In this lecture Neville Goddard emphasizes that the crucifixion and key events in Christ’s life are supernatural dramas that occur timelessly within the human soul. He illustrates this through personal mystical experiences involving voices from outer and inner realms, crucifixion by vortex points, and an inner resurrection born within his own skull. Neville argues that biblical narratives are not historical events bound by space and time but symbolic representations of God’s incarnation and awakening within man. He identifies human imagination as the vessel through which God dreams and experiences life, making every individual both dreamer and dream. The lecture ends with practical guidance: assume the desired state as already fulfilled and walk in that consciousness, allowing the inner Divine to manifest external change naturally.
Others spent some time in church today, listening to one or maybe all seven words of the cross. And I wonder what the attended really understood—the great mystery. For we are told when they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him. When they came to the place called the Skull. Where is it and what time? We cannot fix the cross in time or locate it in space. And it’s a very great mistake in interpretation to ignore the out-and-out character of the supernatural nature of the crucifixion. In fact, all the great events in the life of Jesus Christ.
Let me share with you my own personal experience to show you cannot locate it in space and you cannot fix it in time. Remember, he’s only fulfilling Scripture and the Scripture is the Old Testament. We turn now to a Psalm—the 42nd Psalm that was written hundreds of years before. If you didn’t hear each of the [inaudible], you can’t date it. It begins, “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, oh God.” My soul seeks and thirsts for God, for the living God. Now, he said, these things I remember, when I went to the throng and led them in procession to the house of God, a multitude being tested by God.
And let me share with you my own experience of that Psalm and you try to fix it in time or locate it in space. This night in question, I was leading an enormous crowd, a gay crowd, a very festive crowd, a huge multitude, and leading them to the house of God. And as we walked in this gay manner, a voice rang out from outer space. And the voice said, “And God walks with you.” A woman at my side, to my right, she questioned the voice. And she said, “If God walks with us, where is he?” And the voice replied, “At your side.” She looked to her left and looked into my face, and she became hysterical. She thought it was so funny. So again, she addressed the voice and she said to me, “Neville is God.” And the voice answered, “Yes, in the act of waking.” Then the voice spoke in the depth of my own self and no one heard it but the speaker. And the voice said to me, “I laid myself down within you to sleep. And as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed …”—and I knew exactly what the end of that sentence would be. He is dreaming that he is I.
But I became so emotionally moved by the voice speaking in the depth of my own being that I began to return to this level. As I returned, my hand, my head, the right side, and the soles of my two feet were nailed by a vortex. It was a vortex, a vortex, a vortex, a vortex, and each foot a vortex. Now, when did it happen? The test is passed. I laid myself down within you to sleep. And, as I said, “I dreamed a dream.” Now it begins, these things I remember. If I remember, then it is passed. As Paul states, “I have been crucified with Christ.” Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Then he stated, “From now on, I recognize no one from a human point of view. Even though I once recognized Christ from a human point of view, I recognize him thus no longer.” Paul, far from the dying side, no one more supported his vision than Paul. But Paul knew the whole thing was supernatural. When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.
The drama is a supernatural drama taking place in the soul of man. In the beginning of time, the crucifixion took place. That’s when God became as we are that we may be as he is. God became man that man may become God. And that was in the very beginning of God. That was the crucifixion. The crucifixion is actually God becoming man. That is how what we speak of as Bethlehem is man becoming God. You cannot date them. But we have dated them, well, for church reasons. And today we speak of Good Friday as a day. In fact, we separate before and after. When Good Friday took place in the beginning of time, Bethlehem takes place at any moment in time. When it comes, it will come suddenly, unexpectedly. No one will know when he is born within you and you become God. But when he said to me, “And as I dreamed, I dreamt a dream.” I dream—and I knew exactly what he was going to dream. He is dreaming that he is I. And when the dream of life is over, I will awaken as the dreamer. But then he’s awake and I will be awake as the one who so loved me that he actually became and took upon himself all the weaknesses and all the limitations of man. And they are unknown. So, this day is called Good Friday. You cannot date it. Any attempt to date it and ignore the altogether supernatural character of the event called the crucifixion and try to explain it in some naturalistic way is to labor in vain.
God actually became that which you are and he is dreaming your life. So, the dreamer in you is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God. Man is all imagination. And God is man and exists in us, and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination and that is God himself, the divine body of Jesus. That’s the divine body. And within us, we meet him morning, noon, and night by the misuse of our imagination.
