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Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Law: Self-Circumcision”

5/28/65

Tonight it is on the law. We are told that salvation is from the Jew, and you wonder why? Because you and I think on this level of a certain race of people, a very small minority, and salvation is from that minority. But it isn’t so, not in the Bible. So we turn to other aspects of the word to see what is meant by this statement, salvation is from the Jew. Now, we’ll take salvation on this level. Suppose you are embarrassed financially, suppose you are embarrassed in a thousand different ways, well, if you realize your objective which is the solution of your problem then you have been saved. As we are told “It is from the Jew.”

Now, let us turn to the 2nd chapter of the Book of Romans. Here is one who was the greatest promoter of the Christian faith. As we know, it is written by Paul…whoever Paul was. It is Paul, he tell us, first of all, it is not the hearers of the word who are righteous before God but the doers of the word who will be justified (Jas. 1:22). Then he said, for the real Jew is not one who is outward; nor is true circumcision external and physical (2:28). The Jew is one who is inward, and real circumcision is a matter of the Heart; it is not a physical, external state. Now in the Old Testament you find, “remove the foreskin of your heart”—you find that in the 10th chapter of Deuteronomy, remove the foreskin of your heart. The same is repeated in the 4th chapter of Jeremiah, remove the foreskin of your heart.

Now here, this is to the Jew and from the Jew…salvation is from the Jew. Well, how can I do it and what does it mean? Here in this room right now, this is the foreskin. Everything in my world that my senses reveal and confirm, everything, that’s the foreskin that hides and completely conceals the head of creation. The head of creation is I AM; that’s God. So I go to bed tonight in the assumption that things are not as I would like them to be, and I go to bed not circumcised but uncircumcised. I am told to remove the foreskin, remove it completely from what?—from my heart. Well, my heart is the center of ___(??), the very center, the core of my being. So what do I accept as true, the evidence of my senses, when I fall asleep? Well then, I am sleeping as one who is uncircumcised. I am told to circumcise myself before God and remove the foreskin of my heart; that the real Jew is not one born after the flesh from the seed of Abraham, but one born after the faith of Abraham. So do I really believe it this night that every dream in my world is attainable, but every dream if I would sleep unveiled as it were completely circumcised, removing the foreskin of my heart?

Now James throws much light on it in the 2nd chapter of the Book of James, the epistle of James, he said, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only.” For if you are a hearer and not a doer, you are like a man who looks into a mirror and sees his natural face, and then turns and instantly forgets what he is like. But if you are a doer and not a forgetful hearer, then you would look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere therein—such a man shall be blessed in his doing. I look into the perfect law. What perfect law? What is the mirror into which I can look this night? So I go to bed and then I mentally see a world as I would see it were I the man that I would like to be. Now, I must not forget it. I must not look into the mirror and see that wonderful state and then turn away and become a forgetful hearer. I must look into it and persevere. For I can say I saw it, I am seeing it, I will continue to see it until what I am seeing is perfectly expressed.

Now, how do I do it? Very simply, it’s a simple, simple statement. The lady is not here tonight; she only comes on Tuesdays. Well, here is a lady in her late seventies, only enough to live modestly, but certainly no extra funds for the normal things of life, what I would call normal. If a ___(??) was needed, a normal thing is to put it back, to repair it. If a painting job is in order, it’s a normal thing to paint. Well, she couldn’t afford these things. But she heard what you’re going to hear tonight, that imagining creates reality, that Imagination is spiritual sensation. She heard that and she said “I would explain it this way, can I smell paint and there’s no paint? Yes, I could smell paint if I want to. Could I feel the wetness of paint? Yes, I can feel it if I want to. Could I see a change in color with the interior and exterior of my home painted as I want it? Yes, I can see that. So I could make all my senses to play upon it. I could even taste it if I wanted to.” So, sleeping in her home that needed repair and needed painting, she believed what she heard; and having believed it, she believed it to the point of producing action on her part, not just believing it…“Oh, I believe what he said.”

