In 'The Rock' lecture, Neville Goddard explores the biblical metaphor of the rock as the symbol of God’s perfect work and the individual’s divine origin. He interprets Deuteronomy’s reference to “the rock” to illustrate how each human is a son of God embodying Christ’s perfection. Drawing on personal mystical experience, Goddard recounts a vision in which an opaque quartz rock fragmented and transformed into a luminous human form, affirming the unity of self and divine consciousness. He extends this metaphor to contemporary issues like population and economics, arguing that material limitations are illusions and that true creation stems from inner imagination. Ultimately, he encourages listeners to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and rely on their inner “Rock”—their human imagination—to achieve perfection and awaken to divine unity.
In the 32nd chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, we are told: “The rock, his work is perfect.” Then this question is asked: “Is he not your father who created you? Separating the sons of men, he fixed bounds to the people according to the number of the Sons of God.” Today there is much talk about curtailing the population explosion. This we will never do, for the bounds are already recorded.
Not one child could be born were it not for a son of God giving it life. For it is the sons of God who become the perfect Rock. In the Book of Psalms, it is said: “I will behold thy face in righteousness and I will be satisfied when I awaken with thy likeness.” Although it is hard to believe that the Rock could be God, it is true, for the Rock is the only foundation, and no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is made, which is Christ.
When scriptural truth is experienced it is literally true. The rock first becomes a person, whose work is perfect. And we are urged to “Be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”When the question is asked: “Is he not your father who created you?” the statement is made: “He has set bounds to the people according to the number of the sons of God.” The word translated “God” here means a compound unity of one made up of others. That unity knows the name of each son. You may not believe me, but we are all God’s sons, all destined to be God Himself. Although it does not yet appear what we shall be, we know that when He appears we shall be like him and we shall see him as He is!
No matter how handsome or beautiful you are, when you look in the mirror you are not perfect in your own eyes. But you are promised: “You shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” and Christ is called the Father, the Rock!
Now I will share my personal experience of scripture. In 1934, while sitting quietly not thinking of anything in particular, I closed my eyes and watched golden, pulsing light come out of my head. Suddenly a solid rock, such as a quartz, appeared before my eyes. As I watched, it fragmented into numberless little pieces, then quickly reassembled itself into the human form seated in the lotus posture. No longer was it a stone, but now a breathing, living being!
As I looked, I realised I was seeing myself as perfect! The beauty, dignity, and strength of character I saw in that face was indescribable. It was the face I see in the mirror every morning as I shave, yet it was raised to the nth degree of perfection. Then it began to glow, and reaching the nth degree of luminosity it exploded, and I opened my eyes to find myself back in my room in New York City.
I saw Christ, God’s power and wisdom, as a rock – the limit of contraction and opacity. Now I know the truth: that you are gods, Sons of the Most High. You left the Father’s glory and have clothed yourselves in mortal flesh. His perfect being is housed in you and he is molding you into his likeness. And when you are perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, you will no longer be two, but one!
In the interval you are his emanation, yet his wife, till the sleep of death is past. And when you awake, like the psalmist you will be satisfied when you behold his form. You will not only have his likeness, but you will know from experience that you are the one who began a good work in yourself. For when God’s work in you is brought to completion, God awakes. That is the day of Jesus Christ, for when God awakens, you awake to discover that you are one with God.
Although we are limited to the number of the Sons of God, no one knows that number. Today there is an attempt to try to stop the population explosion, claiming we cannot afford to feed everyone. But I remember hearing George Washington Carver speak back in the thirties. Standing before a large audience in New York City he said: “One day I asked God why he made the peanut and he said: ‘I gave you a brain. Go into yourself and I will reveal the answer to you.’ ”
Then Mr. Carver discovered that the peanut contained everything, and he brought out three-hundred by-products of the peanut, calling it his synthetic kingdom. He said: “The Southern states of America (that which is south of the Mason/Dixon line) can grow enough peanuts to feed and clothe the world.” Therefore, you see the problem is economic, for we do not know how to distribute that which we are capable of producing.
Today billions of dollars are spent so that people will not grow what they can. If a man produces more than the government wants him to, he must spend billions storing it, for we haven’t learned how to change our economic system to take care of what man is capable of producing.
Communism is not the answer, neither is socialism or democracy for that matter; but the solution is not in curtailing the birth of children. First of all it cannot be done, for God has fixed a limit to the peoples of the earth according to the number of the sons of God. We are more than the stars of the heaven, more than the sands of the sea, and each son is known by name!
