The Fall and Restoration: 1968 Lectures

By Neville

Neville was born in Barbados, West Indies in 1905 into a poor English family—nine boys and one girl—where he was raised and educated in a traditional Christian manner. His father who knew about the power of imagining, along with the help of his industrious sons, made the Goddard’s into the largest business presence in the island, and at his death left all ten children independently wealthy.

At age seventeen Neville left Barbados for New York City where he worked in retail for several years until he became a dancer in Broadway shows. This led to a stint in London where he was introduced to metaphysical thought, and upon returning to New York he began to teach the law of imagining in 1938 to ever-growing audiences in the East, Los Angeles and San Francisco. When he moved his family to Los Angeles in the early 1950s he was attracting crowds of 2,000 for his Sunday talks. Everyone wanted something—homes, new jobs, mates, money—and he successfully taught them how to fulfill those desires through the use of their all-powerful human imaginations. The techniques, testimonies from his audiences, the creative formula, visions, dreams and Bible interpretations are discussed simply and in detail in these lectures. They encourage any seeker to apply his or her imagination for success, and ultimately lead to the appreciation that there is no intermediary between God (man’s I AM) and man.

Starting in 1959 he had a series of six visions over a three and a half year period—resurrection/birth from above; David; splitting of the temple/ascension; and the dove’s descent. Then he understood his mission: To first experience these visions, understand their meanings, and then teach the meaning of these signs that are given to man after multiple lifetimes and all states of consciousness have been played by each individual. These signs confirm the awakening of man’s soul. Man’s origin and destiny are divine—from unity into diversity back to unity, with no loss of individuality. All is forgiven and the exile, the prodigal returns to Lordship, greatly expanded by the journey through limitation, illusion and a sleep likened unto death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Nov 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781490790138

Neville

Neville Goddard (1905-1972) was a profoundly influential teacher, and author, writing more than ten books under the pen name Neville. He was a popular speaker on metaphysical themes and is associated with the New Thought philosophy.

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AWAKE, O SLEEPER!

1/8/68

First of all, I want to thank you for your cards and letters, and again, may I ask you to share with us your dreams and your visions and your experiences in applying this principle, this simple principle that imagining does create reality. So share it with us that I in turn may share it with others and encourage the faith of all. We have to go forward and take you beyond anything that we’ve ever done before. It’s part of the game.

Now, tonight’s title is Awake, O Sleeper! You will find this in the 5th chapter of Ephesians: Awake, O Sleeper, and arise from the dead (verse 14). Now, what person rationally would grasp it? You see, the Bible is addressed to the Imagination which is spiritual sensation and only but immediately to the understanding or reason. If you try to grasp it through reason, well, it doesn’t make sense. How could I speak to someone and tell him that he’s not only asleep but he’s dead? I equate sleep with death, and tell a man that I am addressing to awake, you sleeper, and arise from the dead. I am telling him he has entered a world of eternal death, but he doesn’t know it. I am telling him that he is dreaming his world into being, but he doesn’t know it…and maybe he doesn’t believe it, for he’s a rational being.

In the Old Testament, in the 44th chapter of the Book of Psalms, we read, Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! So it’s addressed to the Lord. All the commands of scripture are addressed to the Lord and fulfilled by the Lord…there is nothing but the Lord. So we start on the greatest confession of faith that man has ever received through revelation. It’s called the Hebrews’ confession of faith, the Shema: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one. It’s a compound unity, one made up of others; for the word is Elohim, the gods. Now I will tell you, I firmly believe in God. I don’t have to believe in God, for I stood in the presence of the risen Lord who embraced me and incorporated me into his one body, and from that moment back in 1929 I am one with the body of the risen Lord.

So here is the Lord. I don’t have to believe in it, but I will tell you, using the word belief, I believe in God. I believe also that men are gods, and that collective man is God; that we are the gods spoken of in the 82nd Psalm—which we are told is the most difficult of all the psalms for the scholars to unravel. If it ever had any meaning, they said, the meaning has long been lost. This is what stumps them. It’s quoted in the 10th chapter of the Book of John; but we go back to the origin, the 82nd Psalm: "And God has taken his place in the divine assembly; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment (verse 1). Now he speaks, I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless… Now here comes the future prophecy. All this is a present fact, you are gods now, sons of the Most High now. Nevertheless, ye shall die as men and fall as one man, O ye princes" (verse 6). Here is a prophecy: you’ll fall as one man. Is the fall the result of disobedience as we are taught? Is the fall something that is a punishment? I tell you, it is not. The fall is a plan. It’s a pretext, an assumed appearance in order to conceal the real intention. The real intention is an expansion, a further existence, an ultimate birth. That’s the real intention. And the gods fell as one man…one man. He chose us in himself before the foundation of the world. And as one man fell, it fragmented itself into the unnumbered men of the world. We are the gods in disguise, not recognizing our brotherhood, not recognizing ourselves.

