Neville Goddard 02-22-1963
Paul is the greatest and most
influential figure in the history of Christianity. After you hear his
story you may judge just who he is. After his credentials have gained
him public confidence, Paul begins. Paul wrote 13 letters, if you
take the double letters as two: like 1st and 2nd Corinthians, 1st and
2nd Timothy, and 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. He first appears in
scripture in the Book of Acts - and bear in mind the Book of Acts was
once part of the Book of Luke. The same author who wrote the Book of
Luke wrote the Book of Acts. They were once one volume, or one book
in two volumes. Our early fathers divided the two and placed the
Gospel of John between them. He first appears in the book that we
will call the Gospel of Luke, only we now call it the Book of
Acts.
He was present when the first Christian martyr, Stephen,
was stoned to death - and Paul consented unto Stephen’s death.
Those who stoned Stephen placed their coats at the feet of Saul. (His
name was then Saul. Acts 7:2) In the 9th chapter, he starts the great
journey to Damascus, and he carries with him letters to the high
priest in Damascus. He pledges himself if he finds anyone belonging
to “the Way,” be he man or woman, he will bring them
bound to Jerusalem. All who believed it were called “followers
of the Way,” not Christians. On the way to bind those who
belonged to the Way, he was blinded by the light, and then the whole
thing was revealed to him, and his name was transformed from Saul to
Paul.
The remaining portion of the Book of Acts is devoted
almost exclusively to Paul, at least the last 16 chapters, which
would begin with the first verse of the 13th chapter to the 28th,
where he ends his days still propounding this mystery and trying to
persuade everyone of the truth of Jesus. Beginning with the law of
Moses and all of the prophets, he explained to them in all the
scripture the truth concerning Jesus. Some were convinced by what he
said, while others disbelieved him. That’s the story.
If
I would read Paul and take one of his letters that will really
explain Paul to me, I would go to the letter of Galatians for in
Galatians (which scholars claim to be the first book of the New
Testament - it came before the Gospels, it came before any book, so
they say) in this letter, he makes the claim: “I Paul, an
apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and
God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” Here is a
declaration of complete religious independence from all men, and
dependent on God, repudiating in this letter all authority,
institutions, customs, and laws that interfered with the direct
acceptance of the individual to his God. No intermediary between the
individual and his God, none, called by any name. Then he said: “The
Gospel which I preach is not the Gospel of man, for I did not receive
it from a man, neither was I taught it, it was given to me by
revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:11) “For when
it pleased God to reveal his son in me, then I conferred not with
flesh and blood.” (Galatians 1:16-17)
You ask the
question of Paul: “Was he or Christ once really a man?”
If you asked that of Paul, he would say: “Was?” “He
is the heavenly man.” Well, does that answer you? You are
asking the question: “Was he really ever a man?” and
you’ll reply: “Not was - he is the heavenly man.”
“As we have borne the image of the man of dust, so shall we
also bear the image of the heavenly man.” That still doesn’t
satisfy. “Was he really a man as we understand a man?” He
doesn’t respond, in time. Then you read his words: “From
now on we will regard no one from a human point of view, even though
we formerly regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him
thus no longer.” (2 Corinthians 5:16) Then he makes the
statement in the same chapter: “God was in Christ, reconciling
the world to himself, not counting any trespasses against them, and
entrusting us with the message of reconciliation.” (v. 19) You
will see later on what Paul is trying to tell us, if I would
substitute the word “imagination” for “God,”
and “imagining” for “Christ.” Imagining means
the activity of imagination - that imagination was imagining,
reconciling the world to himself and not counting any trespasses
against them, and then entrusting to us this message of
imagining.
Now we will go to this great Book of Galatians,
2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who
live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the
flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me.” Bear in mind imagining being that son,
imagination being God the Father. Now let us go to the first two
verses of the 3rd chapter: “O foolish Galatians! Who has
bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed
as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by
works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” Listen to the
words carefully: “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly
portrayed as crucified.” Do you know what “portray”
means? I think we all know, but let me refresh your memory: “To
depict in a drawing or painting; or in some verbal description; or as
an action on a stage,” a play on the stage. “O foolish
Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was
publicly portrayed as crucified?” Answer me only this: “Did
you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with
faith?” “Are you so foolish? Having begun with the
Spirit, are you ending with the flesh?” Do you get it? The
whole vast world has fallen victim to believing in the flesh of
Jesus. Have you, having begun with the spirit - are you falling now,
actually blind, and a victim of the flesh?
