Sami's Question

Neville Goddard PDF Lecture Transcript
June 30 1968

Courtesy:  FreeNeville.com

Neville: Good evening. We won't be meeting for several weeks, so tonight I'd like to follow a different format. I'd like to take a question from the audience and use that as the inspiration for my lecture. Does anybody have a question they would like me to answer? I see a hand over there, but I can't see who you are, the stage light is in my eyes. Oh yes, I can see now, it is Sami, one of our regulars. Glad to see you, as always. What question can I answer for you?

Sami: I have been living by your teachings, and have had many wonderful things that I imagined come to pass. I imagined financial prosperity and it doesn't seem to have come to pass, at least not as I imagined it. What should I do?

Neville: This question is not just Sami's question; it is a question we all must answer, as every day all of us are called upon to witness to the truth of God. And when something doesn't seem to happen as we expected and imagined it to be, then we have to find out what has happened and do the right thing to get a better result. The word Satan means doubt. Desiring a certain state, reason may tell you it will be difficult to attain. If you listen to your reason, and doubt your desires, Satan has made himself known to you. And this happens to all of us.

You may think you understand what I have said. But if you aren't getting what you want, there is something you haven't understood. So I'm going to start by saying something I've said before, "When I speak of feeling, I don't mean emotion, but acceptance of the fact that the desire is fulfilled."

And you can think you did that, but you can know for sure, if you haven't achieved your goal, you don't have acceptance. And the reason you don't have acceptance is that you are still thinking OF the goal, rather than thinking FROM the goal. That is all there is to it.

And if you are thinking of the goal, rather than from the goal, you can do that for ten years and nothing will happen. But the instant you think from the goal, your world will change. And that can happen tomorrow, it can happen in an instant. But it can never happen from continuing to think in the old way.

Tonight I will ask all of you to take my yoke upon you and learn of me, to listen to me as I explain my understanding of scripture. This teaching is not hard. It is simply this. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Your heavenly Father sleeps within you as your wonderful human imagination. You must learn to live in your imagination morning, noon and night. And when you do, you will have your goal.

Start with the Law. Learn how it works and prove it in daily action. For right now God sleeps in you. But when you awake from your sleep, He will awaken in you as the Promise, and you will find yourself entering into the promised land of your dreams. If you remain faithful to God, no power on earth can stop that from coming to pass.

Because remember, all cause is spiritual. What does this mean? It means that if your world is not the way you want it, there is some imaginal act in your mind that is keeping the unwanted experience alive. Your only problem is that, unable to remember the moment a state was imagined, when it takes form and is seen by the outer eye, its harvest is not recognized, and therefore denied. So you do not realize the imagination that is keeping your unwanted state alive, but it is there, and when you separate yourself from that imagining, your unwanted state will vanish.

This is the great adventure, for when you do this, you truly discover and know, in a way you never knew before, that God IS your Father. And there is an endless joy in accepting that Jesus Christ is in you, endless expressing as your own wonderful human imagination.

Let me share a letter with you. This is from a man named John, telling me of his financial good fortune. And let me begin by saying that this is not the first letter I got from John.

Last year, having heard some of my lectures, he decided he wanted to increase his financial wealth. And his problem was the same as many of you here. He thought he was imagining FROM the goal, but nothing happened. And he asked me what he should do. And I told him that he had to find a time in his life when he had truly gotten that feeling of living FROM the goal, and seen something happen as a result. And then he should study his thoughts and feelings and realize what he did that was different.

And when he figured that out, and did that with his financial goal, he would be free. And when he realized what he had done to keep his goal from happening, how every day he had  been imagining in the wrong way and keeping his goal away from him instead of coming to him, he would laugh, because now he would be free.

And what do you think I did after I read his letter? I used the pruning shears of revision. I imagined him writing to me and telling me of his great good fortune, how wealth had entered his life through a change in how he used his imagination. And today I have that very letter in my hand. And I knew that would happen, and in a totally naturally way.

And it will happen for you, too. Because the truth is that you can do anything in this world that you want to do. But you must remember that the Holy Spirit is in you. You may not believe it today, but it really is the Truth. The truth is that you have to find Christ, the Christ in YOU, which is your own wonderful human imagination.

For this world is made up of infinite states which you may clothe yourself with. If you do not like the state you are in, you can get out of it. And I suggest that you do that, and I suggest that you do that today. For why would you want to stay for one minute longer in a state you do not like? For you have the power to have any state, to be in any state, and to live in the state of your dreams.

Nothing appears by accident! Everything is the result of an idea. The problem you are experiencing today is because of an idea which you planted yesterday. You were asleep, and while you were asleep, you planted an idea, an idea that is now the unlovely state  which you inhabit today. And how did you do this? You did it by feeling intense. And while you were feeling intense, an unlovely seed was planted, which has become an unlovely state. How do I know this? Because you always reap the thoughts you sow.