Now, we go to the beginning of Genesis and take it from there: And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and while he slept, he took from man a rib; and from that rib he made a woman, and bringing the woman before man, man said, ‘At last, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, for she was taken out of man. Therefore man must leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they become one flesh (Gen.2:21-24). Now, through the eyes of reason you discount it, it’s all a myth, it’s stupid. We know biologically that’s stupid. May I tell you, it is true…but not as the world sees it. To understand it you must have the vision. It must be revealed to you, that Man has no body distinct from his soul. That called body is only a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this world (Blake, Mar. Heaven/Hell). This body is Eve…this is my emanation, my vegetated mortal wife; my emanation yet my wife ’til the sleep of death is over. This is Eve, whether it be male or female, makes no difference. This is my emanation, the Jerusalem in every individual man. I am adjoined to you and you to me by our emanative portion, which is the Jerusalem in every man. And this Jerusalem is the Jerusalem below that bears sons into slavery. Everyone comes in wrapped in this garment that is his emanative portion, and he’s enslaved in this world of eternal death.

There’s another Jerusalem. The one who emanates is the Jerusalem from above, and that is the emanation of the Lord that is hidden from view. But it is one with this, this is my Eve. I become so much one with the Eve that if you struck me tonight and caused me pain, I scream out, I am in pain! Well, what is his name by which all men must know him forever and forever?—I AM. Go to the people of Israel and tell them I AM has sent you…that is my name forever throughout all generations (Ex.3:14). So when you strike this [body], I’m so much a part of my wife to which I have cleaved that strike her and you strike me, for I say, I am in pain. And I go on throughout…so take this from me, Destroy this temple and I will in three days raise it up again. They said, What? In three days when it took us forty-six years to build it? That’s how the mind of man thinks. They think only in terms of an external thing made with human hands, knowing not that he spoke of the temple of his body. For, Know ye not that ye are the temple of the Lord, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (2Cor.6: 16). That’s what Paul asked us in his letter to the Corinthians, that we are, actually this is the temple. He dwells in his wife, he cleaves to her, and they become one. So, this is the only Eve of scripture. There never was another Eve. Every being born in this world, male or female, that is Eve; and the one who emanated it, that soul that emanated it, is the Man spoken of. It’s capitalized in the translation in scripture in the 2nd chapter of Genesis…that she came out of Man, and Man is capitalized, generic Man.

So when I fell, I fell in one body, and falling in one body, I entered my cave and I met my Savior in the grave. Some find a female garment there and some a male, woven with care (Blake). So I found a male garment; my wife found a female garment. But she is neither female and I’m not male, we are Man. For Man in the resurrection is above the organization of sex; he is not the divided being. As we are told in Galatians, In Christ is neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, neither Greek nor Jew, neither black nor white (3:28). We are simply above the whole organization in this world of eternal death.

So when Blake speaks to us in his greatest work, Jerusalem, he first takes the theme, having stated the theme, he tells it’s Of the sleep of Ulro. Well, the sleep of Ulro refers to life in this world as we know it, right here in this world. This world seems to be of an ultimate endless state; there is no end to it, it goes on and on. It also seems to us to have no purpose, for tonight the richest man will die leaving it all behind him, and the poor man will die, he goes to the pauper’s grave; but in the end, given the same length of time, both turn into dust and bones. You will dig out one grave and find you can’t tell who it is. It’s all nothing; it seems to have no purpose. And yet Man has to enter this world. Regardless of what he seems to achieve in the world—-for the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of the Lord. No matter how wise he seems to be, it is stupid in the eyes of God; and the strength of Man isn’t equal to the weakness of God. So let them strut across the stage and see all the things that they see, and it still is nothing. So it seems to be that here there is no end to futility, and there is no purpose, and yet Man has to pass through it and awaken from it into eternal life.

So he starts his theme, and he lays the theme out. He is writing about this: Of the sleep of Ulro and of the passage through eternal death, and of the awakening to Eternal Life. Now he tells us: This theme calls me night after night in sleep, and every morn awakes me at sunrise; then I see the Savior over me spreading his beams of love and dictating the words of this mild song…that’s how he starts it. Now, he starts the dictation, and he swears in his letter to his friend Butts that the whole thing came by immediate dictation. He said, I did not write it. I can brag about it, I can praise it, because I dare not pretend to be anyone other than the secretary. The authors are in heaven. And it’s the grandest poem that this world contains, for the Spirit of Truth dictated it. Morning after morning as he woke it was dictating twelve, sometimes twenty, and sometimes thirty lines at a time. And what now seems to be the labor of a long life was produced without labor or study…and quite often against my will…but I had to take it down.

He would rise and take it down, and his wife Catherine would rise with him, and sit in the silence while William recorded it. Sometimes she would hold his hand as he recorded it, because he was simply completely possessed by the Spirit as it wrote through him, and he’s writing down this greatest of all poems, Jerusalem. This is how he starts it: "Awake! Awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! Expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine"…that being in whom we were contained, that being who fell deliberately for a purpose, to expand beyond its glory. Because only by this contraction into the state called death could it expand. We have that told us in the story of the parable of the seed. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it brings forth much (John12:24). Here we have in this little story of the grain of wheat it set forth the mystery of life through death. If I want an extension of living, an extension of reality, an extension of existence, I must contract and die, and empty myself of my glory which I had with the Lord before that the world was. Entering into one body, one body falls. And the world tells it as a mistake. It’s no mistake, it’s a plan. God planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated. In the end, when the mask comes off after you awake, you are enhanced beyond your wildest dream by reason of the passage through death and your awakening to eternal life.

