Neville 09-18-1967
YOURS FOR THE TAKING
There is only one cause for the phenomena of life. That cause is God. Housed in you, God is a person in the
most literal sense of the word. Believe me, for I know this from experience. God, the only creator, is pure
imagination working in the depth of your soul. God began a good work in you and He will bring it to
completion on the day God’s creative power is unveiled in you! God’s creative power and wisdom is defined
in scripture as Christ. When Christ unveils himself in you, you will know you are God’s power and God’s
wisdom.
God, your own wonderful human imagination, underlies all of your faculties, including perception, and streams
into your surface mind least disguised in the form of creative, productive fantasy. When you ask yourself what
you can do to transcend your present limitation of life, you are dwelling upon the means. God does not ask
you to consider the means, but to define the end. Speaking to you through the medium of desire, God asks
the question: “What wantest thou of me?” Then he tells you not to be concerned with the ways and means, for
his ways are unsearchable. They are inscrutable and past finding out. This statement you will find in the 11th
chapter of the Book of Romans. So don’t be concerned as to how God will fulfill the end, only know that He
will. Can you believe your desire is fulfilled? Can you believe it is true? If you can, it is yours for the taking,
for nothing is impossible to one who believes.
Now, let me share with you three stories which came to me during the summer. The first letter was from my
friend Bennie. In it he told of lying prone on his bed, face down, when he felt as though someone grabbed his
shoulders; and as he was lifted up he heard the words: “Take a stand!” Intuitively he knew he had to make
the decision now as to whether he was going to believe that imagining creates reality or disbelieve it.
Scripture tells us, “He who is not with me is against me.” There is no neutral ground, for “I have not come to
bring peace, but a sword. To set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.”Why? Because
a man’s enemies are within him. Everyone must eventually take the stand that imagining creates reality and
swim or sink with this concept.
Now, a few days later while in meditation, Bennie felt himself being held from behind by three men. As they
raised him, he watched the sun rise and heard the words: “Look! Behold!” and “Recognition!” And he
remembered a passage from my book, Your Faith Is Your Fortune: “Recognition of this truth will transform
you from one who tries to make it so, into one who recognizes it to be so.”
Soon after this, a friend asked Ben to pray for him. He wanted to be the property manager of the company
he worked for. Although he had been passed by year after year, Bennie told him what to do, and imagined
hearing the friend tell him the job was now his. A few months later the job was vacated and his friend was
given the position with an increase in salary and greater responsibility, just as he had imagined. What did
Bennie do? He imagined! To whom did he pray? To his own wonderful human imagination! God, the creator
of all life, is like pure imagining in you, underlying all of your faculties – including perception. He streams into
your surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fantasy. Bennie took a stand. He prayed for his
friend and believed his prayer was answered. He tested himself, and the windows of heaven opened and
poured forth blessings for all to see. Now Bennie knows that with God all things are possible.
God is your mightier self. Emptying himself, God took on the form of a slave and is now found in the likeness
of man. Abdicating his power, Pure Imagination took upon himself the limitations of flesh, thereby becoming
human. It is God who weaves your every desire into cubic reality, waiting upon you effectively and swiftly,
regardless of whether your desire is for evil or for good. The one who conjures thoughts in the mind of a
Hitler or Stalin is the same power as the one conjuring thoughts in the mind of a pope or the Arch Bishop of
Canterbury. There aren’t two Gods. There is only one!
The 14th and 53rd chapters of the Book of Psalms are identical, each telling us: “The fool says in his heart
there is no God, but the Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of the many to see if there are any
that act wise and seek the Lord.” Here we find that in the eyes of God, wisdom is equated with seeking the
Lord. And ifGod is all-wise and all powerful, then any search other than for the Lord is stupid. You may be
the greatest mathematician or scientist, the most intelligent and honored man among men, but if your search is
not for God, you are stupid in His eyes.
Called upon to look for the cause of creation, what are you doing losing yourself in the phenomena of life?
When something happens, search your thoughts and you will discover your own wonderful human imagination
to be the cause of your experience, because God is a person. At the present time He is wearing a mask
called Neville, but the one speaking to you now knows himself to be the Ancient of Days. Every being in the
world is a mask worn by God; for housed in man, is man’s imagination.
A thought acted upon is an imaginal act. Think (imagine) a horrible earthquake and God will give it to you.
Imagine (think of) a war and God will provide that, too. Imagine peace and you will have it. God will give you
health if you will but imagine being healthy. Imagine success and you will have it. The moment you think, you
are feeding your imagination, which is a person. I use the word person deliberately, for you are a person.
You are the mask God is now wearing, for God became you that you may become God.
Now let me share another letter with you. Last year this lady, living about sixty miles north of San Francisco,
was possessed with the desire to come to Los Angeles and attend my lecture. Leaving word at her office, she
drove her car to the San Francisco airport, where she took a plane to Los Angeles. There she was met by a
friend and immediately came to the lecture. After the lecture she joined a group of four women and one man
for coffee, where she expressed her hunger, having missed lunch and dinner that day. The gentleman sitting
beside her then said, “I’d like to buy you a steak.” And as she looked into his face she heard a voice within
her say, “This is your husband.”