And when you cannot remember sowing the seed, this teaching can seem hard to understand. And when you figure it out, when you first practice this technique and get it right, you will be surprised when it happens. But you will learn that when you completely accept the state assumed, you will not have to figure out how to make it happen. In fact you do not have to do a thing to make it come to pass. The assumption contains its own plan of fulfillment. The seed of the oak tree contains the tree. Your job is to plant the seed, but it is not your job to grow the tree. The seed grows by itself, and God makes the seed turn into the tree, not you.

So tonight, I say to you, use the law and prove its power by becoming the man you imagine yourself to be. And when you do this, as you get the Law to work for you, don't forget the Promise, for without the Promise what would it matter if you owned the entire earth? Believe me when I say that you're only suffering from amnesia. Jesus Christ is in you. And when you realize that Jesus Christ is in you, then you know that you can put yourself into any state, be it wealth or poverty.

So I say to you, if you don't enjoy poverty, don't get into the state. And if you're in poverty and you don't want to be in poverty any more, get out of it. For you are not weak.

Infinite power resides in your Imagination. You could be in prison and imagine yourself free. And when you made this freedom real as an imaginal act, you would be free. And it would all come about in a wonderful way.

Start today to follow all of your imaginings through from start to finish. For you use the law of imagination all day long. It is not big things only, it is everything. Find out how you get imagination to work for you in little things, and then do the big things in the very same way. And when you awaken from the dream, you realize that you are not limited, you are not weak, you are not small, you are not poor. You are the Lord Jesus Christ.

When you find on that day, that you find yourself where you imagined you were, you will have recognized the infinite power you are, and set yourself free.

And when you are free, you are free indeed, for it is not you who frees you, it is God who sets you free, and when God sets you free, you are free indeed, for you are now worshiping the true God.

Try it now. Believe in the reality of your imaginal act, for it is God in action. Dare to believe in the reality of God in action. It happened to me, it can happen to you. When you learn how to focus on your assumption until it becomes totally real to you, you will watch with amazement as everyone in your world plays their parts in the fulfillment of your dream.

And realize that this is not just the Law being fulfilled in you, but the Promise as well. For there is a plan of redemption buried in you which will erupt in the fullness of time.

When redemption becomes alive in you, you will experience all that is said of a man called Jesus in scripture. And when this happens, you find that, with no effort at all, you

And when this happens, you find that, with no effort at all, you enter the state you desire to express. With no effort at all, you find that you can believe it is true, and that when you do this, no earthly power can stop your dream from objectifying itself. I urge you to test your creative power on this level. Do it now.

Take every moment you can and clothe yourself in the feeling
that your wish is fulfilled. Live in this imagination all day long. Feel its reality and do not forget that moment that you did this for the first time, for that moment is the moment you saw the world FROM your goal. That moment is the time of the planting of your dream, and as every dream has its own seedtime and harvest, the day you plant your dream, you know that in its own good time, that moment of seedtime will appear in this world, properly clothed as a wonderful harvest, and experienced as an objective fact.

Don't consider the means. Jesus Christ in you knows much better than you how to make your dream come to pass. Your job is to know your desire is already an accomplished fact and that's all that you need to know. Get that feeling of reveling in your dream "because it is true now."

How do you do this? Let me ask you, what would you do if your dream was true? Answer this question and you will know. Would you have a party? Who would you invite? What would you do at the party? What music would you play on your phonograph? What friends of yours would be there?

This is what I mean by getting the reality of it. Do not think that you have to climb the mountain, and that climbing the mountain is hard. For if you still think you have to climb
the mountain, then you are still thinking OF the goal. You have to look down at life from the top of the mountain, and notice the path that you took to get to the top, and be happy that you don't have to climb anymore because you are there.

Let me tell you a story that will convince you of how to do this. Pretend with me that you live in New York and that you want to take an ocean voyage. So you are in your apartment in New York, thinking of taking your voyage. And when you do this you are still thinking OF your goal, and you will never achieve it until you change how
you think.

But that is where you start, for that is where everyone starts. You are now seated in your apartment in New York City, contemplating the joy that would be yours if you were on an ocean liner sailing across the great Atlantic.

But now you make a change. Your eyes are closed. You have consciously released the New York apartment and in its place you sense and feel that you are on an ocean liner. You are seated in a deck chair; there is nothing around you but the vast Atlantic.

Fix the reality of this ship and ocean so that in this state you can mentally recall the day when you were seated in your New York apartment dreaming of this day at sea.
As you sit on the deck of the ship, feeling the sea breeze cross your face, feeling the movement of the ship gently rolling in the waves, recall the mental picture of yourself seated there in New York dreaming of this day. In your imagination, see the memory picture of yourself back there in your New York apartment.