When we all awake, we are the ones who knew each other more intimately than anyone on earth could ever know. How could I ever know? My wife and I think the same thoughts through the day. There isn’t a day that I will voice something, she’s been thinking about it; she voices something, I’ve been thinking about it. But no matter how intimate our thoughts are in the sharing, it can’t compare to the intimacy that is ours when these garments are taken off and we are once more awakened into eternal life.

So Awake, O sleeper! Well, you can’t really awake by doing anything that you are taught to do, may I tell you. They’ll tell you, don’t eat meat and you’ll awaken. Don’t go to that church, you’ll awaken. Don’t do so and so…all the don’ts. You could do nothing and never awaken; you can do everything and not awaken. But, may I tell you, that seems extravagant and it is, because all will awaken, but not by any effort on their part while they’re here. You will awaken at the moment in time that was predetermined that you would awaken, whether you be shining shoes at the time or whether you be employing a million people. Our government today undoubtedly has on its payroll millions of people and the one who is given credit is our President. He is the head, and so in a technical sense he employs a million. And tonight, the one shining his shoes could awaken, and he falls sound asleep and continues the dream.

But he cannot die! That’s the glorious part. This emanation, take it from me now and in three days I’ll raise it up again. So this body of mine, shoot it if you will, cut off its head, it’s my emanation and, therefore I, believing myself to be it, I will find myself in the immediate present wearing the same body, only it will be new. No part will be missing, no bridgework, no fillings in my teeth, no gray hair, no need to wear glasses, and no need to wear any aid in this world. I will be a young man twenty years old. Just as I snuff out this, and you call it dead, I’ll be wearing a garment same as before, in a world terrestrial just like this, and continue the journey until I awake.

But, I can tell you I have awakened. So when I take this off, whenever it’s taken off, I will no longer be in this world. For this world does not terminate at the point where our senses cease to register it. So when a man cannot follow those who are called dead, as we call them dead, only because of his limitations he can’t follow them. But the one you call dead isn’t dead to himself. He emanated the body that you knew. He emanates the same body…same body, beautiful, enhanced beyond your wildest dreams, and he continues not even knowing that he has gone through the door. Death is no more than leaving one room for another in the same fabulous terrestrial world that is called in the mysteries eternal death; and from which Man will one day awaken into eternal life. But having descended and entered the world of death when he now awakens he is expanded. And that was the purpose. There is no limit to expansion. God set a limit to contraction, to opacity, but not to translucence or expansion.

And so, we descended. Not because of anything that we ever did that was wrong, not one thing was wrong. So if I emanate this body, which I did, destroy it when you will, I will, if I have not awakened, I’ll emanate the same body. And you cannot reach me. I may find myself tomorrow in a different section of time. Not an extension of this, like 1969 or ’68. I may be in the year 3,000, I may be in the year 1,000—whatever is best fitted for the work yet to be done in me in order to bring about the awakening and the expansion into an extension of existence.

So, here is what we are. So just think of it. God made Man in his own image you’re told, male-female made he them (Gen.1:26-27)…that’s the first chapter. The second changes it somewhat and tells a different story, but it’s not a contradiction if you see it through Imagination. Here he fashions him out of the dust and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and he becomes a living soul. But his destiny is to become a life-giving Spirit, not just a living soul, an animated body. So the purpose of the fall of the sons of God is to transform them into an entirely different world, being life-giving Spirits animating bodies, not being an animated body but animating the whole vast world around him, and closing it off at will and starting it again. And that is our destiny!

Now, reason cannot grasp it, and every scholar when he comes to this, the first thing—and you can’t blame any man who has never had the vision—he says it’s a myth. Certainly it’s a myth…a rib of my side…take my body apart, no rib missing. Take yours apart…unless you had one cut out for some operation on the lung, but if you have not lost a rib through operation, no rib is…as every man’s rib, not one is missing. Yet, you’re told in scripture one was taken out. But the word rib, you know what it means? The Hebrew word is Tsalah. It means a portion, literally, of a person. It also is translated, when you want to write the word quarter in Hebrew, you have Tsalah. We speak of the four-fold man, four faces stood every man. It means a side. Well, the side may not be this side or that side or that side or this side…it’s a portion. It’s trying to say a portion of the soul emanates. That’s what it’s trying to tell man, but if you don’t see it that way, and Tsalah only means a rib, literally, a little rib, well then, it’s translated a curve. So because it means a curve, the curve of a man’s structure would be the rib. Well, if you wanted to write rib yes, if you want to write a pane of wood, the flooring on the ground, the same is Tsalah. It could be a piece of wood, but a piece, not the whole, a portion. Tsalah is a portion of the soul that emanates. When it emanates, then he from whom it emanates must leave everything and cleave to his emanation, and they become one flesh.

Well, you’ve cleaved to your emanation so much so that you identify yourself with it. And so, if I ask you, Who are you? you give me your name. But you first say I am, then you put a name on it. If I strike that thing that you say you are, and I hurt it, well then, you say, I am in pain. You call upon the name of God and say God is in pain. You didn’t say, God is in pain, you said, I am. Well, that’s his name. You tell that the gods came down to earth? So, again, let me repeat, I not only believe in God because I stood in the presence of the risen God, but I believe that all men are gods and that collective Man is God. So when you hurt Man, you hurt God. And when you hurt Man, you hurt yourself because you are God. There’s nothing but God, only God in this world.