It takes all of the sons to form the Lord, for the word “elohim” is a compound unity of one made up of others. The one Rock is made up of all the fragments. The Rock broke into many pieces, destined to adjust itself together a perfect human form. Having declared: “Let us make man in our image,” the Rock buried himself within you to form you into the perfection that He is. And we are told in the 44th Psalm to “Rouse thyself, why sleepest thou 0 Lord. Awake!”
The Son of God is within everyone, known in eternity and known by name. As God’s Son you must awaken, but you cannot do so until God has made you as perfect as He is. When this occurs, God, and you – his emanation – awaken to discover that the two of you have become one. Having left everything, the Son of God – who is one with his Father – cleaves to his emanation – his wife – until they become one flesh, one being, one Lord.
I tell you a truth! Although you are unmindful of this rock and have forgotten the God who gave you birth, you are a son of God. The day will come when you, too, will see that Rock which begot you. The rock symbolises death in the sense that God died to his luminosity and translucency in order to take upon himself your body of contraction and opacity.
As far as I am concerned, individually, I have awakened. For me the dream of life is over and I know from experience that scripture is true from beginning to end. I know that we are the sons of God who collectively form the only God, and there is no other!
Now, there is no other foundation than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. That foundation is the Rock who is now forming itself into a beautiful youth. Christ is breathing in you, making your body alive. It is Christ who dreams your every dream, even the most horrible ones. He inspires every vision, as well as all of your actions. And when you are perfect in his eyes so that you can be superimposed upon him with a perfect fit, his work will be finished and He will awaken as you!
God, desiring to make man into the perfection that he is, clothed himself in mortal flesh to dream this dream of life. We agreed to dream this world into being in order to become more luminous, more expanded, and greater than we were when we descended. And this we will do.
A friend recently shared this experience with me. A few years ago his friend was about to give up the theater, believing it was too difficult for him – a black man – to succeed. My friend loaned him my book, Out Of This World, in which I stated that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, would harden into fact. His friend read the book but could not believe this statement.
Then one day I autographed a book for this gentleman with these words of Blake: “If the fool will persist in his folly he will become wise.” This gentleman’s name is David Moses. When he received that book it did something to him, for he began to persist in the folly of claiming success even though the evidence of his senses denied it.
Within a matter of weeks he received an offer for the Greyhound commercial. From that he received movie and TV contracts. He is scheduled to be on the Dianne Carroll show and has just completed a pilot for Danny Thomas, who told him that the show, when accepted by the network, would start this coming September with either twenty-six or thirty-nine segments. Here is one who dared to persist in his dream.
Now, the dreamer in him is the same God who declared: “See now that I, even I am he and there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal. I do all things and none can deliver out of my hands.” (Deuteronomy 32). If God is putting you through the paces, it is because He is shaping you into his own image; and when God completes the work He began in you, you will no longer be two, for then you will know I am He!
Having clothed yourself in mortal flesh, you have gone through hell, for that is what this world is. And you will not leave yourself here, for if one of us were to be left behind, God would cease to be the being He is. He would have to leave the ninety and nine and go in search for the one. Everyone has to awaken to the awareness of being the same being, only enhanced, to find himself greater than he was before his descent into this world of sin and death.
I have seen that breathing, living figure. I knew it was myself, yet I could not believe I possessed that strength of character or majesty. Put a superlative to every characteristic you admire and you will describe that face. And when the good work which is being done in you is complete, the face you now wear will conform to it and you will say: It is I! To the eyes of the world you will be the same being they have always known, but God only sees the heart and in God’s eyes you will be perfect.
” Beloved, it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears we shall be like him and see him as He is!” When He appeared to me I saw my own face. No longer a rock, I was a living, pulsing, breathing man meditating me, and “I was satisfied when I awoke with his likeness.” (Psalms 17)
Everyone, when awake, will have the likeness of perfection. No one can fail, but will be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. I mean no one! Hitler cannot fail, for the son of God dreams Hitler is his very self, and will awaken to see Hitler’s face raised to the nth degree of perfection. The same thing is true for Stalin. On this level we cannot understand how this could be, but I tell you that is exactly what is going to happen.
We knew each other before we came down, for we are the sons of God, who as one man proclaimed: “I say, ‘Ye are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.”‘
Within you, individually, is the prince, the son of God who collectively forms the Lord. This I know from experience and speak to you with authority. The scribes speak from theory and speculation, but I speak with the authority gained from experience. I am sharing my experiences with you, for I know I have fulfilled the pattern that every man will follow. Everyone will see the Rock form itself into a breathing, pulsing, living being to reflect the individual’s beauty and perfection molded there.
