In this lecture Neville Goddard explores the biblical concept of “The Way,” drawing on John 14:6 to show that Christ is both the path and the pattern accessible through human imagination. He argues that we are divine beings who have “fallen” into limited states of consciousness and must assume the state we desire by feeling it real until our external world reflects it. Goddard interprets scripture as an inner drama of personal transformation, describing the birth of Christ within, the realization of divine sonship, the splitting of the temple, and the descent of the Holy Spirit. He illustrates this process with vivid dream examples of flying and spiritual rebirth, emphasizing that true change comes from within rather than external rituals or authorities. By daring to assume desired virtues and persist in that assumption through the senses, one unites with the Christ-pattern in themselves and returns to divine unity. Throughout, he encourages holding the inner vision, recognizing the power of imagination, and trusting the unfolding of the Christ consciousness as the sole way back to the Father.
Tonight’s subject is “The Way.” In the 14th chapter of the Book of John we read, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes unto the Father but by me.” And Phillip said to him, “Show us the Father.” Then he said, “I’ve been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (Jn.14:6,8). So he is the way to what? In this passage specifically to the Father, but he is the way to everything in this world, may I tell you, good, bad or indifferent. That seems insane if you’re trained to believe that God is creator of the good only, and some other being other than God creates the evil. There’s only one Creator, only one God. “I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal” (Deut.32:39). There is nothing but God and God is your own wonderful human Imagination.
Let us now find out why then are we acting as we act in this world. Let us go back to scripture, to the 82nd Psalm, “And God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” (Ps.82:1). Now God speaks, “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall fall and die like men, and fall as one man, O princes’” (verse 6). Now you think this took place in eternity and it’s not related to us.It is related to us, you are the gods in the state that is fallen. Not because you did anything that was wrong; it is for a purpose, a creative purpose, to expand beyond what we were prior to the fall.And here, we fell into the limit of opacity and contraction called man of flesh and blood. Regardless of the pigment of the skin, regardless of the nationality, regardless of any racial background, we are one. The word translated God is the Hebrew word Elohim. It’s a plural word. It’s translated in this passage both God and gods. It’s a compound unity; one made up of others. One made up of all the others.
Now, here we are in this world in states. The rich man, the poor man, the man that is known, the man that is unknown, the man that is wise, the man that is foolish, all these are the gods. Whether rich or poor, known or unknown, wise or foolish, these are only states (of consciousness) into which we have fallen in our sleep. For we actually fell into this world made up of infinite states. Now there’s a way out of any state into another state. You can get into a state in a second, it doesn’t take time; but will you remain in that state and occupy it until it seems natural? For my home is simply that state to which I most constantly return. That constitutes my home.
A state…how would I know my state? Well, let me now think of my friends. Let them see me as they always see me. They know my limitations, my weaknesses, they know all the things about me, for we’ve discussed it, that I desire now to be seen differently in the world, first by myself. I want to transcend my limitations, so I assume that I have…a mere assumption. But does it work? Well, now let me think of my friends. Let me see them in my mind’s eye. Do they see me as they formerly saw me or are they seeing me as I am now assuming that I am? They should see me as I am now assuming that I am. If they see me, and empathize with me, because they are friends rejoice with me, well then, can I now so occupy the state that automatically I return to it long before there’s anything in my world to support this claim? My senses, at the moment deny it, my reason denies it, but in spite of this denial, can I so believe in Christ? Can I so believe that he is the way to everything and he is my own wonderful human Imagination? Can I believe it?
For we are told, “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will” (Mark 11:24). These are the words of Christ, and Christ is called in scripture “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor.1:24). Scripture takes wisdom…listen to the words, the 8th of Proverbs: “And the Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way; before his works of old, I was set up from everlasting, ere the earth was. When he laid out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a little child. I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always. He who finds me finds life; he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death (Prov.8:22,30,35). He is called “the little child.” Here, wisdom is exalted and personalized as God’s companion in the creation of the world. Here, this is scripture.
Well, who is this Christ? He is a little child, we are told, and Christ is in man. Know ye not that Christ is in you? Test yourself and see whether you are holding to the faith. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2Cor.13:5). And he is the little child, who is God’s eternal companion in the creation of the universe. Now, he contains within himself, so scripture teaches, and “he has made known unto me, the purpose of his will, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time” (Eph.1:9). So here, this child contains within himself a plan, a pattern for the fullness of time.