So be not just a hearer of the word, but be a doer of the word. If you are a doer you’ll be blessed in your act, if you are a doer. So she fell asleep smelling paint. Well, if she’s smelling paint, it’s because her home’s been painted. So she fell asleep in the end—she can smell the paint—and then she received after her persistency. For she had about three weeks of this persistency, three weeks, that’s all. Night after night she fell asleep in a painted home. Then came a letter from Lloyd’s of England. You read the story…here, she received a notice that she was heir to several thousand dollars, something like eight or nine thousand dollars—I can’t recall the figure—from one she had never seen. Never seen! This lady wrote her a few years before, something like twelve or fourteen years before, asking her to investigate the nature of the death of her brother, who died in this country. She investigated and then wrote her findings, and that was it. The correspondence ended that year. Three letters went across the ocean, and then the lady died and left in her will to this lady she had never seen this sum of money. So she repaired the house and painted the house, and has several thousand dollars left over.

She filled the bill of the true Jew. I am quite sure were she here tonight she would protest my statement. She would say to me, “I am a Christian.” Well, I would say to her, Christianity is only the fulfillment of Judaism, that’s all that it is. There is only Judaism in this wonderful world. You’re either the true Jew or you’re not a Jew. If you are the true Jew, you will live this way, and if you are the true Jew you will know what Christianity really is. And Christianity will unfold within you, and everything said of Christ Jesus in the gospels you will experience, but everything. But on this level, salvation is from the Jew, so you are either the perfect Jew or you are not. And the one who said, I am a Jew, I am of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin—and here is one who persecuted Paul, but he found the story of Judaism. He found the true story behind the whole picture. The foundation in stone is Judaism, that’s the core of it all. Without that you have no Christianity. How could there be any Christian in this world without Judaism? But people misunderstand what Judaism is. It’s not external; it’s not going to shul, it’s not going to synagogue and performing any external act. Man must perform circumcision on himself. Well, a little boy at the age of eight days has it performed by another on him; that’s an external act. I am not denying that in some biological way it may be a very clean act. It may be the most wonderful thing hygienically, I’m not denying that; but when it comes to the Spirit that is not it. When it comes to the Spirit we perform it on ourselves.

As Paul tells us in the 2nd chapter of the Book of Romans, he was born a Jew, and it was performed on him as a little boy of eight days. He doesn’t deny that, but he understood the meaning behind it. And having understood it he tried to give it to us: That as we retire at night we must perform the uncovering of the head of creation; take off, remove completely, that thing that hides what we really want in this word. Read it carefully in the ancient Book of Deuteronomy and read it also in Jeremiah; read it in Ezekiel. Remove the foreskin that’s what we’re told in Jeremiah, told in all these ancient books. But the “where”…from your heart, remove it from our heart. Well, I go to bed tonight feeling distressed for you or for someone else or for myself. I’m feeling it…that she is unwell or he is unwell or this, that and the other. So I go to bed feeling this—that is the foreskin over my heart. Remove it and make me behold him, behold her, behold them, as I would like to see them. For man becomes what he beholds.

So if I would sleep in the assumption that you are as I would like you to be, and persuade myself that this imaginal act is true, well, then I am creating. I have unveiled the creative head which is I AM; that’s the name of God (Ex. 3:14). I’ve unveiled it and put something for him to behold, something new. So we go back to James—the one who really hears and does is one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres therein. Well, what would liberate you but my vision of you. If I see you tonight as you told me that you are today, and you don’t like what you are today, and that’s the concept that I hold of you tonight, I am not circumcised relative to you. I’m not looking into the perfect law of liberty relative to you. But if tonight I go to bed and I think of you and I see you not as reason tells me that you are, but I see you as I would like to see you—and I know you would like to see yourself, and have the whole world see you—if I would go to bed that way, then I certainly perform the act of removing the foreskin of my heart relative to you. Having done that, I put something in its place. What?—the law of liberty. I looked into the law of liberty, the perfect law of liberty, and liberated you.

Well, does it work? Did the little lady get her home? From a total stranger she got the money. I could tell you unnumbered stories, hundreds and hundreds of similar stories. You don’t have to know anyone who has money. You don’t have to wait for some relative to die who may leave you in her will. You don’t need anything in this world other than to know the art of self-circumcision. That is part of scripture.

