Neville 11-11-1968
FOLLOW ME
Neville Goddard
We are told that when Jesus found Philip, he said: “Follow me.” Then Philip told Nathanael: “We have found
him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets wrote.” Philip is one who is interested in the workings of
the mind. Looking for one who is searching for the source of the phenomena of life, Jesus finds one in whom
he can reveal himself.
The Book of John begins: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was
God.”Now turning into a person, it is said: “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through
him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the
consciousness of men.”
Read this statement carefully and not superficially, and you will discover that from the beginningless beginning
there has been God, and another through whom God acts and by whom God expresses himself. One who is
to God what man’s imagination is to a man. They are inseparable, for the Word is not only with God, but is
God!
Man finds it difficult to identify himself with his imagination, but the word “logos” – translated “Word”means a
purpose; a plan; a pattern. The Word which was with God in the beginning is Divine Imagination, through
which all things are made. There is not one thing in the world today which was not first imagined. Perhaps you
cannot grasp the idea that nature was first imagined, but you cannot deny that man’s clothing, home, business,
and transportation, were imagined.
Man expresses himself through his human imagination, just as God expresses himself through his Divine
Imagination. There is no clear-cut separation between God and Imagination, or man and his imagination. I tell
you, Imagination is God Himself. He is the divine body Jesus, of which we are his members. Identifying
Divine Imagination with Jesus, Blake claims Imagination became Man, that Man may become God’s power
and wisdom, called Christ. Any Christ other than he who is crucified, buried, and rises in an individual is false,
for there is no Christ other than man’s own wonderful human imagination.
God’s creative power is buried in you. Just as a seed buried in the womb of woman must bring forth after its
own kind, God’s power is brought forth as your spiritual birth. Your imagination is spirit buried in you. God -
being spirit – has planted his seed, which will erupt one day, and you will experience a spiritual birth.
In the 3rd chapter of the Gospel of John, he speaks to one who is a member of the Sanhedrin, saying:
“Unless a man is born from above he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”Why? Because it is impossible to
physically enter that which is spirit. The kingdom of heaven, being spirit, can only be entered through a
spiritual experience. Nicodemus, accepting this statement on a physical level, asked: “How can a man who is
old re-enter his mother’s womb and be born again?” His question was answered in this strange way: “The
wind blows where it will and you hear the sound thereof, but you cannot tell from whence it comes or whither
it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. (wind).”
When I was born from above I was aware of a peculiar, unearthly wind. This wind is a must in order for man
to leave this sphere of death and enter the eternal sphere of life called the kingdom of heaven.
One cannot speculate upon God’s kingdom by using images of earth for, “Eyes have not seen or ears heard
what God has prepared for those who love him.” If your eyes have not seen or your ears heard of that age,
don’t try to speculate using images of earth, for there is nothing here that remotely resembles the kingdom.
Now let me share my experiences with you. I retired one night, never suspecting that the time of delivery was
upon me. I had been carrying God’s plan of salvation within me since the beginning of time. It had been
growing, yet I did not suspect its birth.
That night as I slept, I felt an unearthly vibration possess me. It increased in intensity until I felt I must
explode, when suddenly I began to awake. Expecting to see the room I had fallen asleep in and the normal
awareness I have known after a dream of the night, I awoke to a greater awareness – to discover I was inmy
skull, which was a tomb in which I was buried.
Alone, I arose to discover my skull was sealed and there was no escape. I knew I had awakened in my
head, yet all of the outlets through the eyes, ears, and mouth were sealed. Intuitively I knew that if I pushed
the base of my skull I would be set free. I did and as something moved I squeezed myself through that little
opening, just as a child comes out of the womb of a woman. When I was completely free, I looked back at
the head from which I had come. It was ghastly pale, turning from side to side as though recovering from a
great ordeal.
I had no idea I had been sleeping in that head, but thought it was my very being. It had never occurred to me
that the spirit which gave me life was the cause of my breathing and consciousness. I thought my physical
body was me, not realizing it was simply where the real me was buried.
Once out of my skull, an unearthly wind caused my head – as well as the house – to rattle. Looking for the
cause, my attention was diverted for a few seconds. And when I looked back, my body was gone and in its
place were my three brothers. One was sitting where the head had been, while the other two were sitting at
the feet. Disturbed by the sound, one rose and moved in the direction of the wind. Looking down, he said:
“Why, it’s Neville’s baby.” The other two questioned his words, saying: “How can Neville have a baby?”
