In this lecture Neville Goddard invites listeners to understand and trust in the true nature of God as their own I AM consciousness. He explores the biblical revelation of God’s name and equates the divine ‘I AM’ with the human imagination. Through illustrative stories—a friend transforming a neighbor by love, and a dream-vision of a journey through hardship—Goddard shows how love and assumption within imagination reshape external reality. He underscores that all true power lies within one’s own inner state and warns against worshiping external images or idols. The lecture culminates in practical instruction: fall in love with the desired state, assume it as a living reality, and persist until it hardens into fact.
Ask any religious person if he believes in God, and he will say yes. But if you ask him who God is, everyone you ask will give you a different answer. So when I ask you to trust in God, I want you to know who God really is, for if you trust in him, your world will change.
Speaking to God, Moses asked: “When I go to the people of Israel and tell them that the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob sent me, and they ask me your name, what shall I tell them?” Then God replied: “Say this, I AM has sent me to you. This is my name forever. Thus shall I be known throughout all generations.” Here we discover God’s name to be I AM, the same name you use when you identify yourself! Now I ask you, do you believe in that God?
The word translated “Lord” in the statement: “I am the Lord” is YOD HE VAU HE, [pron. YOD HEY VAV HEY] which means “I AM”. So this statement could read, “I am the I AM.” It is impossible to say I am and speak of another; and your awareness – your I am – is he who declares: “I am the Lord, and my glory I will not give to another.”
During your lifetime, I am sure there have been those you thought greater than yourself. I remember when General Eisenhower returned from his successful campaign. There was a big parade for him, and thousands of people bowed before him, giving him their glory by worshiping a false image.
There is no other God, other than he who is housed within you. When you say, “I am” you are speaking God’s name, the God I ask you to trust – for there is no other. We are told to “Make no graven image unto me.” If you make an image out of marble or metal in the shape of another and worship it, you have created a false God.
A friend recently shared a wonderful experience with me. It seems a neighbour was forever dropping in on her, constantly telling horrible stories about her friends. She tried to tell the woman how to change things by using her imagination, but she would not listen. And although she imagined her as a fine, positive, happy person, she remained in her negative state.
Realising the lady was a character my friend had to overcome, she began to change her thoughts. In her imagination she told the neighbour that she loved her. This she persisted in doing, until one day she realised she really did. That night she had this dream.
She found herself sitting in the shade of a beautiful tree. A figure approached, looking like a goddess, in a long white gown with loose sleeves and a silver belt. Suddenly she realised it was her friend, who came to say goodbye. They embraced and she felt a surge of love for that woman like she had never known for anyone before.
The next day this lady came to her door and said: “I gave my notice this morning and have come to say goodbye.” Then my friend added this thought: “If I could fall as much in love with the being within me as I did with this lady, I would be completely transformed – which in turn, would produce great changes in my outer world of effects, for now I know my friend’s transformation took place within me.”
Scripture tells us to love God because he first loved us, and that we should imitate him as a dear child. How is this done? By falling in love! Whether your desire be for wealth, fame, health, or marriage, you must fall in love with the state. My friend fell in love, and so transformed the lady she will never again encounter that state.
God uses man to express love and hate, for man is the agent to express the qualities of I AM. There is no other God! You will find other characteristics of God, but those who know his name put their trust in I AM!
Put your trust in God’s name. Knowing what you want, believe that your assumption will make it a fact. Believe that you need no one on the outside to aid you, for all things are possible to God. Assume things are as you want them to be, for an assumption, persisted in will harden into fact!
Another lady found herself, in dream, with her sister, mother, brother-in-law, and a man she knew to be her first husband. Having agreed to cross the desert on foot and return, they began their journey as the sun blistered her body and the sand burned her feet. At one point she fell, struck her head on a rock, and knew excruciating pain. But at the journey’s end she found her Father. Then she returned to the group and they began their journey home.
Again they encounter everything they had experienced before, but this time she fell madly in love with her first husband. As her love for him grew he became younger and younger, and by the time they returned he was a youth.
She was told that the entire trip took four days – two days to go and two days to return. As she contemplated this period of time, she saw her husband stretched out on the top of a hill. Filled with a great love for him, she was about to throw herself upon his body when she awoke.