Now, in the world of Caesar, which is this world, you and I—the fallen God, came down for a purpose—can achieve any goal in this world if we know who we are and we are willing to test it. Willing to dare it and accept the challenge that I can be the man that I dream of being by daring to assume, in spite of my senses denying it, that I am the man that I want to be, and sleep in this assumption as though it were true. As the great bard said, “Assume a virtue if you have it not. Restrain tonight. It will lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence, and the next still more easy.” So if I do it, believing that to be true, and it proves itself in the testing, then what does it matter what the wisdom of man now tells me? For this is the wisdom of Christ. Must I know the “right” people? That’s what men will tell you. Must I have the right educational background? That’s what men will tell me. And they’ll give me all the little reasons in the world based upon what man thinks. And the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God. So if I dare to assume that I am what I want to be and persist in that assumption until it seems natural, so when I think of my friends that’s what they see in me, what I’ve assumed that I am, and I act and live in this way as though it were true, well then, if time brings forward the results of my assumption, haven’t I confirmed the wisdom and the truth of the words of Christ?
Well now, that is on this level. Tonight, I want to take you into the level of The Way. You have no idea how truly wonderful you are, because you are the God that fell: “You shall fall as one man, O princes.” Together we are the God, the Lord, but the Lord is the compound unity, one made up of others. We are the gods. But there is a way by which we return to that divine congregation, the congregation of God. And there is only one way: “I AM the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Here is the true and living way. He not only points the way, because he is the pattern he is The Way. Union with Christ is the only way to God the Father.
Well now, how do I have union with Christ? He’s in me. When he begins to erupt within me and begins to unfold his pattern, for the pattern is in me, it begins with the first personalization of Christ which is the little child. Everyone will have this experience. Here, in this world we are born from below and we are evil. Let no one tell you we are not; the Bible teaches it. Listen to the words, the first child of Abraham born of a slave, Hagar, his name was Ishmael. This is the prophecy of the Lord to Ishmael: His descendants will be more numerous than you can count. Today we are three and a half billion in the world. They estimate in the not distant future that there will be five billion of us and they’ll go to other billions of us. These are the descendants, these fleshly bodies, of Ishmael.
Now this is what is said to Ishmael, “He’s a wild ass of a man; his hand shall be against every man and every man’s hand against him” (Gen.16:12). And that is individual man. There isn’t a moment in time we aren’t killing each other. Not only in our great conflicts in war and the gas chambers where we put millions into it, but on the streets, all over the world we kill each other. But not only in such violence, there are more subtle ways of killing. In the economic field…you can take a whole family and crush them, and then they all starve, through your individual greed to take from him the little he needs to feed his little flock and actually put him to the wall economically. It’s been going on since the beginning of time.
So there are multiple ways of murder in this world. It didn’t end with Abel’s murder; it is part of the wild ass of a man that we are at birth. So man is born, really, an evil being and he requires a new self-hood. The ancients saw it plainly by revelation, to the entire abrogation of experimental theory, and many of them believed what they saw and prophesied of Jesus. The prophecy is all in scripture: The coming of the Savior. Now, he doesn’t come as we have been taught to believe that he came. He is in you. He is the pattern of salvation buried in man. And when he comes, everything said of him you experience. You’ll be taken back by this one way, by the way of Christ, from this world of sin and death back into the divine congregation having done the job you were sent to do. And we all are returning into the one God. There’s only one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, and we go right back into that body and form it, this time enhanced, for there’s no limit to translucence, no limit to expansion. There is only a limit to opacity and contraction and we have reached that limit of contraction and opacity. We now will start the expansion. And the individual expands in us, and the plan unfolds in us, and that’s the only way by which we return to that divine congregation.
There is no other way. Diets will not do it. Knowing the right people will not do it. You could meditate from now ’til the ends of time—go and sit in the ___(??) until you simply turn into worms—you still can’t do it. Not a thing on the outside is going to do it. You simply put all of your hope upon this grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Christ within you and then the whole thing unveils within you. You are the same, in the eyes of those who know you, the same being that you were before, the same limited being. And they look at you amazed that you would dare to claim that you have experienced Christ, because their concept of Christ is so false. Their concept is something entirely false. Has not a thing to do with Christ of scripture.