If you succeed in looking back on your New York apartment without consciously returning there, then you have successfully prepared the reality of this voyage. The key is that you must not return to the apartment. For if it is true that if you sailed on this ship, then you must be on it, for where else could you be?

Remain in this conscious state feeling the reality of the ship and the ocean; feel the joy of this accomplishment - then open your eyes. You will be back in your apartment physically, but something will have changed.

When you do this, you feel differently, because you have changed your imagination. And now, because you are thinking FROM the goal, and not OF the goal, this voyage will come to you, in a wonderful way.

Even if someone half way across the world has to take an action for you to be on this ship, it is already in motion, the moment you find yourself on the deck of the ship in your imagination, and do not return to the apartment but remain in the mental state of your
goal. Notice that when you are thinking OF the goal, you feel weak. But when you are thinking FROM the goal, you feel strong, you feel joyous, you feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life.

Truly as it is said in scripture, God has gone ahead and prepared the place you, for where you are in consciousness there you shall be in body also.

So that you understand what I am saying, I will say it one more time. You must change your imagining and you must change it now if you want your goal to come to you now. That is why I say, if you want to live in a new house, fall asleep in that new house. For that is what you would do if you had it, you would sleep in the new house and not in the old house. And in the new house, you would think of the old house and realize that you don't live there anymore, because you don't. You have sold it, and you don't live there anymore, because you live in the new house.

This is easy. Don't make it hard. Simply determine what you want and imagine a scene which would imply you have realized it. Enter into the spirit of the scene. Participate in it by giving it sensory vividness. Then relax as you feel its reality.

And in that scene, realize that you are not in the old reality anymore, because you are in the new one. Do you see what I mean?

So you must learn to live in your imagination morning, noon and night. And when you do, you must also learn to think FROM the goal. And when you learn to think FROM the goal, the gates of heaven will open for you. For all that you wish will come to pass in a
wonderful way.

Just name your goal. Imagine you have reached it and persuade yourself it is true. That's all. That is the beginning and the end If it takes a thousand people to play their part to aid the birth of your imaginal act, they will do so, not even knowing they are
playing the part you assigned them.

The Father has been sleeping within you. Today let him awake. Let today be the day that you allow him to break the chain for on that day, you will rise as He!

Move into the state of your desire, be in the desired state in your imagination and before your eyes, people will respond because of your action.

Dare to assume you are wealthy and watch everyone play their parts to provide you with the wealth you claim to have. They will, for they are only yourself pushed out. Remember, everything is yours for the taking. If you want it, take it. It is all yours.

If you persist in acknowledging what your inner senses are telling you until you are persuaded of their reality, you will see their evidence. Then you will know from experience who Christ really is.

I invite you all, when you leave here tonight, to go all out and imagine you really are the man or woman you want to be. And do not doubt, for the minute doubt steps in, a mental division descends, as doubt is the devil.

Instead, you become that man, that woman, that you desire to be. And when you do, do not be like Lots wife. Never look back. Enter into your new world and be grateful. For when you enter your dream and never look back, your world will rearrange itself around your dream.

Your dream world will have become your real world. Your old world will have melted in the image of your dream. And the most amazing thing is that this will happen, without any difficulty, or help on your part.

I was born in a little island called Barbados. I do not feel it will be long before I will vanish, leaving not a trace behind. This cannot happen, however, until I have finished the work I was given to do.

Only then can I ask my Father to return me to the glory that was mine, the glory I possessed before the world was. And this glory will be yours as well. For we are all sons of the Father. And so my journey is your journey. Your feet will walk the same steps as mine. Just as I am free, so you are free too.

And yes, when the world hears of this, the ministers will turn my experiences into their institutional concept, and once again void the word of God, but this doesn't change the truth, for the truth is that I AM God and so are you.

Does that answer your question, Sami?

Sami: Yes

Neville: Sami, would you come up here on stage for a moment.

Sami: (Comes up on stage.)

Neville: (Shakes Sami's hand, then turns to the audience)

I want everybody here to meet Sami, who is one of our most devoted members. I wanted you up here, Sami, because I wanted to say to all of you, that, right now, I know that Sami is going to be a tremendous success. I know this because I have seen it in my imagination, and what I have seen in my imagination must come to pass. Because
God is my own wonderful human imagination.

And tonight I know, that when we enter into the silence, that Sami will also see his success in his own wonderful human imagination.

For I have not only seen the Law in action for Sami, but the Promise as well. He has a wonderful future ahead of him, full of success and prosperity.

And this is true because, tonight, in the silence, Sami will see the world FROM his goal. And so, in the most wonderful way, his dream will unfold, in the days and weeks to come.

And so it will for each of you, for when you do what he has done, to study these ideas with earnest devotion, and live life as it should be lived, from your imagination, your success is certain.

Sami: (Returns to his seat)

Neville: And now, let us go into the silence