In the statement: “And the Rock, his work is perfect,” the word “perfect” means to set up for a goal. God’s goal is to make you in his own image, after his own likeness. The world came into being, not to make one person more important than the other, but to make individual man into the image of the one and only God.
You will never lose your identity. You are individualised and the God forming you into his likeness is individualised and is known by name in eternity. Although there are more sons of God than there are sands of the sea, we will all return to know each other intimately. All things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle. We will have access to the wisdom of all, wisdom derived from this fantastic experience of descending into mortal flesh.
In the case of the gentleman I told you about, he is now a success and may perhaps forget how his success came to be. Quite often when people reach their goal they turn their back on the ladder by which they did ascend and forget the God who gave it birth! I hope this gentleman remembers, because no one gets off the wheel of recurrence until he is judged perfect by the one who began the good work in him. Only then will the individual become superimposed upon the Son of God to form the one God and Father of all.
A friend recently told me how he first came to hear me. It seems that in the spring of 1967, as he pulled a book off the shelf at the Glendale library, a book fell to the floor. He picked it up, read the title, Your Faith is Your Fortune, by Neville, and replaced it.
A week later he returned to the library, pulled out another book and the same book fell to the floor. Again he picked it up, checked the title, and returned the book to the shelf. When the same thing happened the third week, he took the book over to a table and read the first twelve pages. Realising its message appealed to him, he checked it out and read the book from cover to cover twice before returning it to the library.
A few weeks later he saw my ad in the paper, and he and his wife have been attending my meetings ever since.
It was no accident that the book fell three times, for in his letter he shared this vision saying: “I was driving my car when suddenly I knew I was going to have a baby. Although the street was dark, I stopped in front of a house, and looking through its lighted window I could see an instructor and his students. Opening the door I cried: Call a doctor quickly as I am going to have a baby.’ Then I ran back to the car to find a baby lying on the seat. I picked it up and said: ‘I am its father. I am its father. I am its father.’ ”
Here is a beautiful foreshadowing of an event this gentleman – as well as everyone – will experience. No one can leave this wheel of recurrence until the Father in him knows his work is finished, and he has made that one into his own perfection. He was perfect when He descended and He must be the perfect Father when He ascends. And, because of his journey into this world of death and your experiences here, when He ascends you return more expanded, more luminous, to know you are the one perfect being!
All of the sons of God are perfect and will form the one body. Just as the heart, lungs, kidney, liver, and all of the body’s vital organs have different functions, yet form one body, so it is with each son of God. Together we form the one body, yet each is known and loved by one another as brothers. Now, “Go unto my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God.'” There can’t be two Fathers or two Gods, so we are really brothers in the most intimate sense, as collectively we form the LORD.
We are told that living water came out of the rock in the desert, and when struck, honey escaped. Everything comes out of the Rock, for he is God and the source of all life. The wise man builds his house upon this rock when he knows it is his own wonderful human imagination. Make it your only foundation by building what you want upon it. Persist in believing in yourself and you will have your desire, because all things come out of you!
Entertain a noble concept of yourself and believe its truth into being!
Because all things are possible to imagine, you can be anything you want to be. If you are now experiencing difficulties and know sadness, it is because the son of God is weaving you into his image, grinding you on the stone of life. You are doing it to yourself, because you are that son who took on this mortal body of flesh. Remember the words of William Blake and “Have confidence in objects. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Follow this path and you will receive from your own ego, a deeper perception of the eternal beauty of creation. You will also receive an ever increasing relief from that which seems so sad and terrible, as it will show you why this event that seems so hard to bear took place.
Everything is ordered and correct, and in the end you will awake to discover you are one with the infinite beauty who is your own being. Until you see your true self you can only speculate as to your beauty and strength of character. When I saw myself, I could hardly believe I was looking at the being I know as Neville, for the being I saw was glorious!
I saw Neville as a breathing, pulsing being. His eyes were closed in deep, deep meditation and I knew he was meditating me. I also knew that when his work was finished, I would be as perfect as he is. Then he would awake and we would be one.
The perfect Rock is not something out in space, but our redeemer, who is the Lord. We are redeemed by the limit of contraction called “the Rock”. Although it could have been a diamond, the rock I saw was quartz, dull in color. It exploded into many pieces which quickly gathered themselves together to form this perfect being looking just like me. Then it began to glow, and reaching the limit of luminosity it exploded as I awoke in my room.