Now here is a simple little story and how it’s been misread over the ages. We read in the Book of Exodus, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (23:19). Now, here is a simple statement, but the Bible is a mystery and man takes it on a certain level and completely confuses the entire picture. In this year 1965 in every orthodox home or orthodox restaurant of the Hebraic faith, you couldn’t go into a home and expect to be served a dairy product with a meat product. It just isn’t done. A young bride receives as a gift two sets of dishes, one for meat, one for dairy things. You go into a kosher restaurant, you wouldn’t ask for butter if you order, say, a meat sandwich. If you ordered some other kind of sandwich, yes they’ll put butter on it for you. They have butter, but they would not put butter on a meat sandwich or serve butter or any dairy product when you order meat.

Going back to this statement, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” that hasn’t a thing to do with dietary law. It has to do with what Paul, the great Jew, is talking about. Tonight I decide to sacrifice my concept of you that is not what I want of you in this world—that’s the kid, it’s my concept. Therefore, I am the mother of that concept. Whether you told it to me or not, my acceptance of your concept of yourself I simply give birth to it, it’s my kid. But I don’t like that concept of you. I would like you to be…and I name the most glorious thing concerning you. Therefore, I’m going to sacrifice my concept of you—that’s the kid. Now, I must not now turn back and give my attention to that from which I divorced my attention: I must not boil the kid in its mother’s milk. So, if tonight I think of you as I wouldn’t like to see you, I am boiling you in the mother’s milk; for my attention is the milk that keeps alive that state that I would like to sacrifice. So I turn my attention from the concept that I held of you. I must give it 100 percent to the concept that I would like to hold of you.

And if my premise is true as the scripture teaches that imagining creates reality…you may say to me, where does that appear in scripture that imagining creates reality? I’ll turn you to the 11th chapter, the 24th verse of the Book of Mark. Now these aren’t the words, but you tell me if it doesn’t actually mean it. These are the words put into the mouth of the awakened God in man—for when God awakes, where would he awake but in man? He is in man, he’s buried in man. So the one in whom he awoke discovered this and revealed it to us, and these are the words, “Whatsoever you desire when you pray, believe you have received it, and you will.” Well, is that not put down into essence that imagining creates reality? If I am called upon to believe that I have received what I desire, do I not imagine that I have it? Do I imagine that you are what I want you to be, and if I’m told in this statement that if I do so I will get it, well, doesn’t imagining create reality? Well, isn’t that scripture? That’s what I’m told in scripture. That’s how I read scripture.

So I say to everyone, try it. It costs you nothing. All you can do is simply try it. If it proves itself in performance, does it really matter what the world thinks? If this very night this room actually became crowded with the most learned people in the world and they challenge my right to say that, and you rose and told them case histories concerning your use of the law, would it really matter how wise they seem to be in the eyes of the world?

Now here in the end of this statement of Paul, in the 2nd chapter of Romans, he makes a play on the word. He tells us who the real Jew is: The one who lives inwardly, not outwardly. Not the one who is seen at sundown in the synagogue. Not one who goes day after day at the death of his father to prove that he is actually keeping alive a certain law. Nothing external at all—but one who inwardly leads this life by circumcising himself; and he circumcises not outwardly, he circumcises the heart, his feelings. He takes off that which veils what he wants to see, takes off the veil completely and sees what he wants to see. Now, he makes this statement at the end of this passage, “His praise is not from men but from God.” Now the word praise is Judah or Jew. The word Judah means praise, the word Jew means praise. It’s a play on the word. And I warn you, he uses the word mystery eighteen times in his letters. So his praise is not from men but from God. We are told if we read scripture correctly, in the Book of Samuel that the Lord sees not as man sees; man sees the outward appearance and the Lord sees the heart, only the heart. So when the huge giant of a man stood before Samuel, Samuel thought surely he is the Lord’s choice, and the Lord said, No, I reject him. “The Lord sees not as man sees; man sees after the outward appearance of things, but the Lord sees the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).

So here, the words “His praise was not from men but from God” (Rom. 2:29) and the word praise means Judah or the Jew; therefore, his Jewish-ness, his real Jewish-ness, was not from the praise of men, not for what men would say but what God saw in him. So, men today give anything to have another medal and to have another honor, and all these things before men. You read every morning’s paper, honors today to so and so. There are certain people in our city, they get them every day—where they put them I don’t know—and just love them. All of that is on the outside. They are not the true Jew. Everyone in this world must become the true Jew, but the real true Jew; and the true Jew lives inwardly. I don’t care what the world will tell you.