I’ll give you an example. Three years ago in Barbados, my wife and I had a small, little dinner party, a party of…I think there were about ten or twelve. My son and his wife, the two of us, and we had two ministers and their wives. They were perfectly lovely fellows, these fellows and their wives. One was Episcopalian of the high church, the Cathedral of St. Michael, and the other was a Methodist, the most prominent Methodist in the island. These two are very, very well known and very well connected. Well, we got to discussing scripture. I said to the Episcopalian that I had experienced the entire story of Jesus Christ and it is not a secular story at all, it has not a thing to do with the world of Caesar. That while we walk in this world we are redeemed by the pattern unfolding in us, that Christ is the pattern-man buried in man, and the pattern unfolds, and you are he.
So I came to the point of David. And I said to him that after the birth of the Christ child within me, a child that I held in my own hands, and expressed my feeling of tenderness towards the Christ child, that five months later I encountered God’s only begotten son, and his name is David, David of scripture. “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’” (Ps.2:7). And then to illustrate to him, being the Episcopalian, I said that in the 22nd of Matthew, the 20th of Luke, you’ll read these words. He asked those who listened to him, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered, “The son of David.” He said, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus called him Lord, then how can he be David’s son?” (Mat.22:42). And I said to him, “David, in the Spirit, called me Father, and I knew that I was his father and I knew that he was my son. We both knew this relationship of father-son. The Episcopalian minister said to me, “He did not call him “Father,” he called him ‘my Lord.’” I said, “That is an expression every child in the ancient world used concerning his or her father. So when scripture records ‘my Lord,’ scripture is only telling you it is ‘my father’.”
Well, he would not go along with that. It was a dinner party, a lovely dinner party and I had no desire to stir the ashes as it were. But, here, in the 31st chapter, the 35th verse of the Book of Genesis…now Genesis is the seed, the very seed plot of the whole Bible. If you don’t know Genesis, you aren’t going to know the Bible. It’s the seed plot of the entire sixty-six books. Well, here is a story, if you’re not familiar with it: Jacob has two women, two sisters Leah and Rachel. He thought that his father-in-law, Laban, was not as favorably disposed towards him now as he had formerly been. And so, without telling his father-in-law what he planned to do, he hastily gathered all of his possessions together, his camels, his goats, his sheep, his cattle, all possessions, and his two women, and took off.
When Laban found out what his son-in-law had done, he started off in pursuit of him, and he found him and accused him of stealing, taking his household gods. Well, he searched Jacob and his caravan and could not find them. He searched Leah’s room and could not find them. He went into Rachel’s room and Jacob did not know that Rachel had taken these household gods. So she took them and put them into the saddle of a camel, and then sat on the saddle. So when the father came in, he searched diligently and he couldn’t find them. And she said to her father—now this is an actual quote from the 35th verse of the 31st chapter of Genesis—“And she said to her father, ‘Let not my Lord be angry.’” “Let not my Lord”—-she’s speaking to her father—“Let not my Lord be angry”—then she gave reasons why she could not rise—“because I cannot rise before you.” Then she gave the reason, for it is as it is with women, so it is…“the ways of women are upon me.” Well, that’s a euphemism for that little moment in a woman’s life that comes every month…a very gentle way of putting it…“For the ways of women are upon me.”
The same thing is said only the word is translated “manner” when it comes to Sarah. I, at ninety years old, could have a son when it has long ceased to be with me after the manner of women (Gen.18:11). In other words, she could no longer conceive. But this one could, for she was a young woman, Rachel, and she’s simply stating that this is that moment of the month and therefore “I cannot rise before my Lord.” So she’s calling her father “my Lord”. If you do not understand this seed plot, you’re going to miss the entire Bible. And he told me, “No, he called him ‘my Lord’” and I said, “Well, that meant ‘my father’.” And I explained the ancients always called the father “my Lord.” Well, it didn’t seem…because he couldn’t believe that David, who is not taught in his concept of Christianity to be the Son of God, in spite of the fact he reads it in the 2nd Psalm. They’ve been taught so long to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, not knowing that they are one. “I and my Father are one. He who sees me has seen the Father. How then can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” So the creative power of God can’t be separated from God—it is God. The wisdom of God can’t be torn away from God—it is God.
And so, that is a pattern in man for man’s redemption. So we are the gods. If you dwell upon that fact that you are the gods, everyone, even though we kill each other…but the killing of each other is simply a grand illusion, for the gods cannot die. They seem to die, but they cannot die. As the serpent said—he is called the wisest creature that God had made, a symbol once more of Jesus Christ—“And did God say to you that you would die? Yes. You will not surely die. But the day you eat thereof you’ll become as the gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen.3:5, KJV). Well, his prophecy came true, for God said, “Behold, the man has become as we are, knowing good and evil” (verse 22). So he did not lie, he did not beguile, he simply prophesied a truth which came to pass.