This experience is one hundred per cent scripture. In Genesis it is said that: “As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and lo a dread and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know of a surety that your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. They will be slaves there and oppressed for four hundred years. Afterwards, they shall come out with great possessions.”‘ (Genesis 15)
In Biblical language the number is important, not years or days. Every letter of the Hebrew tongue has a numerical and a symbolical value. Four-hundred has the numerical value of the last letter, taf, whose symbol is a cross – the cross of Man. In her vision it took two days to enter and two to return, making a total of four. The number two is opposition, division. The journey was that of oppression, fear, and hardship; but in the end she found her first love, who guided and helped her return.
Isaiah tells you: “Your Maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is his name. He has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, and will love you with everlasting love.” (Isaiah 54)
In spite of everything you do, have done, or will do, God will forgive you – for you are his emanation, his wife till the sleep of death is past. Regardless of the garment you wear, be it male or female, you are God’s wife in this world. In symbolism however, God’s wife appears in the form of a female.
Blake tells us that He is God only, and She is God in you. As you journey you are God’s emanation. But when the journey comes to its end you will know only God as your Maker, your husband, for you will inherit God. You will no longer be two, but you will become one being as you inherit yourself!
Remember: you have only one lover, only one husband. He is your own wonderful Human Imagination, called God. It is he who gives you everything you fall in love with. But if you pray to a little statue made by human hands you are serving a false God.
One day you will know that this world, which seems so real, is a dream. That you were never a rich, poor, white, or black man, as these were only states you dreamed when you entered the state called Abram to become Abraham, the father of multitudes.
God revealed himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, God Almighty, then to Moses as I AM. God’s final revelation will come to you when God’s only begotten son, David, calls you Father.
It is said that David died and his sepulcher is within us to this day (Acts 2). It is within you, God’s sepulcher, that David will rise.
Appealing to the Lord to awake, David cries: “Rouse thyself, why sleepest thou O Lord. Awake! Do not cast us off forever.” For only as the Lord awakes can David rise from the sepulcher and find his Father. Having been promised that his soul would not be left in hell, David awakes; and as he calls you Father, your soul is released from hell.
Asleep to your true identity, you are dreaming the horrors of life for a divine purpose. “Only through many tribulations will you enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Acts 14)
Do not be concerned with the horrors of the world; simply remember that all is ordered and correct. Instead, fall in love with the I AM within you and change your world. God made it as it is now and he can change it, for your husband is a creator. Everything in your world can be traced back to your own wonderful human imagination, who is God.
“Man is all imagination, and God is Man. He exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of Man is the imagination and that is God Himself.” (William Blake). Fall in love with the state you now desire to occupy and to the degree that you are self-persuaded, you will enter it.
Don’t believe in anyone outside of your own wonderful human imagination! Every coin is inscribed with the statement: “In God we trust” yet I wonder how many trust in God – and not the coin! If you really believe in God, you can be penniless, yet walk in the assumption of wealth and be wealthy. Learn to trust your own wonderful human imagination, for he is the only God. Do that and you will never go wrong!
Now let us go into the silence.
In the opening, Goddard deconstructs common religious beliefs by asking listeners to define God, leading to the revelation that God’s name is ‘I AM’—the same self-identification each person uses. By linking scriptural episodes like Moses’ encounter and the Hebrew tetragrammaton to human self-awareness, he emphasizes that divinity is not external but the very essence of individual consciousness. This establishes a foundation for his central teaching: trust in the self as God.
He then uses vivid anecdotes to demonstrate practical application: one friend transforms a negative neighbor by persistently loving her in imagination until love emerges in reality; another undergoes a symbolic dream-journey of suffering and redemption, showing how internal states of oppression can be transmuted by love and imaginative assumption. Both stories illustrate the law of assumption—persisting in a desired mental state until it manifests objectively.
Goddard weaves scriptural numerology and symbolism into his argument, explaining that biblical numbers and names are keys to understanding psychological processes. The four-day journey, the numerical value of Hebrew letters, and references to Abraham and David serve both as spiritual allegories and as mechanisms for decoding the dynamics of consciousness. This scholarly approach lends weight to his metaphysical system and invites deeper study of sacred texts as psychological maps.
In conclusion, Goddard issues a call to abandon external worship and instead cultivate a profound relationship with one’s own imagination—‘God’ as the creative center within. By falling in love with the desired state and assuming it as real, practitioners can transform their inner world, which in turn reshapes outer experiences. His final exhortation to enter the silence serves as an invitation to personal meditation, where the law of assumption can be directly applied and tested.
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