Without arguing the point, my brother reached down, picked up a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, and
placed it on the bed. Then I, as though having rehearsed the drama in eternity, took the babe inmy arms and
said: “How is my sweetheart?” as the child broke into a heavenly smile. Then the scene dissolved and I
awoke.
We are told that each individual is born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I, an
individual, have found him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets wrote, for when I awoke in that
tomb no one else was there. I recognized that tomb to be my skull and when I came out from its base I found
the sign of my spiritual birth as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying on the floor. The word translated
“manger” means “floor; the lowest point in the area”. So you see: a child is not born. The child is only a sign
of your individual spiritual birth.
It was I who rose in the sepulcher and pushed myself out. It was I who was born anew through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. After this experience all of my concepts of Jesus Christ crumbled
and dissolved, for I knew that the being who was in the beginning with God actually became me that I may
become God in the most literal sense. I knew that God was not only crucified upon me, but was buried within
me. That I carried in my body the death of Jesus, that his life might be made alive in me.
I was awed at this experience. Knowing all of the things I had done and was still capable of doing, I
wondered how I could be the Christ of scripture. Yet I have searched scripture and cannot find any other
explanation. I now share with you what I have experienced, for everything recorded there as an event in the
life of one called Jesus Christ has unfolded in me.
We are told: “You search the scriptures thinking in them you will find eternal life, yet it is they which bear
witness to me.”One hundred and thirty-nine days after my resurrection and birth from above my head began
to vibrate intensely. Suddenly it burst and I found myself seated in a modestly furnished room. A youth,
handsome beyond measure, was leaning against the frame of an open door. As looked at him I knew he was
my son, yet I also knew he was David of Biblical fame. At that moment I had found my son and he had found
his father.
The next morning as I searched scripture to find out who saw David and whom David called father, this is
what I found. In the 89th Psalm, the Lord declared: “I have found David. He has cried unto me, `Thou art my
Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’”
If David called the Lord his father, and David called me father, am I not the Lord? This is the plan that God
established in the beginning when he gave himself to you and to me. Being a father before the pledge, when
God succeeds in the giving you and I must be God.
Dwell upon these words: “I am the true and living way to the Father. No one comes unto the Father save by
me.” This true and living way is a pattern buried in all which leads the individual to the discovery of being God
the Father. This truth is revealed by David, for it is he who says: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said
unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’”
Now, Christ, being God’s creative power and wisdom, cannot be separated from God. Christ was not some
little boy who was born two thousand years ago, but God’s semen, his creative power that is buried in
humanity. The image of God is contained within that semen; and if God is a father, when the semen awakens
in the individual he will know himself to be God, the father of all life.
One hundred and twenty-three days after the revelation of being God the Father, I fulfilled the 3rd chapter of
John, wherein Nicodemus was told: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of
man be lifted up.” (That which is recorded in the Book of Numbers is an adumbration of the event, for when
the Son of man is lifted up it is an extremely personal experience.)
That night a bolt of lightening split my body from the top of my head to the base of my spine, becoming a
pool of golden liquid light. Knowing it was myself, I knew I was self-redeemed. I fused with the light and
becoming one with it I ascended my spine to enter my skull, where the drama began. As I did my skull
reverberated from the intensity of the vibration, and once again scripture was fulfilled.
There is no other purpose in life other than to fulfill scripture. You may own all of Caesar’s belongings, but
when you depart this world you must leave it all behind. But when God’s pattern erupts in you, you enter an
eternal world, knowing yourself to be its creative power. Then you are used to express God in any aspect
your very being so desires.
The fourth and final revelation occurs 998 days later. This event brings the total number of days from the birth
from above to the discovery of the dove to 1210 – as foretold in the books of Daniel and Revelation. On this
final day my skull became transparent, as a lovely beige dove floated about twenty feet above me. As I raised
my right hand the dove descended and lit upon my index finger. Then I brought it to my face and it smothered
me with affection.
Here again scripture was fulfilled as the Holy Spirit descended upon me in bodily form as a dove, revealing
the story of Jesus Christ as a personal experience. When I was physically born, it was through the action of
powers not my own and I had no consciousness of it. But my spiritual birth was consciously experienced
from beginning to end.