But all the wisdom of man in this world is not good enough to redeem man. A pattern had to be contained in man to redeem him, and there is no other way to God. So, you’ll get these arguments, “But surely to the Chinese, to the Indian, to the so-and-so, there must be another way other than the way that you call the Christian way.” No. There are Christian Indians, Christian Chinese, Christian Japanese…they’re all over the world. The foundation is Judaism and Judaism is the seed plot. It is the foundation; Christianity is its fulfillment. It’s not the other way around. Christ comes to fulfill. But he didn’t come the way that you are taught—a woman giving birth to a child. There is a woman, but not that woman who bears from below, that’s Hagar, and she can only bear children into slavery. But this is another woman, the woman from above, called “Jerusalem from above” and she bears it into liberty.
Now, here is a lovely experience of a friend who is here tonight. She said, “I found myself on a horse, I’m riding. And then my mother dies. Then, I take the place of my mother. And that’s the dream.” May I tell her, that’s an enormous leap forward…an enormous leap. The horse is always the symbol of the mind and you the rider to control it. It must have someone to control the mind. If my mind isn’t controlled by me the rider, then it goes berserk. So I am riding the horse of my own mind. Now my mother dies. And I was born by a woman; a woman gave me birth, this garment. So that’s my mother, my physical mother in the world of Caesar. Now my mother dies and I take her place, because there must be a second birth…I must be the twice-born man. But the second one, I will give birth to myself. So I have to become the mother. And so, my second birth now is where I give birth to myself. So she’s become the woman that is now capable of giving birth to herself. In that one simple little dream an enormous leap in the right direction towards the second birth.
And then these two experience. One gentleman, it’s a very humorous one and yet the most marvelous experience, he writes, “I fell asleep simply desiring to teach the Bible. So I imagined I was teaching the Bible and instructing a group. And so, I fell into a sleep from my daydream into a real sleep, and I’m teaching the Bible and explaining it and telling them how to interpret. While I’m doing this, suddenly, I see this light and this energy coming from my head, an enormous head. My head seemed twice its size; my face seemed twice its size. Well, with all this energy…and I put my hand up and this enormous power and my knees seemed to be radiating energy…I thought, ‘Well, now I will simply do something about it.’ I thought I was awake. I had been sleeping maybe for an hour and a half or two hours. I thought I was awake.
“So I got off my bed, I’m on the third floor in my apartment, and I went downstairs, and I thought, ‘I’ll go and see Jan. I’m going to fly. I’ll take this energy and I will simply use it and I’ll fly.’ So when I got downstairs I said to myself, ‘How stupid of me, I could have flown through the window from the third floor.’ So I went back upstairs to the third floor and I took off. And there I am, flying through…on my own energy, about ten to fifteen feet above the ground. And it’s dark, it’s early in the morning, and I’m on the way to Jan. I say to myself, ‘I’m not getting a good view from fifteen feet, so I will simply go a little higher’ and I increased the altitude and up I went for a better view. Then I thought to myself, ‘Now suppose a cop takes a pot shot at me. Because they’re seeing this man flying through space he might take off and all of a sudden shoot me, or at least try to.’ So I said to myself, ‘No he can’t, he can’t see me.’ So when I got to Jan’s place, I said to myself, ‘No, her daughter will be home now, and if I disturb her daughter she’ll give me hell.’
“So I thought, ‘No, now I will go to Marge instead.’ And so I flew off to Marge’s house. Then when I got to Marge’s house, I said, ‘Oh no, suppose now instead of Marge answering the door her husband Ray answers. That would be terrible.’ So, I flew back home again, came on back home, went back to bed and, suddenly, I put my hand out and my hand went eighteen inches above my head…couldn’t feel my head. And then when I could feel my head, all that strange feeling disappeared, and I’m once more normal and I’m back on the bed.” But, he said, “I did it. I did it. I know there is something in me that is a power, that is a wisdom, that is not known to this little thing that I put to bed every night and waken in the morning. There is something in me that is now stirring and I proved it, for I was fully conscious in everything that I did.”