I was born and raised in a Christian family. I knew nothing outside of Christianity, but I didn’t realize what it was until I began to awaken to discover that Christianity is only the fulfillment of Judaism, that’s all that it is. The great revelation is Judaism, all in the Old Testament, and the New interprets the Old, not the other way around. All of a sudden you come upon it. And who did the interpretation? The Jew did. You’re taught to believe that others did? No, go back and read the story: Paul did, with his grand claim “I am a Jew.” Take the story of the central figure, Jesus Christ, is there any denial in scripture that he is a Jew? He is the Jew of Jews, who simply began to awake within himself; and all the promises made to Abraham he fulfilled within himself. He doesn’t deny that he was the Jew.

So the real Jew is the one who lives inwardly, no one who will claim by reason of his physical birth that he’s a Jew. It’s my hope that he’ll become a Jew. He may be a Jew physically, in his own mind’s eye, but if he knows scripture, I will say to him, you must become a Jew. You become a Jew only as you begin to live inwardly, and realize the whole drama of life is taking place within you, it’s not on the outside…that’s the true Jew. But the one who will think that because of the accident of birth he’s a Jew…as the Christian thinks by the accident of birth that he is a Christian. One billion Christians walk the earth and think they are Christians because of the mere accident of their physical birth, and they aren’t Christians at all because Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. He must first become a Jew, and the Jew is to live inwardly.

Then man discovers the drama of life is mental, it isn’t physical at all. So when man discovers that, it doesn’t matter what the problem is. You are intelligent enough to know if this is the problem what would be the solution. Ask a very simple question, what would be the solution of this problem? Well, you could see it mentally, couldn’t you? Well then, you circumcise yourself—you take off the problem and see the solution. Bring every sense of your body to bear upon that solution. The little lady brought the sense of smell. That was the dominant smell, she could smell paint, and she knew the whole thing must have been done prior to the application of paint. And she knew she could see the color that she wanted. So she brought two senses. You can bring all of your senses to bear upon this unveiled state, and then cover yourself once more with this state.

That’s why Paul said “I die daily.” What man in this world thinks of dying daily? He died daily, he said, I die every day. If I die every day, then I circumcise myself every day; for the head of creation is covered every day with what I believe to be true. So every night he uncovers himself and he removes this foreskin from his heart, and removing it from his heart every night, he created every night a new world. He said, “I die every day” (1 Corinthians 15:31). Here is Paul, the greatest of all Christians, one who said, I am of the seed of Abraham and the tribe of Benjamin, and here I stand condemned by my own people, because they don’t understand the great mystery of Judaism.

So I say to everyone, everyone must become the Jew, the real Jew, the living Jew that walks this earth knowing that the whole drama is taking place within oneself, not on the outside at all. When you do that, well, then does it really matter what the world will say? May I tell you, they’ll only say what you are saying. I’ve been teaching this since the thirties—this is now the sixties—I’m going back into the thirties when I started, and when I started, because I was completely unknown and unsafe in my foundation when I would speak in New York City to audiences of around a thousand or more I always would have those who would challenge me in the audience, because within me I was challenging myself. Ministers would come, rabbis would come, priests would come, and they would simply throw the book at me. Well, I was a young boy then thirty years ago—you take thirty years from me I was still a young fella—and so I felt unsafe or insecure, and they would throw it. But as things began to unfold within me and I proved this principle, and I was speaking no longer from theory but from experience, they didn’t come. No one challenged me. All those opposing with opposition were still, because they were still in me.

When I stand before you and tell you that Jesus Christ is real in you, but he’s asleep in you, and he will awaken in you. And when I tell you what I know from experience, that the day will come and you will awaken within your own skull and everything that is said in scripture concerning Jesus Christ you’re going to experience. And you will be born in the same miraculous supernatural manner. You will find David of biblical fame, and he has called you Father, as he called Jesus Christ Father. As I had this, not argument…a little wonderful dinner in Barbados last year and this very wonderful minister of the Episcopal faith, and I was telling him my experience, I said, “Yes, this explosion in my brain, and suddenly standing before me is David of biblical fame, and David calls me ‘my Father.’” He said to me, knowing his Bible backwards, he said, “But David did not call him ‘my Father,’ he called him ‘my lord.’” I said, “Yes, but the word is Adonay, and Adonay is a term used by every son of his father, of every servant of his master, of every slave of his owner, of every citizen of the emperor. But every son calls his father, Adonay, my lord.” So, as he said, “If David in Spirit calls him ‘my Lord,’ how then can I be David’s son?” (Mat. 22:42). I am David’s father is what he’s implying.

