Neville Goddard Lectures: “If You Can Really Believe” (1970)

20 Jun Neville Goddard Lectures: “If You Can Really Believe” (1970)

by Neville Goddard 06-15-1970

I trust that you will find tonight’s message a very practical one, because today there are so many reading the paper and believing what they see and what they hear on radio and TV about the depression and the recession and this, that and the other. Now tonight let me tell you Who-You-Are.

We are told in Scripture – this is the 19th chapter, the 26th verse, of Matthew: “With God all things are possible.” Then we are told in the earliest Gospel, the book of Mark, the 9th chapter, the 23rd verse: “All things are possible to him who believes.”

Divine Imagining has no restrictions placed upon it. Human imagining has one restriction placed upon it to believe. “All things are possible to him who believes.” So they equate man – he is speaking of you with God, but on this level it is believing. Can you believe it? There is no other limitation, other than man’s capacity to believe what he has imagined. “All things are possible to him who believes.” So, the only restriction placed upon man is his ability to believe what his reason, what his senses, deny – that’s all. No other restriction.

Now I’ll turn to the 115th Psalm, and here I think the whole vast world has been guilty of this. The Psalmist claims: “Our God is in the heavens…. Their idols are made” – first of all:

“Our God is in the heavens, and He does what He pleases,” (Psalm 115:1)

No matter what it is, He does what He pleases.

“Their idols are made with human hands of silver and gold.

They have voices, but they speak not,” or rather:

“They have mouths, but they speak not; and eyes that do not see. They have ears that do not hear… and they have hands that do not feel, and feet that do not walk, and there is no sound from their throats. Those who make them are like them, and those who believe in them are like them.” (Psalm 115:5-8)

To believe in anything outside of yourself as the cause of the phenomena of life, you are believing in something made with the human hands – I don’t care what you call it. Now, who is this God who does as He pleases that is equated with man? Well, you try to think of anything other than your wonderful human imagination!

“Our God is in the heavens,” and we are told that, “Heaven is within you,” in the 17th chapter of the book of Luke; “God is within you” (Luke 17:21). If He is within me, what in me does anything that it pleases? Nothing but my imagination! I can imagine anything in the world. The most incredible thing, I can imagine, but as man, one condition is imposed upon me: I must believe it.

If I can persuade myself of the reality of that which I have imagined, no power in the world can stop it from coming to pass. Man creates his objective world out of imagination and faith. These are the substances out of which he actually projects and objectifies his world. There is nothing but God, and God is man’s own wonderful human imagination.

“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, from “Annotations to Berkeley” and “The Laocoon”]

So, Divine Imagining – yes, it’s instantaneous; but when it’s keyed low into the human form, then there is one condition imposed upon it:

Can I believe it?

So, I now come to the point of faith. What is faith?

Faith is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope.

So, I have a hope. I would like to be this, that or the other in this world. Or, I would like someone – a friend of mine – to be this, that or the other. Now I must appropriate it subjectively. I go down in my imagination and I simply conceive a scene, which would imply that it’s true, and I appropriate it.

How do I appropriate it? I create a scene, which would imply that it is true, bringing the individual or friends before me. I could have friends tell me, “Have you heard the good news?” and I will act as though I didn’t.

“No, what is the good news?”