Now another gentleman—he’s here tonight—and he said, “I found myself in an ancient city and I was there for the purpose of teaching everyone to fly. And so, I took off, no machine, and I made the most beautiful swan dive, gentle, gentle descent after taking off and came right down gently on my belly. And at that moment I looked up and here stands my Jan. Well, his Jan is very dear to him and she happens to be his mother-in-law. There she is dressed in a monk’s robe and she isn’t a day over twenty, perfectly beautiful, dressed in a monk’s robe, as she takes my hand into her hands and silently congratulates me on my feat. Then, suddenly it’s changed a bit, and here is my brother Paul at my side. I do have in this world of Caesar a brother whose name is Paul. And at that moment I woke, but I was fully awake in the doing. I knew I was dreaming and I knew I was doing what I was doing. You can call it a dream within a dream, but I knew I was dreaming, and I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it.”
So here, we are beginning to become aware of this power within us and use it in many ways until, finally, the pattern unfolds. It comes suddenly; it comes like a thief in the night. No one knows when Christ will erupt within man. But Christ is the pattern man, not a man who walked the earth 2,000 years ago. When we fell as one man the pattern came with us or we couldn’t even breathe. This is the power within us, the wisdom within us. And the only escape from this world of sin and death is by the way of Christ, which is the pattern man. So you’re going to start with the birth of Christ—you’ll be born from above. And all that is said of him in scripture concerning that infant child wrapped in swaddling clothes you will experience. And it will be your experience. It’s your child, your birth, that is, the sign of your birth.
Then comes the discovery of the fatherhood of God and you are God the Father, for his Son calls you, Father. Now this is the great mystery, how can you, individualized as you are, how can the speaker, individualized as he is, be one? Well, if your son calls me Father, and he’s my son, then are we not one God, one Father? For, your David is not going to be a David other than the David that called me Father. There’s only one David, and that one David will call everyone when it unfolds within him Father. And you will know that you are his father and you will know scripture, and God is his father. “For I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’” (Ps2:7). Well, if the whole vast world of billions of us has this experience where God’s Son calls him “Father” and he knows it, there’s no uncertainty as to this relationship, well then, are we not all one, one Father, one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all?
And it takes the Son to reveal it. “For no one has ever seen God; but the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18). So you can’t look at me and see the Father; only the Son can tell me that I am the Father. And he tells it to me in a first-person, present-tense experience. So you can believe me or disbelieve me, that’s your privilege, but I do know you’re going to have it and after you have had it you’ll know the truth of my words. You will know that we are one. You and I are actually one because we have the same Son. If we are the Father of the same Son, well, then we are one Father.
So no one has ever seen the Son, that’s what we are told. “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mat.11:27). Well, if no one knows who the Son is except the Father…and you’re going to tell me that you’ve seen him on the outside? How are you going to see him on the outside when only the Father knows him? No, you’ll never see him on the outside. This drama unfolds within you. It is a divine drama. It’s the drama of salvation, when the Son comes before you and calls you, Father.
And so here, these two must come first. Then comes the splitting of the temple, where you do not take the blood of another, the blood of a goat, the blood of anything else; you take your own blood. And you are split from top to bottom and at the base of your spine is golden liquid light. It’s the blood of God and you are God…for it was just revealed to you, just four months before, that you are the father of God’s only begotten Son. So who now is split? It’s you…and therefore God is split, from top to bottom. And it’s God’s blood, it’s your blood, and you fuse with it and up you go as prophesied in scripture, right up into the temple of your own being.
And then, the dove will descend two years and nine months later, and smother you with affection. Who is the dove but the symbol of the Holy Spirit who descends upon it, and this is a completed drama then. From then on your work here is finished and you only linger to tell it. Either write it out or tell it to those who will listen to it carefully. Maybe they will write it or maybe they will continue telling it. But you tell it while you remain for the remaining days or years. Then, when you depart this time, you depart forever. You have ascended into heaven, back into that divine congregation.
So Jesus Christ does not merely point the way, he is the way. And union with Christ is the only way to God the Father and the union is simply the unfolding of the pattern in you. You can’t get any closer than that…when the pattern unfolds in you. Not as something on the outside, in the first-person, present-tense experience. It’s not happening to him, it’s happening to me. And so, that’s union with Christ, for he is the pattern. Christ is the pattern man. The whole thing unfolds within the individual and then he knows who Christ is. Then he knows the gospel, he knows scripture.