And may I tell you, and this is not from speculation, God is love; in spite of the horrors of the world God is love. For when you stand in his presence, you can’t feel anything but love. And when God embraces you and you become one with God, you have never felt such ecstasy, not in eternity. You can’t describe the joy, the ecstasy that is yours when you are embraced by the risen Lord. From then on you’re incorporated into the body of God, as we’re told in the 6th chapter of the Book of Romans: For he who is united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him (verse 5). Only one body, only one Spirit, only one Lord, only one God and Father of all and you are that!

So in the end, the one who commanded the fall for this fabulous purpose you will awaken; and you were the one who commanded it, for he is Father. And you will awaken right here in this world of death as the Father. The only one that can reveal to you that you are a father is God’s only begotten Son, David, calling you Father. For David in the Spirit calls Christ, Lord. And the word Adonay is the name used for the Father. For in Hebrew they do not often use Yod He Vau He because it’s a sacred name, and so they substitute Adonay for the word Yod He Vau He. And so, David in the Spirit calls Christ Adonay, my Lord, in other words, my Father, for every son spoke of his father as my lord…fulfilling scripture. For the 2nd Psalm is: And David said, I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’ (verse 7). This David, the David, the only David of biblical fame will stand before you and call you Father, and then you know who you are. This comes after you’ve been awakened from above, born from above, and then comes the Son calling you Father.

Then the entire drama unfolds within you and you will know exactly who you are: that you are the ones spoken of in scripture as the gods who gathered. We agreed then to dream in concert, so that when you and I see a building we may see it differently—you may see it through the eyes of one who would like to own it, I may see it through the eyes of one who admires it with no feeling of possession—but we do see the same building, only we see it differently. So when we descended, we agreed to dream in concert. So while we walk this earth, we see the same streets, therefore, we know the same number; and we can go where we want to go because we are dreaming in concert. But we are dreaming, my dears. This whole vast world is the dream of the gods who descended. But because we agreed to dream in concert there’s no confusion. Had we agreed to dream individually and all play solo, this would be the wildest, maddest thing in the world. But we agreed to dream in concert.

Now may I tell you, when I invite you to go all out and to imagine that you are now the man, the woman, that you want to be, some will tell you that will lead to madness. May I tell you, it will not! The only thing that would lead to madness would be to doubt it. The minute doubt sets in, and you would like to believe it but reason tells you it isn’t true, and you begin to doubt, then descends what the world would call a mental division, a certain madness. For doubt is the only devil in the world…that’s doubt. If you could go all out and believe it then regardless of what the whole vast rational world will tell you, you won’t go mad. The whole thing will become a part of your dream world. You’ll bring it into and fit it in without any difficulty into the world.

Someone born poor, very poor, he began to dream that he had wealth and that he had fame. Well, at the moment it would seem insane, his dream, but he persisted in his dream. But when the dream became true and his fame was established and his wealth established, it seemed perfectly natural to those not knowing his dream. So everyone is dreaming. But if you begin to doubt your dream and still try to make it true, but doubting all the time, you’re heading towards a little breakup. But you will not breakup if you go all out in your wonderful claim that you are what you desire to be. Because all things are possible to God and the God spoken of is right where you are seated. That’s the God of whom the Bible speaks.

So when the gods came down in the likeness of men, here they are; and some found a female garment there, and some a male, woven with care. So God himself enters death’s door—-this door of death [body]—-always with those who enter; and lays down in the grave with them in visions of Eternity until they awake and see Jesus and the linen clothes lying there, which the females had woven for them (Blake, Milton, Plt.40) They seem to be woven in the womb of a woman and they were, no question about it. But they were simply emanations of a soul woven in the womb of a woman between a cooperation of a male and female. But the soul emanating is neither male nor female. For it emanates a male garment or a female garment and wears it in this world of death. And take it off, emanates it again, this time without the use of the womb of a woman, doesn’t need it any more. For we are told in the 9th chapter of Hebrews: "For as it was appointed for all men to die once, and then comes the judgment, so Christ was offered once for the sins of many, and then he will appear a second time, not concerning sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him" (verse 27).

Well, you’ve died already. Forget the death. When you go before I go, it may be said of you that you died…I will hear the news that so-and-so died. You didn’t die at all…you already died. You only die once. When we fell all in one body that’s when we died. We left our heavenly home and the glory that was ours to come down and assume the limitations of the flesh, which is called that of a slave. So we have already died: "If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." (Rom. 6:5) So the death is over, only once do you die. So when you go through the gate and men call you dead, you aren’t dead! You simply emanate the same body, only it’s young, it’s new, twenty-years old, nothing missing, unaccountably new. You can’t explain it. And may I tell you, the majority who go through don’t even know they’ve gone through, and take the young body for granted just as we take everything in this world for granted.