So, here the suffering life that they spoke of today, and all the statements that their faith said today, are taken from the Old Testament. The first two are from Luke, the third from John, and the fourth from Matthew. Then we go back to John for two more. And then we end with Luke. So, in the beginning forgive them for they know not what they do. Not one really knows or he can agree. And the power is putting him through the furnace and suffering with him. Because as you suffer, if you didn’t have an imagination, you couldn’t suffer. Remove imagination and you can cut yourself in pieces and you couldn’t suffer. So, God in man is the suffering one. He actually suffers everything that man thinks only he suffers. So, someone will say to me, it isn’t God who suffers in my case. I am feeling the pain. I said, who? If I am, because that’s his name, that’s God’s name forever and forever. “Go to the people and say, I am have sent you. For, this is my name for all generations.” There is no other name that he has.
So, in the gospel of John, it is always, I am. Throughout the entire gospel, he’s affirming I am the door, I am the shepherd. I am the vine. I am the true water, the living water. All these things the I am is speaking of, which is all in man. So here this night, millions celebrated this day and they thought they did God a service, which is all right. It’s good to do something of that nature. So, they went out and they spent an hour, two hours, and spent three hours, and they heard these words from the cross and thought the interpretation given by the minister was the interpretation. The simple word, a word spoken of is not a word, but a competed sentence. It could be just, the shortest one is, “I thirst,” well that’s taken from the Psalm. In the very end, quoting now the 31st Psalm, but it’s put into the mouth of Jesus on the cross. And he said, “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.” The completed verse in the 31st Psalm is, “Into thine hands I commit my spirit. Thou hast redeemed, oh Lord, faithful God.” He said, “I’ve come only to fulfill Scripture.” And all these words on the cross are taken from the Old Testament.
These things I remember for, may I tell you when it happened to me, memory returned. Walking in that procession to the house of God, memory returned. But when did it happen? Not on earth, not here. What did she say to the voice? “If he walks with us, where is he?” When did the voice answer, “At your side”? And when she became hysterical, looking into my face—when was it and where was it? You can’t fix it in time and you can’t locate it in space. But I can tell you it happened, as far as I am concerned in an objective sense; they all seem objective to me. And the voice was objective, all to the last one; because everyone heard the voice. She heard it and could question the voice. Yet in the very end when it spoke only from within me: “I laid myself down within you to sleep.” A deliberate decision on the part of my father and the purpose of laying himself down in me to sleep is to transform into himself as God the Father; that’s his duty and to do it he put me through the furnaces. “I try you in the furnaces of affliction, for my own sake I do it.” For my own sake. I will not give my glory unto another, and glory and I are identical in Scripture. “I will make my glory to pass before me, and when I pass by.” So, he identifies glory with the “I”. So, forgive me himself, which is his glory, he has to try me in the furnaces of affliction. And so, I go through hell in the shadow. And when he awakes, then I awake as the one who so loved me, he gave himself for me.
So, this is the great story that took place, not took place, but I mean that we celebrate today as having taken place 2,000 years ago. And it’s not so at all. This is the eternal drama that is forever taking place. Something to be done absolutely and continuously without dating it. You can’t date it. It has no reference to time, no reference at all to anything taking place here. It is always taking place. And so tonight, one, two, or maybe all of you, who knows, it’ll be his will this night that he unfolds himself within you and reveals himself as you. Then it’s his will, but no one can earn it. No one can force it. It will come and you’ll see when the Father reveals himself. When people say, I saw God, you don’t see God; God makes himself seen. You never see. He makes himself manifest.
If after the whole thing unfolded within, the few who see me unveiled, it’s not because they came upon me and caught me by surprise. It was my deliberate choice to make myself seen. It’s entirely up to me to make myself manifest after the whole thing unfolded within. You don’t get anyone by surprise. I’ve made you a promise. I will keep that promise. I have kept it to at least a dozen that I have made myself seen twice, but you do not catch me by surprise. And so, when these events unfold within the soul of man, it is God unfolding because we are told, “Rouse thyself. Why sleepeth thou, oh Lord? Awake. Do not cast us off forever”—but he will never cast you off. But it seems so long when you are eager. We now go back to the 42nd Psalm. He likens “the little hart”—now hart is not H E A R T, it’s the little fawn, the little deer, H A R T—“as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee oh God.” My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
Now we tell people the same of the famine of the world. It will not be a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God. When that thirst is felt, nothing in this world can quench it but an experience of God. And that was an experience of God. When I heard his voice coming from without first, then coming within and I knew the “I” of the dreamer within was God. And I do not separate the dreamer within from the “I” when I awake. It’s the same me. I can have a daydream, as I have a night dream, but that daydreamer and the night dreamer are one and the same. So, if I can think of the “I” in a dream, the night dream, the most wonderful picture, the most marvelous bridge of incident, and actually experience it, well then, the same thing is true when I awake. If I only know that the “I” when I awake is one with the “I” that is dreaming, I can now get my goal in this world.