So, even though an able, brilliant, intelligent man, like my friend in Barbados, who would stand and he’s blocked by that one little thing, that I said he called me “Father.” He said, “No, he called Christ ‘my Lord’” and could not get over that hump, that the ancients always called the father, “my Lord.” Well, chronologically speaking, is not David of the ancient world? If you took it chronologically he is supposed to have lived—which he didn’t as we understand it—but he’s supposed to have lived 1,000 B.C. and here it is 2,000 A.D. and here’s a man who is only sixty-three claiming that one who lived 1,000 B.C., which is 3,000 years ago, is his son. And I tell you, he is my son…more so than my physical son who calls me Father. He is forty-four; but he is not any more my son. I am told by his mother that I sired him. I take that on faith. But I have no woman in David; he has no mother. I begot him; he is my son. He has no mother unlike my physical son who had a mother. I have to go on faith that I did participate in this creation of a body, but that has to be purely on faith.
But in this case there is no uncertainty when he stands before you and calls you Father. You’ve always been his father and he’s always been your son. There is no other creator in bringing me into that relationship of son to father. So there is no mother. And if you read scripture carefully, in spite of the fact that Ruth does give him a mother and in other parts, like in Chronicles…but Chronicles is not altogether as complete as Samuel. Samuel is the book that tells the story of David. And the most scholarly of all Biblical criticisms, which is The Encyclopedia Biblica, states quite openly that he has by tradition no mother. But churches have inserted throughout scripture, in spite of the warning “Do not add to the words of this book,” and they have added verse after verse simply to build up the traditions of men. But these are not the revelations of God as recorded by the ancients.
So when we find it, new editions come out and we delete anything that has been inserted that was not there in the original manuscripts. You’ll find many things inserted…and that is one where they gave him…to give it reason in the world, because how can you have a man if he doesn’t have a mother? So to give it a secular treatment they put a mother into the picture and he has no mother. Read it carefully, and you’ll find in the Book of Samuel he has none. You’ll also find in the 2nd Psalm, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord:”—he didn’t speak about any mother—“You are my son, today I have begotten you” (verse 7). And, here he is the anointed ___(??) of the Lord.
So the only way to God is union with Christ. There is no other way. And whether there are three and a half billion of us in the world, and tomorrow five billion, and maybe eventually ten billion, makes no difference. That’s fulfillment of prophecy: “I’ll give you descendants more numerous than you can number.” That is said to Ishmael and we are Ishmael, the wild ass, whose hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against him. The kindest person in the world, push him hard enough and threaten someone that he loves, and you find he is not quite as gentle as you thought he was. He’ll react, as an animal would react, if pressed hard enough. Threaten the one he loves, a child, his wife or her husband, and if that really is a deep affection, they will die in the attempt to protect what they love. Well, that is the being spoken of as Ishmael: “His hand against every man and every man’s hand against him” (Gen.16:16).
And the economic war is just as great, in fact, more so than the military war. When people are impoverished through the greed of others, not one person suffers but many suffer. First of all, they’re embarrassed that they’re lowered into, well, extreme poverty. And so, to again…another euphemism, instead of calling it poor, that a man is poor, no, he is underprivileged. So we take all these words and dress up these hard, hard statements, where if we use them we’ll say exactly what the man is, he’s poor. He has nothing. No, he’s underprivileged. Well, a person could be underprivileged and still not be poor. But, no, they wouldn’t say a man is poor anymore, he’s simply underprivileged.
I tell you, the conflict is on. It was all foreseen: “You will die like men and fall as one man, O princes”…so that was foreseen. Not because you and I did anything that was wrong…for this is God’s plan and we agreed in concert to fall into these states, and then come out of these states having experienced them. And so, “I do not consider a great state…either the just or the wicked is in a supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil” (Blake, Vision of Last Judgment). When he falls into these states, he falls into something that either is lovely or unlovely. And those who find themselves in a comfortable state, they think that they earned it because of some past. No, they haven’t earned anything; they’re only states.
Today, money…my father always had a statement, “Money doesn’t care who owns it.” And so, don’t let anyone tell you that because a man is rich, or she is rich, that they are in any way superior. If most of them who have oodles of money would go back just a generation or so, they wouldn’t want to write about it. Not its origin. But they’ll brag about the fruit of the tree, but not how the tree came into being.And so, let no one brag about it because you could be anything you want to be if you know this law. They’re all states. How would I feel if it were true? Well then, try to feel what I would feel were it true. And then look into my mind for confirmation of that assumption and see my friends congratulating me, see my friends empathizing with me. They all actually are so rejoicing with me that I know that they see what I am seeing. Now let me make a habit of this way of thinking. And so, when I go to bed, feel the state. When I wake tomorrow, in spite of everything that denies it, feel the state. The state felt to which I return constantly becomes my home, and then that home objectifies and crystallizes in my world.