A miracle goes on all day long in my body. I eat tonight’s dinner and it’s been converted, unknown to my conscious reasoning mind, into blood, to tissue, to bone. And no man on earth can make one drop of blood. Transplant a heart, but he can’t grow one. Transplant all kinds of organs, but he can’t grow a one. He can’t make one drop of blood. They’ve been trying forever, but they can’t make a drop of living blood. They can’t make one hair of the head. So they said now this man would have lived three weeks if he didn’t have the transplant, so we’ll give him the transplant…and he lived eighteen days. That’s the first one in South Africa. And suppose the other one does live…he will not live one hour beyond his span of time as told us in the Sermon on the Mount: Who by being anxious can add one hour to his span of life? (Lk.12:25). Man goes blindly on believing that he can do these things, and all that it is doing is publicizing the surgeons and the medical world. It isn’t doing a thing to this being that you really are, for you are not anything he thinks you are.

So I’m dying, poor old heart is all gone, liver gone, all things gone. I should get out and emanate something new and wear it…and they’re going to put a new heart in me! They’re all hoping this night that someone will die suddenly and they get their heart so that the doctor can have the experiment. If they didn’t die suddenly and leaving a good heart, they couldn’t use it, so let her be good and healthy but die. Either kill her or do something and let her give the heart. And they’re using that and people are eating it up as though, Isn’t that marvelous! Isn’t this fantastic! and the world goes blindly on in the world of sleep not knowing who they are.

So I tell you, you are the Adam made in the image of God that is the Son of God; and out of you came your Eve, and Eve is the body that you are wearing, and you cleave to it. You cleave to it so tightly that finally you become one flesh, so that whenever it is hurt you are, and that is the Adam and Eve of scripture. Therefore, it is not a myth. It does come out of you, but certainly not out of this little bone in my side called a rib. For the word Tsalah means a portion, that’s what it means. So, "Man has no body distinct from his soul; that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age." That’s all that it is. You are a living soul, destined to become a life-giving Spirit. So as you fall, you emanate a body, because you have to have a body to function in this world. You can automatically do it. The minute you fall dead, you aren’t dead at all, you’re alive, and a body is emanating out of your own being, young, new, not one part missing, nothing missing. If you had an arm missing, the arm is not missing. If you had all your limbs off, as many today have all these off after the war, they are not missing. The whole thing is replaced. And when they’re replaced, he takes it for granted.

I know…I meet them. I can’t persuade them that they’ve died. How can I tell a man who is alive, who is talking to me, that you died? He laughs at you. So, if I tell you that you’re sound asleep, wouldn’t you laugh at me? If I tell you that you’re not only sound asleep but you’re dead, well now, you’ll say: Neville is mad. Don’t go and hear him. That man is mad; he has a demon. But I have company, that is what they said of the risen Christ in the 10th chapter of the Book of John: Why listen to him? He’s dead. He’s mad. He has a demon! (verse 19). And he said to them…what did he say? Why do you stone me; for what good work? For no good works but for your blasphemy; for you being a man, claim that you’re God. Well, he said, Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, ye are gods’? If he calls you gods to whom the word of God came, then why when he whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world claims that he is the Son of God that you should say he blasphemes? (verses 32-36) He doesn’t make a claim greater than the other. They don’t know they are the Son of God. He’s only trying to awaken man that you are the sons who came down.

He makes no claim that he is greater than. He said: I am going to my Father and your Father. Go and tell my brethren I am ascending unto my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God (John 20:17). He didn’t make a claim that his Father differed from your Father, or that his God differed from your God. But they couldn’t understand the mystery. They tried to get it right straight through the reasoning mind, and it isn’t, you can’t get it that way. The whole thing is spoken to the Imagination which 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 (Blake, Annotations to Berkeley; Laocoon).

Now let us go into the Silence.

*           *           *

Q: Neville, I have to take it on hearsay that I was born, but I remember being a little boy. Now, if I’m coming back at twenty years old, how does that differ from this manifestation that I’m in now?

A: I go back to my own experiences. It was given to man to die once, to be born once; but he’s born a second time but not in this world. On the second time he’s born into an expanded world. That’s why he came here, to achieve that expansion which is that birth, that ultimate birth, that extended reality or extended life, extended living. After all, there is no limit to God, so he has to expand and expand and expand. So he conceives a drama which will allow him to contract, forget who he is, and then expand. No man can keep on expanding unless he first contracts.

Now, you recall yourself as a little child…I do too. But I do not know of any other kind of birth than this one that you and I have gone through. When I meet my friends who are gone, they’re all around twenty years old, and may I tell you, they don’t know they are gone. When I met Jack, Jack said to me, Who’s dead? I said, Jack, you aren’t dead but you died! He said, Neville, you are so stupid. How can I not be dead and yet I died? I told him exactly where I saw his body put into the ground in Haverstraw, New York. I went up there. I said, You had a marvelous, good Catholic funeral. Your sister insisted on a Catholic funeral, so you had a Catholic funeral. I met the priest, and you are buried in the ground. Oh, he said, that’s stupid! Well, there he was…he didn’t even know he had gone. It was six months after he had gone.

Well, Jack lived the same life here. Jack told me (he died at fifty) he said, Neville, I’ve never dreamt in my life. You say you dream and you say you have visions? I have never had a dream in my life. I said, You haven’t, Jack? I would go home…Jack slept in my apartment before we were married. After Bill and I got married, well then, he got himself a room; but prior to that for years Jack was in my apartment. I had a suite of rooms in a hotel. I’m going out at night and Jack, if he ever got on his back the rafters would just scream out he snored so. I’d say, Come on, Jack, turn over. He’d turn over just like a little tiny tot, always a babe. And many a night I would say, Oh, Jack. He’d say, Yes Nev, yes Nev? I said, Isn’t she pretty! Where’s she? Where’s she? Over there, she’s looking at you. Oh, yes she is. Blonde haired, see it? Yes! He saw everything I’m telling him he’s seeing.