This is my story. It is my hope that you will follow me. That you will believe my experiences. If I tell you
earthly things and you do not believe me, how can I expect you to believe the heavenly things I share with
you?
Everyone imagines! Can you believe that Christ, Imagination’s power, is in you? If so, then God is in you!
And if God is in you, you cannot be lost for then God would be lost. Everyone has to be redeemed.
Everyone will be saved because God – the savior of each individual – is redeeming himself, bringing the
individual awareness in whom He is buried back into the kingdom with him.
The moment God buried himself in you he imprinted himself upon you, predestining you to not only radiate
and reflect God’s glory, but to be the express image of his person. God is not some impersonal force, but a
person. The unknown author of the letters to the Hebrews claimed he was the express image of God’s
person. This is a true statement. Not one will be lost because all of us will be gathered together into that one
body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. In the end there will be one grand fulfillment of the
greatest of all commandments: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
When I speak of my imagination there appears to be two of us: Neville, and my imagination. I know
imagination cannot be seen, yet I also know I cannot separate myself from it. If I lose myself in a daydream
and move from my living room in Beverly Hills to Central Park in New York City, I have not separated
myself from my creative power. I cannot, for my imagination is my very being. I can speak of my imagination,
but I cannot separate myself from it any more than God can be separated from Divine Imagination, for
through Divine Imagination’s creativity God creates and sustains the world. Should God change his imagining
the world would cease to exist, because it must be, and is supported by an imaginal act. The same thing is
true in your world. It will change only when you cease to continue to dwell in your current imaginal state!
But there is a pattern buried in you that will not change. Told in the form of a story, man thinks an individual
was born two thousand years ago. But the creative power of God did not assume only one man; he took
human nature into his sacred Self. The one creative power of the universe is buried in humanity. It is the same
creative power in one who murders, as in the one who is murdered. God allows you to misuse Christ, his
creative power. But in the end He will awaken and all violence within you will cease to be, for you will
discover yourself to be infinite love, infinite wisdom, and infinite power. Then the world will become a
shadow, and you will know there is no need to fight shadows.
Now let me share two experiences of one who knows herself to be an incurrent eyewitness. She has the
capacity to turn her thoughts inward and see a world as solid and real as our outer one appears to be.
This particular day she decided to leave the scene that was before her eyes by turning inward and claiming it
had vanished. But instead of vanishing, the scene froze and everything became a cold, dead statue. Realizing
that she had the power to arrest it, she decided to test herself to see if she could re-animate the scene once
more. So she imagined the scene was alive and instantly life flowed through the room, as though no action on
her part had ever stopped its flow. Then she said to herself: “If I can stop and start what the world calls
vision, I should be able to stop and start what the world calls reality.” She can, for in that brief vision she
learned where life really is. Christ in her gave her a taste of the power she will exercise consciously in the not
distant future.
Although this world appears so very real, it is a vision. “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is
within, in your Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” If life is in God and God is your
imagination, then what the world calls life is only an activity of your imagination. If you stop imagining and
arrest that which seems to be animated and independent of your perception, you will prove to yourself that it
can be done. Then you will know who Christ is, for you will have discovered that “In him is life and his life is
the light of men.”God animates Man within himself. Although humanity appears to be independent, with life in
themselves, their life is but an activity of imagination, for that is what I AM!
My friend also shared this experience. One night in dream she was in a classroom listening to a woman teach
the law. Claiming to believe and practice the law, the woman began to rant and rave against Neville, claiming
he was insane, as she did not believe in the promise. The lady then asked the teacher: “Do you believe that
imagining creates reality?” and when the woman replied, Yes, the lady asked: “How would you feel right now
if you began to imagine you were God?” With that the teacher screamed: “”You should be in the same
institution with Neville!”
It is easy to mouth the words: imagining creates reality, but are you willing to imagine you are God? And if
you did would you become God? At that thought a line was drawn, so she does not really believe that
imagining creates reality. She is willing to believe that she can imagine things are better than they seem to be,
but to believe she is God is an insane thought.
Her dream fulfilled the 10th chapter of John, where the question is asked: “Why listen to him? The man is
mad and has a demon.” When one comes to tell the story of God becoming Man that Man may become
God, he is called mad, because his words are in conflict with what the world believes.