But never forget the vision. Keep the divine vision in time of trouble. The divine vision is the story of Jesus Christ. He is the pattern. So no matter what happens to you, always keep the divine vision in time of trouble. You’ve seen it in words and one day you will experience it. You’ve heard it…I’ve told you exactly what happened to me. And I’m not alone…in this audience there are others and many others are on the verge of it. May I tell you, I’m thrilled beyond measure…thrilled beyond measure! I’m waiting eagerly for any one at any time, or many, to tell me, call me up, write me, “I had the birth.”Because I know on the heels of that, only nine months, and then the three major ones are over. And then what? Two years and nine months, what’s that? What’s that for the waiting to complete the forty-two months of revelation, or the time, times and half a time, or the twelve hundred and sixty days? This is the measurement between the birth and its completeness when the dove descends.
So, I can’t give you anything comparable to this. If tonight you inherited by the use of the law a million dollars, a billion dollars, how could it compare to departure from the world into which you’ve fallen and going back enriched? Because no one is going back poor! Everyone is going back enriched because we are the gods. We came down for a purpose. Everyone who returns by way of Christ—and there’s no other but by the way of Christ—goes right back into the one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all. And they’re rejoicing in heaven because one has returned! And they’re coming up one after the other.
So you will have it and you’ll tell others to encourage them to hold onto the vision and keep the faith to the very end. And then all will eventually return. When all these masks are off—the white mask, the pink mask, the yellow mask, the black mask, all are taken off— we were never the masks that we wore. We were the gods we were before the fall, and we are still the gods that we were, only enhanced by reason of experience of the fall. For, we came down into death and conquered death…died like men yes…and still overcame death.
Now let us go into the Silence.
___(??) other than to assume. You don’t need the aid of any being in this world. The power within you can do it all…it is Christ. Assume the most noble concept of yourself, that you are honored in this world. It’s a nice thing to be honored. Not among men, they’re putting little things on you, but you feel honored, you feel dignified. No matter where you go you feel welcome, there are no closed doors. Regardless of the present limitations, there aren’t any closed doors. You feel this way and walk this way, and may I tell you, doors will open. They’re all open. No chips on your shoulder, no battles to fight. You know who you are: You are God. You aren’t going to go out on the street and scream “I am God” but you know it. And that’s far greater than talking and trying to persuade others that you are and they’re not. Because there is no one who is not God. Every child born of woman is that one descending from the divine society, everyone. And that one, by one way and one way only, is going to return after his journey is over.
Now, are there any questions, please?
Q: I don’t understand then why when a child is born here to this material world sometimes at age two, three, or four it leaves.
A: Did you hear the question? I can’t understand, said the gentleman, why there are children who are born at the age, well, at birth sometimes, sometimes two, three, four and then they depart this world. Sir, departing this world is not death. It’s a lesson for those that are left behind. The individual who departs this world finds himself instantly restored in a body same as before but new, unaccountably new, in a world just like this, a terrestrial world, and he is in an environment best suited for the work to be done in him. That work is the unfolding of this pattern man. And his entrance there could be for the most fantastic lesson for the parent.
I have in New York City two darlings. They met in my meeting on a blind date.She had just enough to go to Paris and he happened to be in Paris at the time. She said, “Neville, it seems insane. All I have is a quickie, one week, and I have to live in a very modest little place, but I’ve longed to go to Paris. I know no one there. Do you think I’m foolish?” I said, “No. As far as I’m concerned, do anything your heart desires.” So she bought her little round-trip ticket to Paris. The second night she was there she went on a blind date and met the man. He was already married five times, no offspring, five times and divorced each. He was fabulously wealthy…awfully nice chap, many years her senior. She was a girl, a beautiful girl, a model out there, in her early thirties and he was a man on in years…not by his standards, he always thought himself twenty and still does at seventy-seven.