One night he was snoring so hard, I said, I’m just going to wake him up. So I said to Jack, Jack, look! What, Nev? all in his sleep. I said, Look at that cat. He said, Where? I said, On your head. He’s messing on you. Look what he’s doing! He jumped up from his bed, tearing his hair out of his head this way at this cat. I said, Jack, did you have a dream? No, no, no. He didn’t even know he had the dream, and I am telling him a cat is on his head and it’s messing on him, and he jumps in the bed, starts pulling his gray hair out. He had very short hair, lots of it, but very short, and there is Jack pulling this cat off of his head. I said, Well, Jack, what did you dream? I didn’t dream, Nev, didn’t dream, didn’t dream. Then he got out of bed and went and got himself a glass of milk. And that was Jack. In this life…he went through life, he never had a dream he tells me, and I could make him dream anything I wanted him to dream. I could go into that room and do anything with Jack and he told me he never had a dream.

So he’s the same Jack he was then, he’s just as sound asleep as he was then. He’s totally unaware of the change. Here is Jack dying at fifty…he looked older. I meet him and he’s twenty. It doesn’t register in his brain that a miracle has happened that he’s twenty. I knew he had fillings in his teeth, I knew he did; he doesn’t have any now…perfect teeth. And it never occurs to him this is a miracle! People go through this and they still don’t register, until you awake. Those who are awake are sent through to try to tell them by asking them to compare something to this, and the mind can’t be held that long, the interest wanders. And so in this wonderful world of ours we are sound asleep likened unto death, and we still…it doesn’t register.

I am telling you tonight you are the gods spoken of in scripture in that 82nd Psalm. I have the most wonderful work at home. It’s called the most critical and the greatest criticism of a scholarly nature of the Bible that was ever given to man. It’s called The Encyclopedia Biblica. The editor of that great work—there were many, 150 worked on it over the years—but the editor of the entire work was Thomas Chaney. He was considered the outstanding Hebrew scholar, and he writes his commentary on the 82nd Psalm. He said, The ideas might have been perennial, but they are long since vanishing from the mind of man. There is no understanding that man has today concerning what this Psalm is trying to say, that ‘God has taken his place in the divine assembly.’ Man can’t quite see it. Well, I entered that assembly. I know it’s true. And then he said to the gods: I say you are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High—now comes his prophecy—Nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall as one man, O ye princes (Ps. 82:1, 6).

Then comes the plan. It’s a play. It’s a purpose. We didn’t do anything that was wrong. We rejoiced because we were going to have the opportunity of further expansion. And may I tell you, it starts with the crucifixion, and the crucifixion is ecstasy beyond measure. Afterwards, it goes into horrors…for you’re going to play the entire part, and you aren’t going to awaken until you’ve played the whole part. Then you can say with Paul: I have finished the race…I have finished the race and I have fought the good fight and I have kept the faith: Henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness (2Tim. 4:7); for I’m crowned with the laurel crown, the victory, having gone through the entire thing. When he awakens, he still is in the eyes of those who knew him the same man, the same weaknesses, the same limitations.

Knowing him by reason of the weaknesses that they know therefore they say, oh, silly, it means nothing. So I know him, I knew him when; and when I knew him then he is still the same man now, so what? So what is he talking about? He’s telling me he’s had all the experiences recorded in scripture of Jesus Christ, and here is a man with weaknesses. He gets a head cold, I knew it. He goes to the barber, gets his hair chopped off too, and he does all the normal things that men do. And he has to perform all the normal functions of a body. For this body of his is the same kind of a body that he’s always worn, and he has to perform the normal functions of that body…as though the one they think of as Jesus Christ didn’t. Ever stop to think of that? You say he lived thirty-three years and he didn’t perform the normal natural functions of the body? Did he eat? If he ate he certainly performed functions. But no one wants to think about it, because they don’t know who Jesus Christ really is.

I tell you, if there be another Christ other than him on whom all men are crucified, or who is crucified on all men, he is a false Christ. And anyone who teaches you of such a Christ is a false teacher. The only Christ is the Christ that is crucified on man, right here. That’s the only Christ. He rose in man and he continues to rise in men. Everyone that rises, he gathers into his one body. So in the end there’s only one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all (Eph.4:4). Doesn’t make sense, does it? How can you take billions of people and incorporate them into one body? Well, I tell you it’s true. I am in the body of Christ and yet I walk this earth. And this Christ is omnipresent. Wherever I am there he is, and wherever you are there he is, though we are poles apart because he’s omnipresent…and yet it’s one body. It’s not a big balloon body, it’s just the body. It’s man. So when Blake made the statement: If thou humblest thyself, thou humblest me, for thou, too, dwellest in Eternity. Thou art a man, God is no more, thine own humanity learn to adore.

Good night!