Name the end. Go to the end. Experience the end as though it were true and let the dreamer in me build the bridge of incident and relieve me from where I am now to the fulfillment of that dreaming. When I get there, it will happen in the most normal, natural manner. It will externalize itself in my world. And I give all credit to the being within who is completing the dream. And when completed, these things will happen. This that I spoke of earlier preceded the resurrection. The resurrection comes about and it’s not in some cemetery. It’s all within your own skull. When they came into the place, which is called the Skull, there they crucified him.* In your skull. So go to bed a perfectly normal person, as you’ve done year after year, for as many years as you’ve lived, night after night, and something strange will happen while you’re asleep. You will feel a vibration that you’ve never known before. The strangest vibration. And you may interpret it as I interpreted mine. I thought, I know nothing of the human form. I know nothing of this problem. And I thought to myself, well, now this is it. I don’t see how I could survive this vibration. And I thought, knowing nothing about it, this must be what they call a terrible hemorrhage, but I couldn’t see how I could survive this vibration. Apart from that, I began to awake and I awoke like I’ve never been awake before to find myself in my own skull. And I knew the skull was my skull, but I also knew it was the sepulcher. I knew it was a tomb and it was hermetically sealed. There wasn’t the slightest little opening in that tomb. And I had one consuming desire: to get out, but I had a built-in wisdom as to what to do. I knew that if I pushed the base of my skull then something would give, that I could push myself through it and then come out.
When I did, I pushed it, and something moved leaving an opening. And I put my head against the opening and squeezed myself out, inch by inch by inch. And I came through that opening as a child comes through the womb of woman, and I pulled myself up. And when I came out, all the symbolism that you find in Scripture, especially in the book of Luke, surrounded me: the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, three men to witness the event, and the most fantastic wind. There was a storm and I interpreted the wind to be coming from the corner of the room, although I still felt it in my head. And one of the three who were present, he felt it and he was the most disturbed of the three. They all felt the wind. He went off to investigate the wind and looking down he saw the child, the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he picked it up. And he looked into the little face; he announced what it was. And he said, “It’s Neville’s baby.”
The other two in the most incredible voices asked, “How can Neville have a baby?” But they couldn’t see me. I was invisible to their eyes. I was so alive, so awake. I’ve never been awake like this before. I can read every thought, their thoughts were objective. I heard what they said and their thoughts, not yet expressed, were objective to me. They couldn’t conceal anything from me. And he brought the little infant and placed it on the bed. Then I took the infant up in my hand, and I said, looking into his face, “How is my sweetheart?” And the little child broke into the most heavenly laugh and then the whole thing dissolved. They dissolved, the room dissolved, the infant dissolved, and I found myself on the bed with this fantastically, indelibly imprinted upon my mind. I got out and wrote the whole thing in detail and mailed it to my wife. I went down the hallway and dropped it in so that there’ll be a record that the story of Scripture is supernatural and is not secular history. It’s something that’s going to happen to every person in this world in their own good order.
But it is not something that happens only to one person, it is going to happen to all. It is God being born in man. That was his pledge to himself. And that man would actually become God. I was invisible to them—why? Because God is spirit. But it didn’t rob me of the feeling of the part and understanding and wisdom that I did not enjoy when I wore the garment of flesh. Invisible to them. But I invite you, you are not invisible to the heavenly host, but they were not present. Only the three who came like the three shepherds coming and they saw it.
And then, 139 days later, a vibration similar to that one started in my head, this time at the top of my skull. Again, I thought, this is it. There’s going to be an explosion with this. Well, there was. This time the whole thing exploded and then it all settled, sending me forward as God’s son—not Jesus. David, as told us in the Old Testament. As David said in the 2nd Psalm, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, thou art my son. Today, I have begotten thee.” And then he tells it in the 89 Psalm, “I have found David. With my holy oil I have anointed him. And he shall triumphantly say, thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” I did not know, born and raised in the Christian faith that I was and call myself a Christian. My training did not reveal this at all. And here I see David and there is no uncertainty as to the relationship. I know he’s my son and I know that he knows I am his father. If I am his father and he is God’s son, well then, who am I?