Then you will know who you really are, for David is the Son of God—in the 2nd Psalm, “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” (verse 7). Here is his only begotten son, it’s David. And the whole vast world thinks it’s another; and it’s not another, it’s David. The David that you read of in the Old Testament, that’s the David, set up in eternity so that everyone will reach that moment in the unfolding tree of life when David will appear and bear witness to who you are. Because you are that tree and that tree is God himself. Only David can reveal to you who you are, and David calls you “my Father.” So when David calls you “my Father,” you know who are. It takes the Son to reveal the Father. And all the priesthoods of the world can tell you what they want; I am telling you what I have experienced. Scripture supports it…it is all in scripture (Mat. 11:27). Everyone will grow upon this tree, this tree of life, and reach that moment in time when that lovely bud will appear into flower and it’s David—that beautiful, wonderful…you can’t describe the beauty of David— and he reveals you as God the Father. Yet you’re still clothed in the weakness of flesh and remain clothed until you finish your story; and then you take off the garment. Then you are one with the being who conceived it all for his infinite purpose.

So tonight, take it on this level. Take it on this level and when you retire this night practice. If you don’t succeed tomorrow, practice anyway. Practice the art of this self-circumcision, the removing of the foreskin of the heart. Practice! If you do, you’ll get results. So you can take it not only for yourself, take it for another, but it’s all performed upon yourself. As you are told, circumcise yourself to God; remove the foreskin of your heart. Well, how do I do it? So we remove it by thinking of someone not as they seem to be, unless it’s a pleasant thing, but as they ought to be. When you see them as they ought to be and you fall asleep in that vision as though it were true, then it comes to pass.

Now bear in mind, the word of God is always good news. So we are told, hear the word of God, it’s never bad news. I bring you glad tidings, I bring you good news. I hear something horrible of someone else, don’t believe it. That is simply the foreskin to be removed. The good news is all that you hear. So whatever you want to be or you want a friend to be, that’s good news. Now if you don’t hear that or don’t believe it, then cut off whatever you don’t believe by turning your attention from it. You turn your attention away from it and see only what you want to see—and you are seeing and hearing good news. Now, you can apply this and use the medium of hearing. Listen as though you heard good news from some friend. Listen to his voice, and actually believe in the reality of that imaginal voice, and persuade yourself of the reality of that voice. And listen. It’s removing the foreskin of the heart, as something else impresses this wonderful creative power that is your own wonderful human Imagination, which is I AM. That is God.

God became man that man may become God. So every child born of woman has God buried in him or he couldn’t even breathe—for God is the breath of life—couldn’t even breathe. So that little child having dreamed that he’s God…now explained to him the great mystery as revealed in scripture, how God so loved man he became man that man by his sacrifice that is God’s sacrifice may become God. And then when it begins to unfold within you, I can’t tell anyone the thrill. I can’t tell anyone the personal thrill. I can share with you in words, but how could I persuade you to the point where you could feel what I feel in the event itself? I can’t. I can describe it to the best of my ability and tell you all these wonderful things that happen within, that everything from Genesis to Revelation is all true on levels and levels and levels. You will reach the level where all the promises begin to unfold, and every promise made to Abraham becomes true. Every promise, it’s all there.

So I say to everyone tonight, when you go to bed think of a friend who’ll rejoice in your good fortune. Now, you say, “Well, I’m not fortunate today.” All right, who would rejoice were you fortunate today? Bring him before your mind’s eye and let him see you as he would see you were it true. That’s all that you do. And just simply look just as though it were true, and fall asleep in that assumption. At that very moment you took off the foreskin of the heart of this day and exposed the head of creation, and the head of creation will create what it beholds. In a way that no one knows this creative act of yours will lead you across some bridge of incidents from where you were at that moment of assuming it to the fulfillment of that assumption. It will, just try it. Before you judge it, just try it. When you try it—and I promise you it will prove itself in performance—well then, it will not matter from then on what others say. It doesn’t really matter.

