YOURS FOR THE TAKING
Neville Lecture
#02
Neville
Date: 09/18/1967
Neville Lectures to Change Your World
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 if God 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 Orderd 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 three 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.
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