Neville Goddard: Live In the End (Part 5)

07-19-1968

Listen this very moment. You may not be able to whistle a tune. Maybe you can’t carry a tune in any manner whatsoever. You can’t play an instrument, you can’t whistle, you can’t sing. Well, can you  now imagine that you are hearing The Battle Hymn of the Republic?  Listen! Can’t you hear it? Can’t you augment it a thousand voices,  ten thousand voices? Did you hear it at the funeral of Senator  Kennedy? Did you see it on TV? Wasn’t that moving when the organ  began to peal, and suddenly that lovely soft voice singing it, and the  whole thing became...well, the whole vast TV world was filled with it. I doubt there were very many dry eyes when he got through  singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic. 

Well, I can’t sing; I can’t whistle a tune, but I can just right now stand here and listen and hear
the entire thing swell. If I try to duplicate it with my voice, I couldn’t  do it, but I can hear his voice as he sang it. You can hear anyone’s  voice; you can hear the speaker’s voice. Tonight, alone, you can  hear my voice, and you can put upon my voice what you want to  hear, and I, unknown to you, will find myself telling you, “Something  will happen to confirm what you’re hearing.”

So, you can do this for good or ill. I advise you: Do it for good. But the choice is yours. You can hurt and you can bless, but don’t hurt. Use your imagination always lovingly on behalf of others. But to  tell you that you could not do it to hurt is stupid, because you can  hurt. It’s entirely up to you.

So, you imagine what you want. Believe that you have it, and see  how it works in the world. Those who scoff at it...well, let them scoff. Five years from now, when you are on the top, they may be working  for you, and may even have forgotten that they sat in the same audience with you when you heard and believed, and they also  heard, but they didn’t believe, and so, you moved on, and they  remained behind. That’s life.

But there’s only one creative power in the universe. Scripture names that power as God...Jesus Christ, the Lord...the same Power. Because there aren’t two Gods, there aren’t two Lords…there’s only one. And that one Christ dwells in us. He did not appropriate a single man, as the priesthoods of the world teach. They tell you of a single man, and they single out a man that differs from all men. He isn’t dwelling in this man or that man. His desire was to save humanity, and so He dwells in us...not in that particular man. He didn’t become this one man...dwelling in one man. Let no  one tell you that the Christ in you differs from the Christ...and let then name any man they want. He cannot differ.

If there is a Christ other than that Christ who is crucified within us, and who rose and continues to rise in humanity, he’s a false Christ. And the teachers who teach of an external, objective, different Christ are false teachers. Christ is within, and He rises within. So, you go out and put it to the test. Put it to the extreme test. Christ in us...not “out there,” is the hope of glory.

So, this word of which I speak...and the word, by the way...its true definition is, “meaning.” In the beginning, there was meaning to the whole thing, and that meaning was with God, and God Himself  was the meaning. (John 1:1) There is a purpose, there’s a plan behind it all. He planned everything as it has come out, and as it will be consummated. And the purpose of it all is to awaken in us, so that we and he are one. So, He actually became us, that we may become God. It seems incredible, but it’s true. That’s the purpose of life: to  take humanity and lift it to God so it becomes God. So, He became man, that man may become God.

Now tonight, you need not confine it to yourself. Take a friend, without the friend’s consent...without the friend’s knowledge, and lift him up. Do you know a friend who is unemployed? Well, then, see him as gainfully employed, and don’t tell him, that you may brag
tomorrow. Don’t boast. Just see him gainfully employed.

Here is a friend of mine in L.A., and this man was unmercifully  bawled out by his supervisors, and told that he was no earthly good, and they are considering letting him go. They are going to fire him. Well, the man had no support outside of the job, and he had a family. He told my friend. Well, my friend lives by this law, so he said to him,  “All right, go your way.” He didn’t tell him what he was going to do. He sat quietly at his desk and heard the man tell him that they praised him beyond measure for something that he had done. 

It  wasn’t 48 hours that they had a complete reversal of their attitude  towards this man in their praise for something he did in the  advertising world. But the blow left its mark, and he said to my friend,  “Yes, they’ve reversed it, but I don’t feel easy on the job, because they could not have said the unlovely things that they said and forgotten them, so it will come back, and I’m going to quit. I have no money. I’m giving them two weeks’ notice. I am going to ask them to give me one week of the two, that I can get myself together and  maybe take off a few days and just get my thoughts in order.”