Now I know that although the wise men of our day speculate on how to curtail the population explosion, they cannot stop it. If the humble peanut can clothe and feed the world, then the problem is economic, but I do not have the solution. I am not an economist. In fact, I can’t even balance my own checkbook. Every month the bank statement shows that I have less than I thought I did. It may be only forty cents, but it’s always less. My wife can’t balance the checkbook either and she majored in mathematics at Smith.
I am always amused to hear these wise men who, although they can speak many languages, their words reveal their lack of the knowledge of the word of God. Read the 52nd chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy: “He has fixed the bounds of the people according to the number of the sons of God who are more numerous than the stars in the heaven and greater than the sands of the sea.” Every child, when born, is the mortal clothing of the son of God who is within him, or the child could not breathe. And although God has unnumbered sons, there is a limit known only to the collective one, who is God. You are loved as an individual and you are known by name, for the son of God speaks to you individually and loves you beyond measure.
If God has put bounds to the people according to the number of the sons of God, and his sons are clothing themselves in mortal flesh, how can any man stop it? I am one of ten children. We are the result of God’s sons’ meditation, and no one can stop God’s sons from coming in for the experiment.
Dwell upon the fact that you are the perfect son of God. Live in the consciousness of that perfection and one day you will see your face woven into the likeness of the Father in you, who is Jesus Christ. And remember: all things are possible to him. Do not turn to anyone on the outside, turn only to the son of God within you who is your human imagination!
Now that you have heard the true story of the Rock, dare to assume you are that perfection, for you already are perfect. In the beginning you said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” That was your challenge and that is your destination.
While you are moving towards that end, you will play the part of the rich man, the poor man, the beggar, and the thief. You will play every part, as all things are ordered and correct.
No matter what you have done, do not dwell upon it and become remorseful; rather start dwelling upon the perfection of the son of God within you. Dream nobly and have no other foundation, for there is no other God. “See now that I, even I am he and there is no God besides me. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal, and none can deliver out of my hands. I raise my hand to heaven and cry, ‘I live forever.'”
The being who spoke those words is within you, speaking to you every moment of time! I have been sent to get you to listen to him. He is telling you that every noble thing you desire is possible, because all things are possible to him. All you have to do is assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, for if you do, it will become true!
This being knows the way to your desire’s fulfillment, but his ways and means are past finding out. Do not try to tell him how to do it; simply walk as though you were the man or woman you want to be, and let the Rock, who is the son of God in you, project your fulfilled desire on the screen of space – and he will!
Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard leverages the biblical image of the rock in Deuteronomy and Psalms to convey a profound theological concept: that the individual is not separate from the divine but is an emanation of it. He emphasizes the Hebrew term 'elohim' as a compound unity, suggesting that God’s singular perfection is composed of each human consciousness. By reframing scriptural directives such as “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” Goddard invites a reexamination of our perceived imperfection through the lens of innate divinity.
The centerpiece of the lecture is Goddard’s personal vision in 1934, where a quartz rock disintegrates and recombines into a living, luminous being mirroring his own form. This mystical narrative serves as an experiential proof of the creative power of human imagination, showing that inner reality precedes external manifestation. The anecdote underscores his broader metaphysical stance that imagination functions as the rock, the bedrock of spiritual transformation.
Goddard then addresses socio-economic fears of overpopulation by referencing George Washington Carver’s discovery of the peanut’s potential. This historical vignette becomes a metaphor for limitless imaginative capacity, illustrating how inner creativity can yield material solutions where traditional economics fails. He argues that perceived scarcity is a product of flawed distribution and limited thinking rather than an inherent lack of resources.
Central to the lecture is the 'law of assumption,' which posits that by persistently feeling the wish fulfilled, one aligns with the creative agent within. Goddard advises against external seeking and highlights meditation—dwelling on the ‘Rock’ within—as the practical method for manifesting desires. This emphasis on mental discipline, assumption, and sustained inner focus reflects his pioneering approach to conscious creation.
Finally, the discourse concludes by uniting mystical, psychological, and communal dimensions, asserting that all individuals collectively form the one God-body. The vision of universal brotherhood and shared divinity reframes personal awakening as both an individual and collective journey. Goddard’s call to recognize and dwell in one’s perfection reiterates the lecture’s core message: true reality is shaped from within, and every person participates in the divine act of creation.
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