Neville Goddard Lecture, All That You Behold

ALL That You Behold

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“All that you behold, though it appears without it is within, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” If you will but enter a state in your imagination, and assume its truth, the outer world will respond to your assumption, for it is your shadow, forever bearing witness to your inner imaginal activity.

Test yourself, and if you prove this to your own satisfaction you will come to the same conclusion the apostles did in the 13th chapter of the Book of Acts. Then you, too, will say: “I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart who will do all my will.” If the world responds to your imaginal activity, is the world not David doing your will? If the Lord claimed that David always does his will, and you, by a simple imaginal act, command the outer world to respond – are you not the Lord?

When you imagine something it is as though you struck a chord, and everything in sympathy with that chord responds to bear witness to the activity in you. If the world is the responding chord to what you are imagining, and David is a man after your own heart who will do all your will – is David not the outer world? This is not “will” as the world uses the word. You do not will something to be so, but imagine it and become inwardly convinced that it is so. And if, through your persistence, the world responds, you have not only found David, you have found the Lord as your own wonderful human imagination.
In Hebrew thought, history consists of all the generations of men and their experiences fused into one grand whole. This concentrated time, into which all the generations are fused and from which they spring, is called “eternity.” In Ecclesiastes we are told that “God put eternity into the mind of man but so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Only in the end will you really know what God has put into your mind.

The Hebrew word, “olam,” [o-LAWM‟] translated “eternity” or “the world” in Ecclesiastes, is quite often translated as “a youth; stripling; young man.” These are three titles given David, the son of Jesse. And the word “Jesse” means “any form of the verb” to be”, i.e.: I AM.” Is that not God’s name? When the time of your departure has come, you will see the world of humanity, not as a crowd of people, but as a single youth, a stripling, a young man; for eternity is personified as the youth called David. You will know this to be true only when you reach the end.

Now listen to these words found in the 20th chapter of John: “Peter went into the tomb, where he saw the linen clothes lying and the napkin which was on his head lying – not with the linen clothes – but rolled up in a place by itself.” You may wonder why this is stated thus, but I tell you: the linen clothes and the napkin are very significant. Read the story carefully and you will discover the tomb where he was crucified and buried was called “the skull”. And Peter, when entering the tomb, saw the linen clothes and the napkin, but could not see the one who was put there.

This is not a secular story of a man who died wearing linen clothes with a napkin covering his face, and left the tomb three days later, leaving his clothes and napkin behind. No, scripture is vision filled with symbolism. The linen clothes symbolize your physical body, the garment you wear here which covers your true identity. This is not a story of one who has died, but of one who has risen from the dead!
In ancient times, the word “napkin” had a far wider range of meaning than it has today. We have a dinner napkin, a cocktail napkin, and also a sanitary napkin; but this napkin symbolizes the placenta, the afterbirth. The napkin appears, separate from the body, to tell you that a birth took place. This is the birth John insists is necessary for entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew and Luke tell the story of the birth as a woman called Mary giving birth to a little child who was different, yet born as we were born. But when you read the story in John (the most profound of all the New Testament writers) you discover where the birth takes place, and who Mary really is. Mary is the skull, the womb God entered. Blake said: “God Himself entered death’s door with those who enter. And he layed down in the grave with them in visions of eternity until they awake and see Jesus and the linen clothes lying there which the female had woven for them.” My mother wove this fleshly garment that I wear, and when I came forth it was from her womb; then the placenta followed. It had to be discharged, for it has no part of the earth. So it is with the napkin, telling you here that an unusual birth has taken place in the skull, where the drama began and ends!

No doubt unnumbered millions attended last Sunday’s services and heard that he has risen. Yes, he has risen, and so will you; for God actually became as you are, that you may rise to know yourself to be as He is. Having entered your skull, he now has visions of eternity. Visions of wars, famines, and convulsions, were first imagined, or they could not happen. When you imagine a state and find its response coming from without, you have discovered who God is, for all things are made by him. As he wills it so, so it is; but he must have one who will do all of his will.

If it takes five hundred different beings, male and female, to respond to your imaginal act, they will come and seem to you to be the influence through which your desire is made visible. You see, humanity is David, always doing your will; and when your time is fulfilled, the whole of humanity is fused into a single youth and personified as David. Strangely enough, he comes from within you and reveals you as his Father. Then, speaking from experience, you will say: “I have found David. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father.’” and you will know your journey is at its end. It takes all the generations of men and their experiences to bring you to the point of confronting the beauty of those experiences, fused into a single youth known as David.
Every child born of woman will eventually know that he is the God who created the universe and willed everything into being. Then he will forgive all, for he will know they were only doing his will. Then everyone summed up will appear to him as David, and he will say, “I have found my son David to be a man after my heart who does all my will.”

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