Neville 11-21-1969
ENTER THE DREAM
Neville Goddard
God only acts and is in existing beings or men. Embracing the fires of experience, God was consumed by the
flames, rose from their ashes, and continues to rise as Jesus Christ, or Divine Imagination. Good and evil are
not conditions imposed by some benevolent deity, but states the soul must experience in order to surpass
them and awaken as God Himself.
Tonight I will share with you an experience of a friend, a lady who wrote, saying: “In my dream I possessed
the power to be anything I wanted to be. The moment I observed the being or thing I became it, felt its
emotion, and shared its thoughts and environment. This I did throughout the night and awoke reluctantly
because I was so enjoying the experience.”
Now let me tell you what Aldous Huxley wrote about his friend, D. H. Lawrence: “To be with Lawrence was
an adventure, because he was not of the order of this world, but belonged to another universe. When I was
with him and he shared his experiences, I felt that he knew what it was to be a tree, a daisy, a breaking wave,
or the mysterious moon itself. He saw things the mortal eye could not see. He was a sensitive, intelligent man
who could cook, sew, embroider, and do woodwork to perfection; yet he could sit alone doing nothing and
be completely happy. He could put himself into the skin of an animal and describe in the most convincing
detail its dim, inhuman thoughts.”
I am quite sure my friend never read that letter, but I gave her my immortal eyes. The eye of Imagination is
now open in her and she has shared her experience of going from state to state, from things to persons,
knowing their feelings and emotions. How is that possible? Because God is the only actor.
Blake makes this statement: “Eternity Exists and All things in Eternity Independent of Creation which was an
act of Mercy. By this it will be seen that I do not consider either the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme
State, but to be every one of them States of the Sleep into which the Soul may fall in its deadly dreams of
Good and Evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent.”
Everything in the world is yourself pushed out. Every animal there can be entered by you, and you can
experience its emotion, for that animal is your very self.
You are the animating power of the universe. All things were made by you and without you was not anything
made that was made, for you are life itself. This I know from experience. The universe is alive in you. It has
no life on the outside. It is yours to animate, to stop, to let go, and stop again. Blake was right when he said:
“God only acts and is in existing beings or men,” for God is the only actor, acting imaginatively in the human
imagination.
While seated here you can see your home in your mind’s eye, but it does not have the cubic reality as does
this room. But one day you will think of something and see it more vividly than you now see the speaker. You
will enter it, not as a shadow, but as a 3-dimensional space. I have sat in a chair or rested on a bed with my
eyes closed as in sleep and seen what I could not see if the lids were open. Knowing exactly where I was
and what I was doing, I allowed consciousness to follow vision and stepped into that image which closed
itself around me as I set out to explore that world.
I now know the truth of Blake’s words: “If the Spectre would enter into these images in his Imagination,
approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought. If he would make a friend and
companion of any one of these images which always intrigues him to leave mortal things as he must know,
then will he rise from the dead; then will he meet the Lord in the air and then he will be Happy.”
Many times while sitting in my chair or lying on my bed, my inner eye has opened and I have seen what no
mortal eye could see. Then I would enter into the image by allowing my consciousness to move on its fiery
chariot of contemplative thought. Clothed as I am, the world calls me Neville; but I – a conscious being -
have moved out of this body and into a world which instantly clothed itself around me; and I explored that
world, clothed in a body just as solidly real as the one I left on the bed or chair. If anyone had entered the
room they would have thought Neville was sleeping; yet I was fully awake, consciously aware of being
separated from my external self.
Look at yourself in the mirror and you are seeing the mask God is wearing in this world of death, but you
cannot see the immortal you who cannot die. Your friend or relative may appear to die, but he is not that
which is put into the furnace and consumed or buried in a grave. He is that which his I AM is conscious of
being, exploring other worlds just as real as this until he experiences the mystery of scripture.
You see, God only acts. Sitting in my chair and seeing what I should not see, I acted by consciously entering
into the image I was viewing, to discover it was not a flat surface, but a 3-dimensional reality, complete and
ready for occupancy.
My friend knows what it is like to become anything that intrigues her, and I am quite sure she never read the
letter Huxley wrote of his friend D. H. Lawrence. This is the same Huxley who showed no interest when I
tried to tell him of my birth from above, of David and the visions I have shared with you. He liked me as a
friend but he had his own limitations, as everyone does. In a certain social world, if you pronounce a certain
word differently you are cataloged as one who is not “in,” as it were, and Huxley would not listen to my
visions because I did not speak as he thought everyone should. I could have told him things beyond the
wildest dreams of his friend D. H. Lawrence, but because of his little stumbling block Aldous could not hear
my words.