THE MAN WITHIN

1/12/68

Tonight’s subject is The Man Within. The man within is Jesus Christ. How will I know that Jesus Christ really is within me? I hope tonight to make it just as plain and as clear as I possibly can, I hope. I tell you this, because last Monday night I thought it was clear, and the next day a very dear friend of mine called me and told me that her phone had been busy all morning where so many who have been coming over the years were disturbed. It was not clear to them. Something said simply disturbed them and she herself was disturbed by an answer I gave to some question asked after the meeting. I thought I had made it clear. So tonight, again, I hope I can make it clear.

How do I know that he is within me? Well here, let me first turn to a small little poem of Blake, it’s called A Little Boy Lost. You’ll find it in Songs of Experience: "Nought loves another as itself, nor venerates another so, nor is it possible to Thought a greater than itself to know: And God, how can I love you or any of my brothers more? I love you like the little bird that picks up crumbs around the door." When the priest heard this, he went into a rage and took the little boy by his hair and led him up to the altar high, and burned him as he had many burned before. Here, it is impossible for man a greater than himself to now. So if I would know God and God is greater, then God has to become me that I may discover myself as God. There is no possibility of my knowing greater than myself. Therefore, if the Lord God who created the universe is greater and he wants me to know him, I can know no greater than myself; therefore, God becomes as I am that I may be as he is.

So Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians: I have been crucified with Christ—I no longer live—"it is not I but Christ who lives in me; and the life I know live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and became me (2:20). He wanted my love, well, I couldn’t love something greater than myself —Nought loves another as itself. Now I know the so-called holy people of the world will scream like the priest in the little poem, because they aren’t honest with themselves. Oh, they will say, I love my country so I’ll die for it…if you draft me and I have no choice in the matter. I love so and so, so I’ll die for him…and all this palaver. No one really looks right into the mirror of his own mind and is honest with himself. Blake was: Nought loves another as itself, nor venerates another so, nor is it possible for thought a greater than itself to know." So, O Father, you want my love? Well then, you’ve got to become me, because I don’t know you…I can’t know anything greater than myself. So, will I know you? Well then, become me and let me discover you as myself. I’m discovering self. So he plotted and planned the whole thing when he became me. He brought the plan within himself; and then as I discover self, I discover it through the plan, and I reveal myself as he who became me.

So this is the mystery of discovering this inner man. I am crucified with Christ. It’s the past tense, really—I have been—for that is over. Now anyone who teaches, Paul tells us, he said it in his 2nd letter to Timothy, There are those who teach that the resurrection is over and past. They’re upsetting the faith of some (2:18). It is not over…it has started, it is continuing, but it’s not over. It’s taking place in all whom he became and he became all; for he chose us in himself before the foundation of the world…and then came the descent.

Now, let me illustrate it with a picture of Blake. You might have seen this, I have it at home. It’s a fifteen by twelve almost—not quite fifteen, not quite twelve. Unfortunately, mine is black and white. It’s simply the Ladder of Jacob. Well, Jacob is lying flat on his back, eyes closed, head turned to the right and resting lightly on his shoulder, but the arms are outstretched in the form of a cross. There he’s stretched out, flat on his back, and then arms stretched out in the form of a cross. Then comes the dream, and he has the ladder drawn in a circular stairway…the whole ladder is a circular stairway. There are those descending and ascending as told in the 28th chapter of the Book of Genesis (verse 10). It is said in one of the ancient manuscripts, it was the God, the gods descending and ascending. But that’s the E…because we only have three manuscripts, the E, the J, and the P. The E manuscript has it the gods ascending and descending; the others have the angels of God. But call it what you will, the gods ascending and descending. All the gods descending are bringing something. One has a basket on its head. I tried with my magnifying glass to see the contents of the basket. You could see something in it, but what it is I do not know, but a wicker basket. One has a pitcher on his right shoulder, a beautiful pitcher that holds, well, fluid. It’s like Rebecca at the well…that beautiful pitcher. One has a scroll, one has a volume. But each coming down has something…a talent they’re bringing down into this world. But each going up has a child. Here’s a little child on the shoulder, a child in the arms, a little child being held by the hand and being led. Each has a child on the ascent; but all have a talent on the way down. That is Blake’s wonderful picture of Jacob’s ladder.

Now here, let me share with you what was given me this past week from my friend Bill Machgan. He said, I found myself—this is only a week ago that he had this experience—I found myself in a dream and I was lying at the base of a huge tree. Above me, up the roadway, was an enormous dog, a big dog, and it was barking at me but it was leashed to a post. I said to myself, I’m alright because my friend has him. Then I looked up and I couldn’t see the form but here was the outline of a fiery being of light and he started down with the dog, and the dog and he came down. I still could not see the actual form, but there was an outline of this fiery being of light. As he came down, they went past me then he unleashed the dog, and then melted into me. At that, as he melted into me and became me then I thought to myself, I must now get up as fast as I can and like lightening I went up to the very top most point. There I said to myself, if the dog started after me I am now in the top room and so I am safe. The dog came, and as the dog came in he came over a licked me on the face. And then I woke feeling thrilled beyond measure because I knew it had tremendous significance.