Now, this lady has been married and divorced four times, so she had specific desires for a husband which
she felt must be fulfilled. She wanted to be happily married to a man who lived by this truth. She wanted him
to love and respect her as well as her seventeen-year-old son. Having imagined such a man in September,
she attended my meeting in October, and married the gentleman she met here the following January.
The gentleman added his story to her letter, saying: “Having played with the idea of being married, I went to a
pawn shop last September and purchased a plain gold band which I placed on the third finger of my left
hand. Every day I wore the ring and every night I slept in the feeling of being happily married. (My friend
thought he could not get the feeling of being married without a physical aid, but you don’t need anything
outside of your imagination to catch the mood.)
Having been an alcoholic, this gentleman imagined his wife never mentioned his past; for although he had not
tasted alcohol for nine years, he had paid the price in his search for God. You see, the alcoholic is searching
for truth. Thirsty, he finds a false spirit in the form of alcohol, while those who will not touch it – and criticize
those who do – haven’t even started their search. But I have news for them. One day they, too, will know a
hunger which will not be satisfied by bread. They will know a thirst so great they will make the mistake of
clothing it in the form of a bottle. But because it will be a false thirst, the thirst will remain. Then they will
discover the true hunger and the true thirst, which is for the hearing of the word of God.
Now, in the third letter a gentleman writes: “Having borrowed from the bank, every month when I sent in my
payment I reduced the total amount in my record book. One day, as I was writing my check and recording
its payment, I closed my eyes and saw two zeros under the balance due column. Then I gave a sigh of relief
because the note was paid. For the next thee months I persisted in seeing those double zeros and rejoicing in
being debt-free. Then came an unexpected surprise! Our company paid us all a mid-year bonus which was
so large I was able to pay all of my bills, including the bank loan, and deposit the rest in the bank.”
Now I think this gentleman and I must be two peas in the same pod, because money seems to burn in his
pocket, too. Instead of keeping the money in the bank as the rational mind would do, my friend began to
think about how to spend it, so of course he found a way. He bought a tape recorder to bring and record my
message!
To whom did my friend turn when he wanted the bank loan paid? He turned to God! He did not get down on
his knees and ask some outside God to do it for him. He didn’t go to church and consult a priest, rabbi or
minister. He didn’t contact a so-called truth teacher, but simply closed his eyes to the obvious and saw two
zeros in the balance due column. Then for the first time in the history of his company a mid-year bonus was
paid. This happened to him because of his use of the law, and his knowledge of who God is.
Not everyone who seeks God finds him, but there are those – like Philip -that when they find him, they bring
their brother Nathanael. Andrew found Jesus and brought Peter. You, too, will find Jesus when you exercise
your imagination, and bring those you love to his awareness. If great wealth befell you, would not your wife
(or husband), your children, as well as those in your immediate circle benefit from your good fortune? And if
it befell them, would it not befall you? So we benefit each other as we search out God and test him.
Revelation tells us to be either hot or cold, but never to be lukewarm. If you do not believe me to the point of
testing the law, you are lukewarm. But one day, like Ben, you will take a stand. You will either be for me or
against me. You will try to believe that imagining creates reality, or reject it. You will be hot or cold about it,
and that is better than being lukewarm. I have discovered that those who hated me at first when I took from
them their idols, the icon in their mind called Jesus, have become my finest students. So many people claim
they believe in Jesus, but cannot define him. Unable to place him in time and space, they are defiant when I
say: Christ in you is your hope of glory. Full of insults, they are cold. Some have even been violent. But one
day they will find him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, turn around, and be embraced by the Lord.
I started telling this story in the 1930′s and here we are in the 1960′s. During these thirty-odd years I have
found those who really opposed me – those who were so moved and disturbed they were determined to
disprove my words. But since they couldn’t do it, they too have found God to be their own wonderful human
imagination. The Bible is addressed only to the human imagination. In Blake’s famous letter to the Rev. Dr.
Trusler he makes this comment: “Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it
not because it is addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and only immediately to the
understanding, or reason?”
The Bible is imaginative instruction. When it unfolds in you it is more real than anything here, yet it is all
imagined, for God is all imagination and so is man. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is
God Himself. There is nothing but this one body called Jesus, who is the Lord God Jehovah.
I tell you, God became as we are that we may become as He is. No one took God’s life. He laid it down
himself saying: “I have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again. The fall into fragmented
space was deliberate. And He who fell has the power to gather us all together, one by one, into that single
body who is all love. His body is above the organization of sex. In it there is no Greek, no Jew, no bond, no
free, no male, no female. When you wear it you understand Paul’s statement: “I consider the sufferings of this
present time not worth comparing to the glory that has been revealed in me.” In that body you know yourself
to be the real Man, and this fleshly body as nothing. You will realize that you were never male or female, but
have always been God.
Remember, everything is yours for the taking. If you want it, take it. If you cannot claim it for yourself, ask a
friend for help. If you want to be happily married, do what my friends did. You want to pay off all of your
debts? Whatever you desire is yours. All you have to do is imagine you have it, for everything in life is yours
for the taking!
Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard, Summa Theologica, Manly P Hall, A Course In Miracles