Well, at the end of two weeks he didn’t have a job. My friend when he told him what he was going to do...my friend knew he  could not afford to quit and not work, so he saw him gainfully employed and earning twenty-five percent more than the present job. He took off the second week. When he came back at the end of the first week, he came into my friend’s office and said, “Only yesterday I got the offer, and I start Monday. I do not lose one day’s salary, and I start at twenty-five per cent more than I received on the past job.

What did it? My friend’s imagination, a loving use of the imagination on behalf of a friend! Had he gone without that imaginal state, he would have walked into the place, and the man would have said, “We have nothing,” or, “We can’t use you,” “Why are you  quitting?” He didn’t ask anything; he simply wanted the man.  So, if you precede your visit by an imaginal act, they will see you as you see yourself. If you walk in knowing that you’re no good, they will see you exactly that way. But if you walk in the assumption that things are as you desire them to be, they are going to see you that way. And this is life.

Now, what greater claim can anyone make than to acclaim that he is God? And when He claimed it, they said, He is blaspheming, for here is a man, and the man claims he is God. The 10th [chapter] of John, “And he said, ‘Is it not written in your law,’ I say ye are gods, sons of the Most High?” (John 10:34)  

If he called them gods to whom the Word of God came, would you say of the one that he anointed and sent into the world that he is blaspheming? Do you know of any greater claim in the world than for a man to identify himself with God and walk as though he were, and  not be ashamed to admit it? He doesn’t go bragging about it, but he knows in his heart he is one with God, for if his imagination is God  and he imagines...well, then, that’s God! And if he imagines a state and it comes to pass, then he knows the creative pwer that is God. He doesn’t have to brag about it and be ashamed of it. He sleeps in  a noble state, because he is one with God.
 

Well, let everyone take that attitude, and the world will change  not be beaten, but you can take the whole vast world, if they feel themselves slaves, and give them the world; they will want it again tomorrow. Unless a man has self-respect, you can give him all the money in the world, and it means nothing. That goes for the individual, it goes for a family, it goes for a race of people; it goes for a nation. As our late President Hoover said, “The rise and fall of ideas will determine the rise and fall of men, the rise and fall of nations, the rise and fall of communities.”
 

So, tell me the idea that a community entertains of itself, and I’ll tell you that community. But now change that idea of itself, and you’ll change that community. Let a family feel important in itself...it doesn’t have to have a background. Who has a background? So,  you can go back far enough, and almost everyone who now claims importance would be ashamed of that background.

So, don’t go back; start just where you are. And don’t pay anyone to look up your family tree, because you are going to pay them to forget it. Just, all of a sudden, start right now and assume the dignity that is God. That’s your real background...it’s God, and so assume it! And, then, with that assumption...and if you have children, I hope you do...well, then, instill that into the child. Instill it into all within the environment, and have them feel important.

I have no background, judged by human standards...either intellectual, financial or these things...we made it. But Mother instilled in us, when we did something of which she was ashamed  she would say to us, “Have you forgotten that you are a Goddard?”

Well, we didn’t know. That must have been very important, because Mother said, “Have you forgotten that you’re a Goddard?” Well, I never heard that we had any background, but all of a sudden you begin to feel that you must be important. So, Mother  instilled it into our mind’s eye. She made the name important, so today it is important. Where we are, in the business sense, in every sense, it’s important; but Mother did that, and she married a man who had no background, and took his name, but she made it important.

All right, who has any background? As far as I am concerned, I refuse to accept the aristocracy of any being in this world, other than the aristocracy of the Spirit. What other aristocracy? Give me the aristocracy of the Spirit, but don’t come to me with any physical descent. I’m not an animal. I’m not a horse, where you develop it by one horse after the other. I’m God! We are all God! You can’t go back beyond God. So, if that is the start of all of us, well, then, that is our root, and, so, claim it now. At any point in time, claim it, and you’ll find yourself being washed clean of anything you might have thought the family tree held. You don’t have any family tree. 

The true Israelite is not a descendant after the flesh, but the Elect of God, of whatever nation. That’s the man of God. So, you simply dare to assume that you are that man of God, and then apply what  I’m telling you tonight. And, may I tell you, in the not-distant future in the immediate present...it will work. If you don’t falter and do not change the assumption...if you remain faithful to the assumption, it will harden into fact, because imagining creates reality. It does!

Now, let us go into the Silence.