You were shown the
whole thing like a play going on a stage tonight, and someone moved
across the stage and they played the perfect play of God’s only
salvation, the only way that man could be saved. And he walks across
the stage and he plays it, and every scene he enacts is a mystical
scene to be experienced by the individual. That was all done. Now are
you going to confuse it? Can’t you now have that little spirit
of observance and separate the action of walking across the stage
from what he is trying to portray? For he is portraying it. If you go
to a play and someone is shot, you know he will go home after being
shot and have the most wonderful time - for their day begins at
night. But you will weep, sitting in the audience, as you see him
being shot, being abused. But he wasn’t shot and he wasn’t
abused, save as an actor - but not the being who put on the mask, who
played the part. So, let me repeat it: “Whose eye beheld Jesus
Christ publicly portrayed as crucified.”
The world thinks he was flesh and blood. No, he wasn’t flesh and blood. This is the fulfillment of all that was told in the Old Testament, but no one understood it, [except] the one to whom it was revealed (you call him Paul now). “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood, and the Gospel that I preach to you is not man’s Gospel. I did not receive it from a man nor was I taught it but it was revealed by Jesus Christ.” The whole thing was revealed and I saw the mystery of it all, the mystery of salvation: that Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. The thing happened, for the play said it did. I went to the play and I saw it and I was part of the gathering, and they hoped I would have the spirit of discernment to separate the action of the actor from what he was acting, and see the spirit, not the flesh. Did I see the spirit?
Then after a while come the teachers, who did not
participate, and they tell you he is flesh and blood. He was born of
a certain woman, on a certain day, in a manner that you were born -
only he didn’t have a physical father. And that isn’t
true at all. This birth is something entirely different, as told us
in the Book of John: “He is born not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” An entirely
different birth takes place, which is all explained as the play
unfolds. You saw the spirit - but don’t go back, not to the
flesh.
Now the story begins. We are called the followers of
“the Way.” Is that the way of salvation? I’ll
believe it. I will wait patiently until it unfolds in me, for that is
the way of salvation. Then in the 14th [chapter] of John, we are
told: “And now you know the Way.” And Thomas said: “We
do not know the way. We do not know where you are going so how do we
know the way?” He said: “I am the way, and the truth and
the light.” It is not a man, “follow me home.” All
that you will see me do upon the stage, - that is the way - so, “I
am the way.” He didn’t say I am this, that or the other -
“I am the way.” You follow the whole thing - that spirit
that moves before you and you will see the way of salvation. They
still didn’t understand him. They said a way to what? A way to
everything, but primarily “the Way to the Father.” “For
no one comes to the Father but by me.” So, don’t look
upon me as flesh and blood - “I am the way.” Follow my
story through this series of events and you’ll come to the
Father. So the state unfolds on the stage and they all see the
spirit, but many could not discern and discriminate between the
action of the actor and what the actor was portraying.
We come
back to Galatians: “Before whose eye Jesus Christ was publicly
portrayed as crucified.” There you see it. The whole thing is
unfolding on a stage, but man cannot lose himself to the point where
he gets beyond the action of an actor. And he cries and weeps with
the actor. He’s portraying something, but they can’t get
what he is portraying. Read the story of Jesus and don’t think
of Jesus as flesh and blood. He is God himself, unfolding it before
you in the form of a man that can see a man walking across the
stage.
So, is Paul the initial awakened being? You judge it -
I don’t know. I am led to believe he is, that Paul [is] the
most influential, the most important figure in the history of
Christianity, that he was the one to whom it was revealed. He was
fiery in his destruction of everything other than the outer
observation of the law, and then to him it was revealed. So take
courage. If you are violent today in supporting something that is
external that you must observe, it doesn’t matter. Paul did the
same thing and suddenly he was blinded by the revelation and he saw
the mystery of life. And he saw that Christ was within him. “And
when it pleased God to reveal his son in me, then I conferred not
with flesh and blood.” To whom would I turn and ask them to
throw light upon an experience that is not understood by mortal mind?