But I tell you who are seated here tonight: you are the only God. You will know this from experience, for the
day is coming when – instead of seeing your thoughts in your minds eye, you will see them 3-dimensionally,
just as you are now seeing the speaker. When the eye of imagination opens you will instantly move into the
thought, whether it is regarding something that took place ten thousand years ago or exists in what you might
think to be the future. I tell you: there is nothing that is not here and now, ready for you to enter and become
one with.
One day you will realize, like Blake, that neither the just nor the wicked are supreme states, and you will be
able to forgive everyone for what he is doing or has done. You will know that although his action seems
horrible, based upon this level, he is expressing a state and must do as the state dictates. Good and evil are
simply states of experience through which the soul of Man must pass in order to awaken to the being that he
really is. He must embrace the fires of experience and be consumed before he can rise from the ashes to be
one with the being who sent him.
I can’t tell you the thrill that is in store for you when the eye of imagination opens, for only then will you be
actually seeing for the first time. And when the ears are open you will hear what no mortal ear can hear, as
you see what no mortal eye can see. A week or so ago I went to an office regarding my Medicare, and I was
asked to prove that I would be sixty-five on my next birthday. I knew that at one time I had obtained my
baptismal certificate, but I hadn’t seen it in years and had no idea where it was. Two nights ago, about 1:30
A.M., my divine brothers said to me: “Your baptismal certificate is in your wallet.” I awoke, opened the
dresser drawer and there, inside a wallet my wife had given me back in 1938, was the baptismal certificate I
had obtained in 1924 when I needed it to go to London during my dancing career. So I know that when the
eye and ear of imagination is open, every desire of the heart will be seen and heard. That is your destiny.
I say: you are God, the only actor in this world. No matter what you imagine, God is acting. He is the only
actor, acting by imagining. You can imagine anything, cover the act with faith by believing in its reality, and it
will come to pass. When Blake spoke of eternity in his statement: “Eternity exists and all things in Eternity,
independent of creation which was an act of mercy,” he was referring to the little garment of flesh and blood
you wear. Your garment is. It is eternal. It is a garment that anyone can – and many will – wear. In my case,
this is a garment in which one awakes. I am not the garment called Neville, any more than I am any part I
ever played on Broadway. I was in six plays but I never was the characters I played there, but simply the
actor. And so it is with God. He is the only actor in eternity and God is the human imagination. It is the human
imagination who plotted the entire play before he came down and assumed these eternal bodies of limitation
and death. And it is the human imagination who will rise from these eternal bodies into Divine Imagination
from whence he came.
In the Book of Genesis we are told: “The serpent spoke and said to the woman, ‘You will not die for God
knows that when you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, your eye will open and you will be like
God, knowing good and evil.’” This is something you must know in order to surpass and rise beyond it as
Divine Imagination. The serpent knew that as you ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, although you
would not die, you would embrace the fire of experience, be consumed as its victim, and rise from its ashes
as God Himself. That is the story of scripture.
Blake added this wonderful thought, saying that we left paradise following the serpent. This implies that we
did not begin here on earth, but left paradise following the serpent of generation who told us that when we
embraced the great experience of good and evil we would be consumed in its fire and yet not die, but would
rise from it. In his book, John tells it in a lovely way as: “I came out from the Father and came into the world.
Again I am leaving the world and returning to the Father.” So we did not begin here, but – coming out from
the Father – we found these garments that seemed to begin in time, but really are an eternal part of the
structure of the universe. In my own case this little garment seemed to begin in 1905, but it was always so. It
was always growing into manhood and departing in its sixties. Always appearing, occupied by God, moving
towards a certain point and then disappearing.
All of these are but garments to be picked up and worn. People think they are the garments they wear. That
is because they do not know who God is, for he is in the one who is wearing the garment. It is God, your
own wonderful human imagination, who acts and is in existing beings or men. There is no other God, no other
actor in the universe.
If you want to test God, you may. Your immortal eyes and ears need not be open to test your creative
power. Simply assume you are the one you want to be. Remain faithful to your assumption and, although
everything denies it, you will become it. It does not matter who you are or what the world thinks of you;
anything is possible to the “I” of imagination. As I mentioned earlier, had Aldous only listened to my message,
rather than my English, I could have told him things beyond the wildest dreams of D. H. Lawrence. But I am
a Colonial in his eyes and, like all Englishmen; the Colonials are looked down upon. If you don’t speak with
the Oxford or Cambridge accent, you are a Colonial in their eyes and not one of the boys.