Then you’ll see what religion really is in this world. May I tell you, the greatest book in the world is the Bible. You won’t outgrow it. You’ll outgrow every modern book today on science. In fact, they’re going so quickly that you can’t print it before it becomes obsolete. There isn’t a scientific book today coming off the press that is not already, I wouldn’t say disproved but it is passé. Something else is coming in to explain, to prove that’s not it at all. But you aren’t going to outgrow the Bible. The Bible is the book of books, it’s the word of God, and it proves itself in a way that few people in this world realize. But, oh, the thrill when the thing begins to unfold within you and all these things become true! You can hardly believe this great mystery. I was thrilled this past week reading Ben-Gurion, who is the former premier of Israel, and I was thrilled when he spoke of the Bible, asking all to come back to Israel and study this tongue that they may really understand the Bible. To see a man who was the head of his country so in love with the book of books! I must confess I was thrilled beyond measure to read it, that he was so completely carried away at his advanced age in the love of this book.

I’ll tell you, the real Jew of the world is the one who is not one outwardly, who is one inwardly, who will practice what I have asked you this night to practice. You practice it and you will know that salvation truly is from the Jew.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: (inaudible)
A: The question is what is the meaning of “heart”? Heart is the core. The very center of one’s being is feeling, that is the core of being. And so, unveil that state. It’s not the physical organ, anymore than the physical organ the world would think of as circumcision. These are only symbols; they are not really the true reality. So I don’t cut my physical heart any more than I would the physical organ which seems to be the cause of creation. We know it’s not the cause, it’s the instrument, but not the cause of creation. But here, we speak of the heart, the core, the center of one’s feelings. Well, really, in Hebrew the heart and mind are the same, you know. They are almost used in translation interchangeably; so, the depth of my mind, the very core of my mind, what I really believe concerning anything in this world. ___(??) and conceal what I really believe. But what I really believe, I live with. So that’s the heart.
Q: What did the minister say when you told him that?
A: What did the minister say when I told him that? Well, first of all, he was a gentleman, and whether he was convinced or not I do not know. He was a perfectly wonderful chap, a very prominent minister in the Episcopal church. And we had dinner together at the hotel (with my son Larry), he and his wife—she was English, of the Caucasian race. And then we had another minister, he was of another faith ___(??), and this other couple—she was Negro and he was white; the other one was Negro and she was white—and then my wife, and my son and his wife. So we had dinner at the hotel of my son Larry. I was simply explaining to these two ministers, but I was directing my attention to the Negro minister who was by far the more intelligent, and the brilliant one of the evening. The white minister, well, he was just having a little job, as far as I’m concerned. But the Negro minister was an intelligent, wonderful gentleman, a cultured gentleman, and I was just directing my attention to him, giving him my experience, based purely upon experience. I said, “He called me ‘my father’ and there was no uncertainty in the relationship.” So we drove home together, it was another fifteen mile drive, and when I got out of the car and thanked him because he took me home to my hotel, I said, “You know, every word I told you this night is true.” He said to me, “I believe it.” But, we left Barbados before we got together again, so I don’t know. But he was so much a cultured gentleman…I don’t know if he believed it or not. So that was my experience at this dinner party. It was a perfectly marvelous dinner party.
Q: If you are demonstrating something, how do you know what you are demonstrating is the best thing for you, even though you ___(??)?
A: How do you know that what you’re demonstrating is the best thing for you? Well, my dear, I don’t really care whether it’s the best or not. If I want it today and getting it tomorrow I discover I don’t want it then give it away. I’ve done that with a suit, with a hat, with a pair of shoes. I thought I must have them, so I got them, and then I wondered what possessed me when I thought I wanted them. I gave it away. So it is the joy of getting them and, may I tell you, the equal joy in giving them away. Those who received them from me thought, “Oh isn’t it marvelous!” They were thrilled to receive a suit I’d only worn once. And yet, when I saw myself in that mirror having put that suit on ___(??). I picked out the material and it was not something that came in enormous bolts. I go to my tailor—he’s been my tailor for almost thirty years now—and Louie brings out this bolt and says, “Neville, I think this is just what…”—he knows exactly my taste, and he persuades me. I get the suit made and then I go home and my wife says, “Neville, what possessed you? Why, a thing like that, I wouldn’t be seen on the street with you.” So I gave it to someone else who loved it. So maybe he was praying. He didn’t have the money to buy it, I had the money to buy it, and he got it through me. So who knows how this thing jumps? We’ve got bridges of incidents and we move across these bridges towards fulfillment, and we think that is the end. We were only the intermediary; he was the end, he was praying. So the one who prayed for a suit…he prayed for it and I was the medium through which he got it. I’ve seen that work time and again. So don’t be distressed. If you buy a hat and you wouldn’t be seen at a dog fight, really, someone else would love it and go to a wedding with it, just love it.
So that’s part of the whole, grand, wonderful plan. So get it. And who wants to be in the same place forever? Who wants to wear the same suit forever? Who wants anything forever? These are all garments that you put on and take off. When someone says, “Now this is really it! I’m going to stay here!” and suddenly a thirty-story building goes up right next to you and you can’t see anything, you’re living in a dungeon. Four years ago we moved where we are now; we’ve been there for four and a half years; there wasn’t a tall building in the area. Come see where I live now. There are thirty-story buildings, sixteen-story buildings, all kinds of buildings, and more and more it gets more and more dark. And so, who wants to be there forever? In a little while, they’re going to rezone where we live ___(??) we really have to. Pushed the houses out, rezoned it, and then you’ll be left alone in a small, little place and nothing but commercial buildings around it.

