Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Real Man” (1965)

13 Jul Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Real Man” (1965)

by Neville Goddard 1/5/65

I do hope we can make this the most productive session that we’ve ever had. If you apply it, I know we can. What I tell you is not speculation; it’s all based upon experience. Tonight’s subject is “The Real Man.” If I tell you that the real man is your own wonderful human Imagination, would you believe it? If I speak of Imagination, you don’t think of man, you think of, well, a faculty, a power, some creative productive power…but you don’t really think of man. But if you ever hear the word “Jesus,” you think of man don’t you? One billion persons in the world call themselves Christians and they believe in Jesus Christ, and they believe in Jesus Christ as a man…a man that is God but man. But if I tell you that Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, would you believe that? Would you really believe that Imagination is man? Well, tonight I hope I can in some way persuade you that Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination.

I do not know if you have seen the current issue of Life Magazine, it’s a double issue. Well, in it the whole book is devoted, this coming issue, to the Bible. But one thought stands out, the thought of Albert Schweitzer. You must have heard of Albert Schweitzer. He is a great philosopher, theologian, musicologist and doctor of medicine. He made a concerted effort to find the historic Jesus; then he brought out his findings in a book called The Quest of the Historic Jesus. In the last chapter, we begin with, on the negative note, that the Jesus of Nazareth has never existed…never existed, the Jesus of Nazareth. But he ends the book on this note: “He comes to us as one unknown, without a name. He commands us, ‘Follow me!’ and to those who will obey him he will reveal himself.” And how does he reveal himself? He reveals himself, as Schweitzer said, in an ineffable mystery. How? In this manner: To those who will follow him through the trials, the conflicts, the sufferings, as they must pass through them, he revealed himself in this strange manner: In their own experience, and then they will know who he is. That’s how he comes to man. He had no existence and yet he comes to one as one unknown, one without a name, and yet in man’s personal experience he reveals himself in this strange peculiar way. And then you have the experience, you know who he is.

We are told in scripture, “Be imitators of God as beloved children.” In other words, experience the biography of God. Well, I can’t induce it, it’s not something that is self-engendered; it’s something that comes out of the nowhere. But do set my hope fully upon this experience, this grace that is coming to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:13). Let me understand who he really is. Well, who is Jesus Christ? I said earlier it’s your own wonderful human Imagination. Well, what in scripture tells me that Jesus Christ is my own Imagination? Turn to the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and these are the words of his first letter: “The Jews demand signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified; to the Jews it’s a stumbling block and to the Greeks it’s folly, all foolishness, but to those who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God!” (1:22-24). So he takes Christ and makes it now the power of God, the wisdom of God. Well, you can’t separate your own creative power from yourself. So “the power of God and the wisdom of God,” you have to think in terms of God.