But having known the Bible as he did - he was well grounded in it -
he could return to his Bible and see where it was all foretold, but
he could not on that level understand it. It had to be unveiled. As
it was unveiled he saw the interpretation of the ancient Scripture.
Then in the end of Acts, when he stands before King Agrippa, he says:
“Here I stand before you chained, condemned for hope in the
promise made by God to our fathers. Here I have hope in that promise
and stand in chains before you because I know it is true.” And
then he spent the rest of his days expounding the story concerning -
what he called then - Jesus. And the whole world of Christendom
thinks it is a man of flesh and blood.
Jesus means, “Jehovah
saves,” “Jehovah is salvation.” There is nothing in
the teaching of Paul but God and man - no intermediary. So God
himself is inwoven in man and unfolds himself in man in a series of
events. And as he then unfolds, as he unfolded in Paul, then he knew
the mystery of the scripture. When he tries to tell it, those who
followed him in the past (because he condemned and allowed the death
of others for believing in it, then he himself fell victim to his
belief) - well, who’ll believe it?
As I go across this
country the one question that is always asked me, whether it is a
social gathering or any place: “Well, don’t you believe
in a physical Jesus?” No matter where I go, I get it. I go to a
small little dinner party of four or five - “I know what you
say Neville, but don’t you really believe that he did live,
that he walked this earth 2,000 years ago and was called Jesus, and
his mother was Mary and his father was Joseph - or maybe it wasn’t
Joseph?” To the unprepared mind, how can you explain what Paul
said in the first three verses of the 3rd chapter of Galatians: “O
foolish Galatians who has bewitched you?” For they went astray
to some physical sense: “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was
publicly portrayed as crucified.” Now I ask you one thing: Did
you receive the spirit from those works of the Lord, or by hearing
with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun with the spirit are you
now ending with the flesh?” For the whole vast world today is
ending with the flesh and they can’t see the spirit which is
Christ Jesus.
Christ Jesus is in man, us, the way, “Christ
in you is the hope of glory.” And in 2 Corinthians 13, Paul
says: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless
of course you fail to meet the test.” I hope you realize we
have not failed. If Jesus Christ is in me, then I should start
looking to find out where he is. I have found him by a search and an
experiment. When he said “God is in Christ reconciling the
world to himself, not holding any trespasses against them and
entrusting to us the spirit of reconciliation,” so then, God is
Christ and Christ is in me, then who are we? And I discovered that
God is my own wonderful human imagination. God in action is Christ,
and imagination in action is imagining. So, imagination imagining is
reconciling the world to itself. Now to those who discover it, he
entrusts this great secret of reconciliation.
So, you take
every being in the world - all right, let them go astray, it doesn’t
matter. If with God all things are possible and he works and creates
only through Christ, and Christ is now imagining - I could imagine
you are what I want you to be, if I really believe in Christ, for
“Christ in you is the hope of glory.” And though at the
moment you don’t respond, and tomorrow you still do not
respond, I’ll persist, for that is the attribute of
patience.
Read the fruit of the spirit. It is not only love
and joy and peace - it is patience, it is persistence. In the end of
the book of Galatians he gives you the proof of the spirit. So, I can
persist, I can be patient. I will imagine they are as they ought to
be, though at the moment reason denies it and my senses deny it, and
everything denies it. But this is the fruit of the spirit. I’ll
be patient. I will imagine things are as I would like them to be.
That is God in action, and God in action is Christ. I like what I am
doing there, for the spirit bears the fruit of love, joy, and peace.
These are the first petals that come out. Then come the other
attributes and among them you will find there is patience, there is
persistence.
So, Paul, to me, is the first in whom the vision
took place. It came to one of the smallest tribes, Benjamin, a child
of Abraham. Abraham is faith. It was all shown to Abraham and he
believed it, and waited patiently for the fulfillment of what was
shown him. He saw the play, too. It was all portrayed to Abraham.