Everyone in this world is going to awaken as God the Father. There’s no room for anyone else in the universe but God. For God is transformed in this wonderful creation into himself, and everyone will awaken as God the Father. So, it’s the story of Jesus. Jesus is God the Father. You want to see the Father, and I’ve been so long with you Philip, and yet you do not know me. He who sees me has seen the Father. How then can you say, “Show us the Father?” I and the Father are one. Yet, I and the Father are one and the Father is greater than I, because he is the office of sender. I am limited, but when I return to myself, the Father, I am not in the office of the sent but in the office of the sender and the sender is greater than the sent though they are one. So, Jesus is not the son, he is the Father. David is the son. Did not David in the spirit call him, my Lord?
And “my Lord” is the title that the son always used to describe his father. He always talks of his father as my Lord. And when I tell you it is David, it is David. No one in this world would ever, I would say, dispute it. He can deny it now, but he would’ve had the experience. And when you have the experience, you can’t deny it. I could no more deny that experience than I could deny now the simplest evidence of my senses, I couldn’t. It’s indelibly invested in us. So, all of you are supernaturally based. And yet men have been taught to believe they are part of secular history. It is not secular history. This being is born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So, God became man that man may be born as God. And because God is a Father. If he’s going to give himself to me 100 percent, then I must be a Father. Not just a Father, the Father of another son, but no, that Son. If he gives himself to me, tell me who are you? But he’s a father. But what is your son’s name? David. Well, if David is your son and you succeed in giving yourself to me, I must be, if you succeed, I must be David’s father.
That’s going to happen to everyone in the world. Not one will escape it, for it’s not God’s will that one be lost. Can’t be lost. So, if you go through the furnaces, do not let anyone condemn you for it and say “serve you right” or this, that, and the other. Never. It is God’s will. He passed through all the furnaces, but he did it for his own sake, for he could not give of himself until we are purified in the furnaces. And then he calls us out one by one, not in pairs. You’re too unique. There is not one person in the world who can take your place. You are unique. The only one just like you. And so, in time, you are going to be called into the living temple, a living stone in the living temple until the whole temple is done.
So, we are told the curtain was torn in two from top to bottom and people looked in the synagogue for some curtain that was stolen. How could it be when the Scripture tells us we are the temple of the living God and the spirit of God dwells in you? If I am the temple of the living God, and the curtain of the temple is torn, it can’t be something of the outside made with human hands. It has to be the temple that I am, and that too is the one that is torn in two from top to bottom.
You don’t expect suddenly a bolt of lightning will cut you in two from top to bottom. At the base of your spine, you’ll see a golden, pulsing liquid light, it’s lit. As you contemplate it, you are going to know it is yourself and you would infuse with it. And then like a fiery serpent, you do the same thing to your own skull. But when you get there, it’s going to reverberate like sound.
So, you tell the story in the third chapter of John, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. What did he lift up? A fiery serpent. And just as he lifted it up and called out to the shadow. No fiery serpent was lifted up in the wilderness. All these other shadows that you’re told in the book of Hebrews, he was told to do this according to the reality. Build it according to the reality, but yours will only be a shadow, a shadow of the things to come. All this is a beautiful imagery, but although the words are figurative, the truth is literal. When it happens to you, it’ll be literally true though, when you read it, the letter, the words used will predict lifting up a serpent in the wilderness.
Now, it all lifted up within you that created power within you that went down into generations will be reversed into regeneration and moved back up into heaven for heaven is within you, and God is in his heaven. For the kingdom of God is within and a kingdom means a king. And the king is within and you rise within yourself. One with God. And you play the part that you are predestined to play before that, the world. So, this is a glorious day, if understood. A perfectly wonderful day. In fact, all the way within, but there are only shadows and we mistake them for the reality. And they’re not.
Now, this Psalm we quoted today is the 42nd Psalm. It’s called a maskil, a maskil of Korah. The word maskil means in Hebrew, a special instruction and Korah means reality. True. That is really true. That which is real. So, it’s a special reality or rather special instruction on truth, on reality.
So, this is a Psalm that everyone should read and finally understand it. You have heard it this night. Take that with you when you read, for I’m telling you, the day will come. You too will lead them in procession. Don’t think of Neville, and Neville alone got them in gay procession. Now you will play that part. And everyone will play that part. Everyone must lead them in procession to the house of God and everyone will hear, and everyone will have someone beside to question the outer voice. And then everyone leading them in the procession is going to hear the inner voice coming only to them. “I laid myself down with him into sleep. As I slept, I dreamed the dream.” I dreamed and knew I was Neville without anyone coaching me what the sentence means at the very end. He’s dreaming that he’s I, you will say to yourself. And then you’re going to know what the crucifixion is. It’s not painful. It’s sheer ecstasy, may I tell you. And if the memory of it brings back this ecstasy, just imagine what the original was. For these things I remember. For if I can remember something and become so ecstatic about it, just imagine what it was when in the beginning, we were crucified as God.