This is always true. If anyone told our forefathers that electricity was a fact – that by merely turning a switch a
room would be ablaze with light, he would have been called crazy and condemned. In certain sections of
time, if a thought was in conflict with what the churches taught, one could be burned at the stake.
Every man who awakens to his infinite power is considered mad. His words are considered those of the
devil, for his experiences do not conform to what men think Christ is. Men are looking for some super being
to come out of the clouds and save the people who are now dead, and treat the others horribly. But if
someone comes and claims that there is only one savior and that one is in everyone as his awareness, that one
is considered mad and possessed by the devil.
But I tell you:God acts the moment you imagine. You are the temple of the living God and the spirit of God
dwells in you. In the 10th chapter of Hebrews this temple is identified with the curtain which, when torn from
top to bottom, opens up the new and living way. Then, ascending in consciousness, you take your own blood
into the presence of the Living God.
Paul asks the question: “Do you not know you are the temple of the living God and the spirit of God dwells in
you?” (1 Cor. 3:16) If the curtain of that temple is torn from top to bottom, it has to be you! The spirit who
ascends is he who is buried in you, and will rise in the same manner as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness. So when I ask you to follow me, I mean it literally, for I am telling you what I know from
experience. I am not theorizing or speculating. Redemption is a very personal experience that takes place in
the individual you.
No one really dies, for the world does not cease to exist when your senses cease to register it. Your friends
and loved ones who have departed this world are just as real to themselves as when they were here. Now
clothed in bodies like yours and mine, they are in a terrestrial world fulfilling their unfulfilled desires. While
there they will know the same struggles, joy and sorrow, peace and war, as Christ continues to awaken
God’s image in them.
When God said: “Let us make man in our image,” He placed that image in you. And when Christ is born in
you, you – the express image of the invisible God – enter the kingdom, radiating and reflecting God’s glory.
There are those who believe they are reborn by changing their attitude and giving more money to the church.
That is because they do not know the mystery of Christ. My visions would frighten them and they would call
me mad; yet I am telling the truth which I know from experience. I am not trying to share some workable
philosophy of life.
Another lady wrote telling of a dream in which she found herself standing in a long line, moving towards a
man sitting behind a desk. When she arrived, he stamped the back of her left hand with indelible ink and she
intuitively knew this was her entrance into heaven. A few nights later she found herself on a highway
protected by chains. Seeing two secondary roads leading off the highway, she knew she had formerly walked
there, but was now on the road towards the kingdom of heaven.
These dreams are foreshadowings – healthy experiences to encourage her to persist. She has now found the
one and only way to the Father. That way is I am! Believing in the Father, she will find him, and when she
does she will find her very self!
We are told that God speaks to man through the medium of dream and makes himself known in vision. If this
is true, no voice should interest you more than that which is heard in your dreams and visions. Words spoken
by men of the world are spoken from theory. They voice their opinions, but I am telling you my revelations.
This night I have told you how Christ is formed. As Paul said: “My little children [with] whom I am again in
labor until Christ be formed in you.” Just like a child is being formed in the womb of a woman, when Christ is
formed in you it comes forth. Then you awaken to discover you have been sound asleep throughout the
centuries, although you did not know it.
The world, seeing a mortal body cremated and turned to dust, cannot understand how there can be a head
that survives such an experience; but it does, for the real Man is all Imagination. He imagines a body there
just as easily as he imagines one here. When you see a friend or dear one who has departed you will
recognize him, but he will be young, as he is continuing the work that he set out to do, which is to form Christ
in him.
One of the signs of your spiritual birth will be the three witnesses. As I stood watching them their thoughts
were objective to me. I was unseen by them because spirit was born. As spirit, I was invisible to my mortal
brothers who came to witness the event.
Unless one is born into the spirit world, when he leaves this world of flesh and blood he is not spirit but
solidly real, as we are here. He is not seen by mortal eye because a veil has been drawn. But after your spirit
is born the veil is removed from your spiritual eyes, and you will realize humanity is doing what must be done
in order for God’s image to be formed in them.
Every man’s words are his judge. Believe me and follow me into an entirely different sphere known as the
kingdom of God.
Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard, Summa Theologica, Manly P Hall, A Course In Miracles