If Aldous had only listened, I could have told him what it was like to not only be the wave, but to be the
ocean. When I was but a boy, years before puberty (in fact it stopped at puberty), I would know the night it
was going to happen and was afraid to go to sleep. It was marvelous to be the ocean, but to be the breaking
wave (a small portion of my being) was frightening. I – the ocean would toss myself – the wave into the skies
and then catch myself upon my own bosom as I fell. This experience would happen to me once a month over
a period of years. I could have told him what it was like to be infinite light with no circumference, but my
accent put barriers in his mind and he could not hear me. This is true the world over.
People judge from appearances, as the individual’s true being is unseen by mortal eyes. God comes to us
unknown and unseen; but in his own wonderful mysterious manner he lets us discover who he is, and when
we do it is in a first person, singular, present tense experience.
I am not trying to flatter you when I tell you that you are God. Everyone is. The one who murders is one with
the one who is murdered. The rapist is one with his victim. These are all God’s experiences of good and evil
in order to surpass good and evil and rise as Divine Imagination who is God Himself. You and I came down
and, embracing the fire of experience, we have been consumed by it. Many a time the little garment that we
wore turned to ash; and from that ash we found a new body, just like the old one, only new, healthy and
wonderful with not a thing missing, to be consumed once more. And we will keep on being consumed, one
after the other, until that moment in time when we rise as the Lord Jesus Christ who is God Himself, to be
consumed and restored no more. So when Blake said: “God only acts,” he really meant it. God not only acts,
he is the only actor. When you begin to imagine, God is acting and what you imagine will happen.
I was late getting here tonight. A friend came for lunch yesterday who, knowing the friend who brings me
here every week, said: “Isn’t he unreliable?” and I immediately answered, “No! Never.” She didn’t want to
hear that and is a very intense lady who knows how to reach him. Today for the first time my friend called to
say he couldn’t make it. An intense imaginal act produced what the lady wanted to hear, but she will never
get the satisfaction of hearing me say he was ever late or did not come.
There are people in this world whose surface veneer appears to be altogether wonderful, but below that
surface there is an intensity and they do not know that they are only hurting themselves. She can’t touch me,
although undoubtedly she has tried; but if she did it would boomerang in a way she would not know. I love
her dearly, but she is intense and also of the same school that if you are not of a certain physical background
you are not “in.”
I have told you unnumbered times that I have no feeling towards any aristocracy in the world. Though I speak
of being a descendant of Abraham, it is not after the flesh, but after the spirit; for in the state of Abraham I
believed the story that was told me before that the world was. There is no physical aristocracy. Only the
aristocracy of the spirit consisting of those who are called and embodied into the body of the Risen Lord. I
could tell her this forever and she would not understand. She believes in physical aristocracy, and there is
none.
Do not allow anyone to try to impress you with his greatness relative to yours. I have never been able to feel
anyone to be my superior. Physically, yes, they can knock me down with one blow. Intellectually, yes – no
question about it. Financially, certainly, but I cannot meet anyone that I believe to be my superior. He may be
an intellectual giant, a mathematical giant, a musical giant, a giant in a thousand ways, but that does not mean I
feel inferior to him.
I was amused today when I looked at my baptismal certificate. My father’s occupation was listed as a meat
vendor. He had a butcher shop. If this lady had seen that I would no longer be socially acceptable to her. But
I urge you to never allow anyone to make you feel less than, because you are infinitely greater than all of the
characters of the world put together, as you are God who is playing all the parts. And you will play the mall.
The phony, and the decent ones, the rich man, the poor man, the known, the unknown – you have played
them all or you would not be here. The reason why you are here is because you are on the verge of
awakening. And you will awaken from the dream to discover that you created the play, and finding no one to
play the parts, you have played them yourself. And when you have played them all, you will awaken by a
certain, definite series of events that take place within you. Then the inner eye and ear will open as mine did
this morning, when the brothers told me where to find my baptismal certificate. I do not think I have looked in
that wallet for thirty years. I do not carry a wallet. I do not drive and my wife carries the money and gives me
whatever money I want, so what would I do with a wallet? Yet the crumpled little yellow page was there, just
as my brothers said it would be.
I tell you: there isn’t a thing that does not exist now and here. We speak of the moon as billions of years old;
but you cannot measure your age because there never was a time when you were not, nor will there ever be a
time when you will cease to be. You didn’t begin in time. You came down into time – which you, yourself
created – to experience good and evil, to expand the being that you always were. Even though your birth
certificate shows you began in time, you didn’t, for you are the wearer of the garment. You are its actor who
is God Himself. You cannot even say God is near, because nearness implies separation. He is not near, for
when you say, “I am” you are proclaiming he is your very self.
Begin now to believe in your true Being who is God, and whatever you imagine to be so, firmly believe it is
so, and it will be so.
Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard, Summa Theologica, Manly P Hall, A Course In Miracles