As Paul tells it, I have been crucified with God. And he confesses he never saw Christ Jesus after the flesh. He knows the whole drama was within himself. And because it took place within himself, he would not confer with flesh and blood. And all these are the great traditions put into historical form and men now worship an external Jesus, praying he is within. As you’re told in the Scriptures, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless, of course, you fail to meet the test.” And then he gives us the test. And the test is so very, very simple. And here is the test. You’ve heard it several times tonight and only you can judge whether you’ve passed or failed. But I’ll give you the test many times. This comes from the 5th verse of the 15th chapter of 2nd Corinthian. Test yourselves and see whether you are holding to the prayer. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test.
Now, you just heard the words Jesus Christ who tells it in the beginning, you think, if the word Jesus, or the word Christ, or the word Lord, or the word God, or the word Jehovah convey the sense of some existent something external to yourself, you fail the test. You haven’t yet found it within. And I’ll tell you, he is within you: your own wonderful human imagination; that is the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, if on hearing these words, you jump out and think of something external to yourself, existing, yes, but external to yourself, then you fail the test. As you walk there, walk in the consciousness of being this one, who so loved you, who became you. He is your own wonderful human imagination. Now you can test him in this way. If all things are possible to God, and he is within, and he is my own wonderful human imagination, certainly I should be able to test that. I will now dare to assume that I am the man that at the moment reason denies and my senses deny. But who is doing it? Who is making the assumption? I am. That’s his name. And all things are possible to God. And he’s just made an assumption. He’s wearing this garment and responds to the name, Neville. When someone calls the word, Neville, he responds. But he is the reality that actually wears the garment. Now, I assume, well, I am assuming as God, I am assuming that I am the man that I want to be. I know exactly what I want. Well, walk as though you were, that’s all he asked of him. When you pray, believe you have received and you will.
Believe that you have, not you’re going to—believe that you have.Then, why not walk as though I have received? If I walk in the assumption that I am already the man that I want to be, though reason denies it, and my senses deny it, I should encounter that man. I will actually become that man, so that others can see I am that man. Well now try it. Take a noble concept of yourself, something new, something wonderful, something that you would like to live with. Assume that you are it and walk as though you are. Sleep as though you are. And then let the one within you, who so loves you that he became you, unfold you in that life. For eventually he is going to unfold you as himself. But in the meanwhile, in the world of Caesar, let him unfold you as the man, as the woman, that you would like to be. Make it noble, make it something lovely, always use your imagination lovingly on behalf of others. And certainly, on behalf of yourself. Nothing little, nothing that would take from anyone in this world; leave them just as they are. Don’t rob them, leave them, think noble things of them, but for yourself dare to assume something wonderful and live in it just as though it were true. And I tell you from my own experience, it will become true.
Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard begins by deconstructing the conventional interpretation of the crucifixion, insisting that it cannot be fixed in time or located in space. He reframes the crucifixion as an eternal, inward event designed to illustrate God becoming man so that man may become God, a process that has occurred "in the beginning of time" within the soul.
Drawing upon his own visionary experiences, Neville narrates encounters with voices from outer space and the depths of his consciousness. These narratives serve as empirical evidence for his claim that divine events unfold subjectively, yet with objective intensity—vibrations, vortices, and archetypal symbols point to the soul’s transformative journey.
A central theme is the identification of human imagination with the divine. Neville insists that imagination is the "eternal body of man" and the medium through which God dreams our lives. By recognizing that the dreamer within and the waking self are one, individuals gain the power to shape reality through intentional assumption and faith.
Symbolic episodes—birth from the skull, the infant in swaddling clothes, and the resurrection—demonstrate different phases of spiritual awakening. Each symbol points to a stage in which the inner Christ is born, crucified, and glorified within the individual, bypassing historical chronology and highlighting subjective fulfillment.
In practical terms, Neville concludes with a method of assuming the desired state as real and walking in that assumption. By maintaining a noble self-concept and employing imagination lovingly, one aligns with the inner Divine. This alignment triggers manifestation, externalizing the dream fulfillment in ordinary life.
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