So don’t be wedded to anything here. You’re wedded to one being and that being is God, and he’ll take you through, from place to place, until finally you awake, and you are he. All is yours anyway…after you awake.

Q: When do we know when we’re judging and when we’re comparing?
A: When we are judging and when we’re comparing? Well, if I understand the question, sir, well, would you give me an example?
Q: The statement “Judge not lest ye be judged,” but at times we compare rather than judge. How do we know when we’re comparing, not judging?
A: Well, it’s a very good question. You heard it, didn’t you, Judge not lest you be judged? Well, first of all, we’re told any judgment you pronounce it’s because it’s within you. Now I wouldn’t judge someone if someone comes before me and they say, well now, I did so and so, or this is what I did. I wouldn’t tell them because you were lax in the past that’s why you need today. I would say to anyone, “What do you want?” I am taught to believe forgive everyone. I don’t care what he has done, forgive me. Well, I can’t forgive him by just saying that I did. Alright, that’s not forgiveness in my concept. If I really know how to forgive, I would say, “So you did so and so, what would you like in place of what you did? What is your desire?” If I can persuade myself of the reality of his desire instead of what seems to be the fact, I’ll put that in the place, and then I don’t judge him. Because, I look upon it as states, an infinite number of states…that you and I are in a state tonight. Every child in this world is in a state. Now, the man who I would judge is in a good state and the one who I would judge is in an evil state, I should not condemn the one in the evil state—it’s the state. I should go out to create a state to deliver the one from that evil state, not to judge him because he’s only in a state. So if I put everyone in this world in a state, I will say to anyone, what would you want? When he names it, he’s telling me he doesn’t want to remain in that state, so I’m called upon to create a state to deliver him from that state. So when I bring him out, he was never really that; he was only in a state. I put him into another state.

So if I look upon the whole vast world as simply states into which you and I, living beings, fall either wittingly or unwittingly into states, well then, I can go forward and deliver people by creating states to deliver them; therefore, I’m not judging people. I just leave them as they are and let others judge them if they will, but I don’t judge them. I just simply take them and deliver them from a certain state. Now, I must then be the judge as to what they want. They may not want it more than twenty-four hours after they get it, but let them be the judge. Lift them into another state. So if I distinguish between individuals and the states they occupy, I’m on safe ground. Man can create states to deliver others from these so-called unwelcome states.

Q: Does this refer to the subjective part of man or the objective mental state of man pertaining to his senses?
A: Well, if I may use the term and I think the world accepts it, the whole world could be done subjectively. Confirmation of that work would be objective. And so, I must bring it into an objective state to bear witness to the reality of the creativity of my imaginal states. If I believe in the reality of an imaginal state, it should have confirmation. So it takes time between planting a seed and growing the tree or growing the fruit. So I imagine a state—that’s the planting of a certain seed—well now, there’s an interval of time between the planting and the reaping. The reaping would be objective; the planting is subjective.

Until Tuesday, and Tuesday’s subject is “Your Future.” If you want one passage from the Bible, which is only one small part of what I will use, take the 16th chapter of the Book of Matthew.

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Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Law: Self-Circumcision”

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