But they were blessed with a little boy, little Larry, and then two years later blessed with a second, and they named him after me, Neville. Well, little Larry was killed two weeks ago last Saturday in London. He was in college, his first year in college, and they got a cable saying that he had a fatal automobile accident. Now he has all the money in the world. He plotted everything for Larry. Now this is a lesson for Joseph and Louise. They’ll learn it…that money isn’t everything. They tried to cushion him against everything in this world by setting up trust funds, this, that and the other. Now it’s a lesson for Joseph to learn at the age of seventy-seven…for they can’t bring him back. But Larry is alive; Larry is not dead. Larry is restored to life. He’s not mangled as he was in this sudden death in this automobile accident… not a thing is missing. He is a restored youth, a beautiful youth, just as he was when he was here at the age of seventeen. He was an unusually handsome fellow, a little taller than I am and gave evidence of growing even taller than that and he was a perfect darling. All right, so he’s gone. He doesn’t need their cushion of dollars and cents. But they needed the lesson of the loss. And so, they cry out, as we have it in scripture, “O Absalom, my son, my son! Would that I had died instead of thee” (2Sam.18:33). So he had to learn a lesson in the death of his son. And so, we’ll find in the end that mercy, infinite mercy, did it all, infinite mercy. Doesn’t seem right, but I tell you God is infinitely merciful…and we are the gods. You wouldn’t think it when you see a man’s inhumanity to man. But he still is infinitely merciful.
I tell you, you are the gods spoken of in the 82nd Psalm. Scholars claim it is the most difficult psalm of the 150. And that the ideas, said this great scholar, Thomas Cheney, who was the editor in chief of The Encyclopedia Biblica, and he was considered the greatest Hebrew scholar of his time. He took these ancient manuscripts and he was the editor in charge. The volume is that thick. Today, fortunately, they’ve all come out in four volumes…each, though, is still that thick and that big. And it’s considered the most scholarly of higher biblical criticism. He said, “The ideas in this psalm might have been perennial, but their meanings have long been lost to us. We have no understanding of the meaning, because he can’t conceive that “God and gods,” and then God is saying to the gods that “You are sons of the Most High; nevertheless, you will die like men, and fall as one man, O princes” (Ps.82:6). Then comes the fall of one man containing all men; and then the return to that divine bliss but beyond the wildest dream of anything known here…for you can’t conceive of what you’ve shut out in coming here! We’re all suffering from total amnesia. And then when you return, you return to the glory that was yours before that the world was, but you bring back the glory of the experience of conquering death. For the gods can’t die. So they have to actually enter a state where they die like men. And still they can’t die, therefore, they overcome death.
Then the creative power of God is increased by reason of all of us going back bringing our talent that we have exercised and increased. Came down with our talent, go back with the talent multiplied, and the power of God is enhanced that much. And all will be one God. There’s only one God: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” There is no greater confession of faith than that. The minute you start other gods…put any man up as some important person you are making another god. And don’t. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one.” There is no other. That is our great confession—the Shema.
Now the time is up…until Friday. Thank you.
In this lecture Neville Goddard reinterprets traditional Christian doctrine through the lens of human imagination. By equating Christ with the creative power of the mind, he challenges the view that evil exists apart from God and instead posits that all experiences—good or bad—are states of consciousness manufactured by our own assumption. Scriptural passages, such as Psalm 82’s reference to humankind as “gods,” become evidence of an original divine state into which we once fell and from which we must consciously return.
Goddard’s treatment of the “fall” and “return” delineates a map of inner transformation. He describes our earthly life as a series of states—rich, poor, wise, foolish—into which we fall in a cosmic dream. The remedy is the deliberate assumption of a chosen state: to feel in imagination the fulfillment of one’s desire until it becomes habitual and therefore objective in life. This law of assumption underpins his entire psychological method.
The lecture then unfolds an inner drama mirroring Christ’s narrative as a personal process: the birth of the Christ child within, the recognition of divine sonship, the splitting of the temple (inner division and regeneration), and the ultimate descent of the Holy Spirit. Each stage symbolizes a shift in self-awareness and power, from the spark of new birth to the full realization of one’s oneness with God. Goddard stresses that these events are not mythic history but living potentials in every individual’s mind.
Concrete examples—lucid dreams of flying, encounters with divine figures, symbolic dream sequences—serve to validate his claims. Participants who learn to harness the energy of imagination can perform feats like levitation or spontaneous teleportation, according to Neville’s dream testimonies. These narratives illustrate the immediacy and practicality of his teaching: transformation is experiential and verifiable by the dreamer or meditator.
Ultimately, "The Way" stands as a manual for self-redemption through imagination. It dissolves external dogma and ritual in favor of inner discovery, asserting that union with Christ is nothing more than the unfolding of an innate mental pattern. By keeping the inner vision alive, persisting in chosen assumptions, and trusting the process, individuals can transcend limitations, overcome death, and reenter the divine unity from which they originated.
The Bible Through Neville
Neville Bible Sparks
Neville Lecture Series
