Neville Goddard Lectures: “Our Real Beliefs Are What We Live By”

29 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “Our Real Beliefs Are What We Live By”

By Neville Goddard May 21, 1963

___(??). Now we can make a habit of this and not really take it in. ___(??). I would like everyone to really pay all attention. Our real beliefs are what we live by. Therefore, it is so important to get truth. For the belief, whether it be true or false, if we really believe it we live by it. And we need not, may I tell you, experience what we said we believe to really believe in it. I’ll give you a very graphic example. I personally have never, and I don’t think any of you have, jumped off a tall building. We haven’t had the experience, but we believe that if we did it would either be fatal or crippling. And so we haven’t done it, and yet we have not experienced it. So a real belief is tantamount to knowing. You can’t distinguish between the two, believing and knowing, when it’s a real belief.

Now a real belief may be a lie, but it’s just as knowing as a true belief. So it’s so important that you and I are exposed to the truth. Nothing is more important than that the testimony of Jesus be heard and responded to. Nothing is more important—I don’t care what it is in this world—than that the testimony of Jesus be heard and responded to. I am not saying that your response will be affirmative; it may be negative, as told us in the last chapter of the Book of Acts. Paul spent the day from morning to evening trying to explain to them the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus. He used the argument from scripture—there’s only the Old Testament, so he used the argument from the law of Moses and the prophets—and we are told that some were convinced by what he said and others disbelieved. Now that’s your privilege, to believe it or disbelieve it, but you should be exposed to the testimony of Jesus. For we are told, he is the first fruit; he is the first fruit that awakened from the dead. He is the pioneer and pinnacle of our faith. So God succeeded in his purpose, and here is the first success. No greater than you when he succeeds in you, no greater, but here is the first one in whom he succeeded in producing his prophecy, his purpose. And listen to his testimony, for he tells us, “These words are not mine. They are the words of him who sent me. And all the words that I speak are the words of my Father.” And so he’s only echoing what was dictated to him by the one who raised him from the dead.

Now we come down to this level and take one of his statements. Here is a statement, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you received it, and you will.” Now, unnumbered hundreds of millions of Christians have repeated that statement. Do they really believe it? Oh, they will quote it from scripture; do they really believe it? I have taken that same statement and put it into our modern tongue in these words, “imagining creates reality.” I know it from experience: I will say, “Imagining creates reality.” Many of you who come here you’ve proved it. There are many of us who’ve proved it in a way, but they will repeat it and give it lip service. But I say if it gets real to the individual who has heard it because the habit of worry discloses a lack of faith in that saying. If I worry, I’m imagining, am I not? Am I not fulfilling the statement of Job, “And my fears have come upon me”? So if I worry about a problem—he can’t find a job, things are going from bad to worse, I can’t pay my bills and I’m worried—do I really believe that imagining creates reality? Really believe it as I believe something I haven’t actually experienced, like jumping through the window? I know I’ll break my neck or injure my body, I’ll cripple it or kill it, I know it. And I haven’t experienced it but I know it. That believing and knowing have become one. But when it comes to that, well, do I believe that I know it with the same intensity? Do I really believe that imagining creates reality? If I do, I couldn’t worry, for worry is to only conjure what I fear in this world. For worry is an imaginal act. I couldn’t possibly be concerned about anything if I really believe that imagining creates reality.