Persistent Assumption

Neville Goddard 06-18-1968

Now, you and I look out on a world, and we think of the great men and women who are publicized in the world, and many of them are altogether wonderful. We speak of the great poets, the scientists, the businessmen – all these fellows in the world, and we think, “Well now, there must be something different about them.”

Now, may I tell you? There’s not a thing different about them. I want to convince you this night, if I can, that this inspiration that we think the poet has, the scientist, the great businessman, is not an influx of a spirit that is different. It’s not different from the individual’s own wonderful human imagination, because there’s nothing greater. So, there is no greater influx of Spirit into a Blake, into a Shakespeare, into an Einstein, into you, than your own wonderful human imagination, for there is nothing greater. There is only one Spirit in man and the Universe!

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one”

There is not a greater spirit than your own wonderful human imagination.

In a little conversation that Blake had with his friend, Crabb Robinson, Robinson asked him what he thought of the divinity of Christ and he answered, “Christ is the only God, but so am I, and so are you. Now don’t forget it! When you think of Christ, you are making something bigger than yourself – something greater than yourself. Blake said, “Christ is the only God, but so am I.” If Christ is the only God “and so am I,” I make myself one with him. Then he turns to Crabb Robinson and says, “So are you.” So don’t forget it.

If you forget this, you make yourself less than the One. You can’t be less than the One; there is only One. There is only God in this world! There is nothing but God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God.

Now tonight, let us put it to the extreme test. If God is the only Reality – you can’t have two, not two gods – and He is my own wonderful human imagination, and “All things are possible to God.” All right, how would I go about proving it? For I am called upon to test it!

“Test it.” I will dare to assume that I am the man that I would like to be. At the moment, reason denies it, my senses deny it; but I will dare to assume that I am it. Now, what am I told in Scripture that I should do? Well, listen to it carefully. These are stories told in Scripture of the necessity of persistence because we are “keyed low.” The same God – the God that created the Universe and sustains it by His Creative Power – is the God that is sitting here in these chairs tonight. But here for a divine purpose, the same God is “keyed low.”

So, would I bring about a change in my world? Then I am called upon in Scripture to be persistent, because I see this world, and everything that I have assumed is denied – as I assume it – by the things round about me. Now listen to these stories as told in Scripture.

A man came at the midnight hour to his friend, and he said, “A friend has called, ‘I have no bread. Would you just let me have three loaves of bread?’ and the one who opened the upstairs window said to him, ‘It is midnight, and my children are asleep in bed. I cannot come down and give you what you want.’”

And the story as told us in the book of Luke is this: he would not come down; but because of this man’s importunity, he came down and gave him all that he needed. Well, the word translated importunity means brazen impudence. He would not take “No” for an answer.

I don’t ask you, as an individual – I don’t ask any outside god; as an individual, I am asking my Self to bring this thing to pass. That is what I am actually saying, because I am speaking to the only God. There is only God! And if God is my own wonderful human imagination, to whom am I going to turn when It doesn’t respond – when I don’t take “No” for an answer?