“And Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day.” Then he
went into the foreign land, as he was led by the spirit, but he still
remained faithful to what he had seen in the play. The play unfolded
before him and God played the part and God was Christ Jesus.
You
say: “How could this Lord, this exalted Lord become human?”
Again Paul answers, in his letter to the Philippians 2: “He
emptied himself and became obedient unto death, even death upon a
cross.” Again he is speaking in a mystery, for Paul is very
fond of using the word “mystery” - in fact he uses it no
less than eighteen times. This - the body- is the cross. To him the
cross was not the grievance of God but the love of God, and that
crucifixion is the most delightful state. It is not a painful state,
as the churches portray it. They don’t portray the true thing
at all. It happened to me right in this present embodiment, where it
was shown me so vividly how it was done. And the thrill that was mine
the night my hands became vortexes, and my head a vortex, and my side
a vortex, and the soles of my feet vortexes. I was in a pilgrimage
over some invisible Mecca with some thousands of people, and a voice
out of the blue announced: “And God walks with them.”
“I
have been crucified with Christ, it is not I who live, but Christ who
lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith
of the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Listen to these words: “If we have been united with Christ in a
death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a
resurrection like his.” The resurrection has taken place, but
it is also taking place. It took place, and that first one - whether
you believe it or not - is Paul, and from that moment on it is taking
place in every being in the world, as we march toward this invisible
Mecca. And along the way we are pulled out of the crowd one by one,
and he awakens in the individual. And that one, without losing his
distinctive individuality, is God.
So, Jesus Christ is God
himself. The play is on. God became man and played the part and
showed us all before we started the journey, but we can’t quite
discriminate between the action and what the actor is actually trying
to portray. Go back and read the words carefully: “Before whose
eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” An
actor depicts the thought, but man can’t quite discriminate
between the thought depicted and the actor depicting the thought, and
he thinks now the thing is flesh and blood - and it isn’t.
You
dwell upon it, and one day you will find yourself in that journey.
The most colorful crowd in the world. Nothing on the screen compares
to it in the color and the joy as you move towards this invisible
Mecca, and you will hear a voice in the crowd, and the chances are it
will always repeat itself in the same way. Someone will be at your
side, and you will ask and they will ask: “But if God walks
with him, where is he?” and the voice will come back: “At
your side.” And they will look into your face and become
hysterical, it will strike them so funny that you - a normal man,
with all the weaknesses of a man - could be God. And the voice will
come back and all will hear it: “Yes, in the act of waking.”
Then, from the depths of your soul will come the same voice, and no
one but you will hear it. And you - I put it in words that the world
will understand, but the words differ: “And God laid himself
down within you to sleep.” It isn’t that. “I laid
myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream, I
dreamed” - he is going to complete it -“I dreamed I am
you.” That is what you are going to hear.
Then, at that
moment you are going to find yourself being crucified in the most
unique manner in the world. You will be sucked back into the body
that is on the bed. Your hands are real vortexes, your feet vortexes,
your head a vortex, and the right side a vortex. It’s a
whirling joy as you are nailed once more to this body. Then you will
know Paul’s words: “I have been crucified with Christ. It
is not I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live
in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me.” And the Son of God, in whom there is
life, is your own wonderful human imagination. Imagining is life
itself. What you imagine becomes animated, it takes on life, it takes
on motion, vibration. Read the whole book of Galatians and that
wonderful 3rd chapter, and see Paul’s confession. No one taught
it to him, he didn’t receive it from a man - it came through a
revelation of Jesus Christ. “And when it pleased God to reveal
his Son in me I conferred not with flesh and blood.” God will
reveal his Son in you in an explosion and you will see him standing
before you and you will see that Son as your Son. Then you will know
the meaning of the words: “No one comes unto the Father but by
me, for I am the way, I am the truth, I am the light.” Not a
man called Jesus, or Neville, or Peter, or any other name. No. “I
AM the way.” The Way is a series of mystical experiences. And
you come to the Father in no other way save by me. So, watch this
picture as it unfolds, for before you unfolded is the story. Before
your eyes, Jesus Christ was publicly revealed in this garment.