Well, Bill, if you haven’t read The Hound of Heaven do so, Francis Thompson. It’s a very small tiny little poem. It’s considered his best…some people think it is the best he’s ever written…I don’t, but I think it’s perfectly marvelous. It’s the hound of heaven which is Caleb. But the hound of heaven is God, it is God himself. He starts it off with these words, I fled him down the nights and down the days. I fled him down the arches of the years. I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind. And in the midst of tears I hid from him, under running laughter. Then the hunt continues as he is running, and in the very end the voice now is the Hound of Heaven which is God and speaks to him. He said, Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am he who now seekest. Thou bravest love from thee who bravest me. That’s how it ends. It’s simply the pursuit of God. What is he seeking? He’s seeking your love. But he cannot receive my love that he wants unless he who is infinite love becomes me for I am incapable of knowing a thing greater than myself. So he who is the greater must become me, actually become me, if he would have my love that would satisfy hm. For if God is infinite love he’s a lover, and a lover without a beloved is unthinkable, so he needs the beloved. So we are told, I no longer call you slaves. I call you friends, for a slave does not know what his master does. So you are now my friends, he said, For all that I have heard from my Father I have made known unto you (John 15:14).

So here, he becomes as I am that I may be as he is. In the descent he brought me down with him, and I went through all the fires, all the afflictions, all the tears, all of everything. But I could not begin the ascent until I was born again. I had to be born from above: Unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. Then Nicodemus said to him, How is it possible? One who is old, can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? He answered, You, a teacher of Israel, and you do not understand this? Except you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God (John 3:3,5). Now he gives him the cue, As the wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit. The Spirit and the wind are the same words both in Hebrew and in Greek. So he tells us what is going to happen: you are going to hear it, it will come as a wind, this fantastic wind, an unearthly wind. Then you’ll know this is it. But it is so much a part of you, you don’t know until after the event…then the infant…and so you take your infant up. It’s the sign of your birth from above, where now you discover who you are. You begin to discover God, for you are God…but not until God actually fuses with you and becomes one with you.

So I can say to Bill, Christ is now your intimate companion with your soul. He’s now within you and now all that is said of him you’re going to experience: the birth, the resurrection, the discovery of Fatherhood. All these things will happen in you. They must for he is fused with you. And you saw Caleb, the hound of heaven, and he comes over as a friend and kisses you. That’s what a dog does when he licks you on the face, he kisses you, and he kisses only his friend. So you are told, not in scripture but the way it’s interpreted, that he died for sinners, he died for his friends, he died for those that he loved. God is infinitely merciful.

So here, man is made a living being, but he sleeps we are told. He’s dead but mercy turned death into sleep; and then the sexes rose to work and weep. But not until mercy turned death into sleep did the sexes rise and they rose to work and weep until that birth takes place from within. There’s a little poem by Wilkin(?) and he said, Behold, O man within, the maiden within you; creature, one from a thousand natures; creature, only just one, but never as yet beloved. She hasn’t yet brought forth the child in fulfillment of the promise that here the Lord himself will give you a sign: a maiden will conceive and bear a child, and she shall call his name Immanuel, which is God with us. So you brought her forth through a thousand natures—all the horrors you’ve gone through. You suddenly discover her. You haven’t yet really turned her into your beloved. For you’re told, it’s the woman from above that brings this child into being; and the woman from below brings in these garments of flesh, these things that are slave garments. But there is a woman in man called the Jerusalem from above, and she brings children into freedom. The Jerusalem from below is Hagar and she brings them into slavery.

So here, the woman within you is created by the life that you lead. I saw it so clearly when I saw this angelic being—you never saw such beauty in your life. At the same time, I saw this monstrous being. One was the result of all my misspent energies, all of my violence went right into this monster. All of my ideals and my faith that I kept when I was faithful to the vision in time of trouble, it all went into this noble creature. And then came that moment in time when both confronted me, this beauty beyond measure and this monster. When I discovered that the monster was my own creation, I made a pledge to myself, not to another, I’d redeem him. If it took me eternity, I’d redeem him; and before my eyes he melted and the energy returned to me who had misused it. My energy felt so great at that moment! At that moment I never felt such intensity, such power. And this one glowed. She’s not going to be destroyed; she is the maiden within me who brought forth the child. So everyone is actually this story as told by ___(??): Behold, O man within, the maiden within you—creature now one from a thousand natures. Now this is the inner man and the inner man has powers beyond the wildest dream of anything on earth.

So let me share with you now another one. A friend of mine who is here tonight, Sharon, and she said it happened to her here recently. She got a new edition of the book called The Lost Books of the Bible and Forgotten Books of Eden. She said, "I sat there and began to read from the beginning. When I got to the 13th chapter, the third through the seventh verses, suddenly I went cold, for here I am reading in a book supposed to be the lost books of the Bible and Eden, and I’m reading an experience of myself that happened to me when I was fourteen years old. When I was fourteen, here I sat at the dinner table with my father and mother and my sister. My mother had occasion to go to the kitchen. I could see her through the door open the refrigerator and she called from the kitchen to me and said, ‘Sharon would you like a glass of milk?’ I said I’d love it, thank you. I saw her pour it into the glass and I saw her put the container back. Then she came in and at the moment that she offered me the milk, at that moment time stood still. I looked at my mother and here she is completely unaware of what is taking place. Not a thing has moved, it’s all frozen. My father, my sister was like a blur, but everything is frozen and time stands still. Suddenly it all began to move. My father was beginning to chew something when he couldn’t, and suddenly he continued the action. My mother continued action, my sister…and I jumped from the table, ran to my bedroom, threw myself on the bed and I could not stop the tears. I cried and