So,
that is the play. If you heard my story, that is the Way. There is no
other way. Not a man called Neville - what he experienced is the Way
to come to the Father. And you will be brought by this series of
experiences, for Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a
series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for
the salvation of man. We are told in Luke [of] a series of events,
and you are the being spoken of and you are brought right up to
fatherhood. But “no one comes to the father but by me.”
“I am the way.” You go back and you see the first
appearance of the Way is the story of Paul (Acts 9). He went through
the experience of the Way, and he comes back and goes through hell,
but not for one moment could he relinquish his experience. So, he
closed his days explaining to everyone who would listen to him the
story of the Way. And some believed him while others disbelieved
him.
Now let us go into the silence.
QUESTION:
Was Paul a man as we are?
ANSWER: If there is any man in the
Bible that is a man as I am, it is Paul. If there is any man that
walked this earth as you and I walked it, it is Paul. It’s the
story. The others are states of consciousness. There is one person in
whom it began to awaken, and he was grounded in orthodoxy. As he
claimed in his own confession: “I am of the tribe of Benjamin,
child of Abraham, grounded in the law - and then he didn’t
understand the fulfillment of that law until it happened in him. He
denied he ever heard it from a man, for no man could have taught it
to him: “The Gospel that I preach is not the Gospel of a man,
it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And when it pleased God
to reveal his Son in me, then I conferred not with flesh and blood.”
Here is a perfect revelation of how this thing takes place. I can
tell you: I hadn’t the slightest concept, and I was raised in a
strict orthodox Christian environment. I had no idea this thing was
actually alive in man, in woman. It happened just as you are told in
the scripture, only it happened in the depth of the soul - and he
goes through all these experiences.
When I started to teach
this, I was teaching only the Law of God. I started on February 2,
1938, and I only spoke of God’s Law - and I have proven it and
it worked. But I had no idea of the profundity of this teaching until
it began to happen in me. All of a sudden the birth from above took
place and everything as described in the Gospels, even to the story
of the dove. That I never conceived to be an actual fact, and then it
happened in the depths of my soul. So it happened to Paul. He is the
one character I would swear actually walked the face of the
earth.
QUESTION: Will you say something on “My yoke is
easy and my burden is light”?
ANSWER: The cross in
itself is light. He declared himself to be the light of the world.
Yoke is union. Union is light. If you saw that unfolding as a picture
on the screen, could you believe it? Belief is union, that’s
yoke. It is very easy to believe it, but man has to be free from his
prefabricated misconceptions. If it comes with your prefabricated
misconceptions and you see it, you will not find the yoke easy. Maybe
in this audience tonight there are a few who are unwilling to believe
what I said this night. They still believe in a Jesus of flesh and
blood - and flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.
“Those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth.” If you still insist he is flesh and blood, then you
will be unwilling to believe that he is simply portraying the state
of God becoming man that man may become God. If you don’t want
to believe it - then don’t believe it.
So, how can you
share your vision with another who is unwilling to share it with you?
But you tell it anyway. You tell it until the end of your earthly
days, because you are making your departure. Can you tell the time of
my departure? No. “I have fought the good fight, I have
finished the race, I have kept the faith.” These are Paul’s
last words. He has kept the faith. The faith of what? The faith of
Abraham. He said: “My teaching is not new, it is as old as the
faith of Abraham.” It is the fulfillment of that faith, but no
one knew it - and suddenly all that Abraham was shown in the
beginning, is now fulfilled in him. And so, I do not bring a new
religion. It is not man-made. It is one that is as old as the faith
of Abraham, but who will believe it? When we think of Paul as being a
convert - we think of a convert as one who was once a Jew and became
a Christian, or vice a versa. That is not a convert, not in the true
mystical sense of the word. It is the fulfillment of the vision. He
never for once, not for one moment, ever gave up Judaism. His last
plea before King Agrippa is: “I stand here in chains for the
hope of the promise made to our fathers - by God Himself.” He
isn’t denying that faith, he is only fulfilling the 53rd
chapter of Isaiah.