The Divine Body
THE DIVINE BODY : Neville Goddard
Tonight’s subject is "The Divine Body." The Bible speaks of two bodies, one belonging to this age and one belonging to That Age. It speaks of the body of this age as flesh and blood, and it speaks of the body of That Age as the body of Spirit.
Blake made the statement that –
"Man has no body distinct from his soul. That called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses the chief inlets of soul in this age." [From "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by William Blake]
I will share with you tonight my experiences of the two bodies, and then you can form your own conclusions. Metamorphosis is the central theme of the Bible, the transformation of man into God. Well, here we are in garments of flesh and blood – garments that grow, they wax, they wane, and they vanish. We all reach that inevitable point where we say that they are dead, and they turn to ash, turn to dust. Yet, I know from experience that man does not die. I do know from my own experience. This is not theory. I am not asking any person in the world to support it. I only know what I know from experience.
The wise men of this age will say, "No, that’s stupid." One just died here recently, and on his 90th birthday, with all the honors that man can confer upon him, they gave a birthday party for him. His name is Bertrand Russell. And this lady friend of his sat next to him at the party and said, "Bertie, you know, undoubtedly you are the most famous atheist in the world, and after today, at ninety, you undoubtedly are the oldest atheist in the world. But, Bertie, suppose you are wrong. Suppose – and it can’t be too far from now – when you depart this world you should meet Him. What would you say?"
And with a twinkle in his eye, pointing his finger toward the sky, he said –
"Well, I would say God, you gave us insufficient evidence."
I can almost hear him say, "You gave us insufficient evidence," because as a brilliant mind, brilliant mathematician, philosopher, plus the fact of his rigid belief that there is no survival, he couldn’t conceive of anything outside of the brain as a physical organ, and its activity made man, and its disintegration was the end of man.
But I have news for him that man does not cease to be when men call him dead. I know from my own experience with those who have gone beyond, many of them – the majority of them – do not even know of the transition, they do not even recognize the fact that they have made the transition.
So, let me share with you one experience of this – a very close and very dear friend of mine. His name is Jack Butler. He was my secretary. When I came out here, either my second or my third year, he was just about 50 years of age. In fact, he would have been, the following December, but he departed in late August.
But the day I was leaving for New York City, I received a cable saying that Jack had been found on the floor, that Jack had a heart attack and was dead. So, I went back to New York City and attended to his funeral. I took care of all the things for him. His sister wanted a Catholic funeral, so we gave him a Catholic funeral in Haverstraw, New York. I went up and took care of all the affairs and paid for the funeral.
My sister-in-law, I have two, and this sister-in-law of mine always said to me –
"You know, I like you personally. I really do, Neville. I like you because you are very kind to my sister – a good husband and a good father. But I don’t believe one word that you teach, you know, for I am a Christian in the orthodox sense of the word."
She was a pillar, and still is a pillar, of the Christian Church in Summit, New Jersey. But she said, "I don’t believe these things that you teach." It’s perfectly all right. Now, Jack died in August, and she knew it.
In the month of January, the following year, say, almost now six months later, I am thoroughly awake, but I am not in this body. This body is on the bed, and I am fully aware of where the body is. I meet my sister-in-law in a world just as real as this – just as real, just like this, and she said to me, "I still do not believe what you teach, you know." I said, "That’s perfectly all right, Al, but look at Jack," and she said, "What has Jack to do with it?" I said, "Don’t you know that Jack died?" And she said to me, "Jack died?"
Before she could say anything further, Jack said to me, "Who is dead?" I said, "Jack, you are not dead, but you died, you know." "Oh," he said, "you are stupid. I am not dead, but I died?"
Al recognized the fact that he had died, for she knew that I came back from California and had paid for his funeral and took care of the entire thing. I said to Jack, "I gave you a good, wonderful, Catholic funeral, Jack, in Haverstraw where you were. And your body was put down in a grave. By now, it’s all decayed right in that little bit of earth. If it hasn’t yet, it will soon decay and turn to dust, and here you are, solidly real." I said to Jack, "Come over here, Jack." He came over. I put my hand upon his thigh and squeezed it. It was solidly real, as it was Jack’s thigh before he died!
Jack looked about 20 or 22 years of age. Now here is a man, 50 when he died, he never wore glasses, he never had any false teeth, he missed a few, naturally – some were missing. But here is a man who could look into the mirror, see the reflection of his face, and not recognize the fact that something had happened. He was gone six months, and he did not know of the transition. He knew nothing about it.
My sister-in-law, Al, she knew he had gone and the next day Al did not remember the experience, any more than 99 per cent of the people today remember these experiences, but Al changed from then on. She became hungry to learn more and more of God. She lessened her hold, as it were, on that orthodox concept, but Jack did not. He did not know.
And Bertrand Russell, at the age of 97 when he died – wearing glasses, wearing false teeth, wearing all the aids that a man of that age needs in order to function here, would look into the mirror and see a young Russell – a young Bertie in his 20’s, and not recognize the fact that he had departed this life.
You see, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God, and in this world of ours, we think ourselves so wise. He said –
"Since, in the wisdom of God this world did not know God through wisdom, it has pleased God through the folly that we teach to save those who believe."
So, I meet them time and time again, and they are totally unaware. You know why? Because the world is just like this; you depart this world, and you are instantly restored in a body that is new – unaccountably new – in a world that is terrestrial just like this, in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in you by He who started it.
Your Father started that work in you. He is transforming you into Himself. He will not complete the work until He makes you Himself. So you are God the Father!
"He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6, RSV)
Jesus Christ is the image of the Invisible God. You are destined to be Jesus Christ, but until that day He unveils Himself in you as God the Father, you will be in a world just like this, doing what you do here. It may be an entirely different kind of work, but it’s a terrestrial world. You suffer there as you suffer here. You go through all the experiences that you have here. And may I tell you – you die there, too! You reach the age when you die there and are restored to life in a world just like this, in bodies just like these, only the body is almost new – not a baby or child – new, always around 20, 22, 23 years of age. That’s about the time that you pick it up.
Now, it’s a mystery. How on earth does it work? Well, let me share another experience to see how it works.
Fifteen years ago in Beverly Hills, I am asleep in my bed, and yet I became aware, and I am seeing a bed that I should not see from the position that I am occupying on my bed. Here I am, looking at the interior of quite a plush hotel, and yet, on my bed no one in my room could see anything but the four walls and the things on the wall – the bureau, the little objects on the bureau. Not a thing could be seen concerning what I am describing. I am seeing the interior of a wonderful hotel. I am looking into a wonderful suite of rooms.
Consciousness follows vision, and I step into that room, my body is on the bed; I know exactly where it is. My wife is sharing the bed with me; it’s a double bed. I went into that room and returned to my body in the bed. I did it, maybe, a dozen times. Then I said, "Now I will adventure. I will take the plunge and remain in this room, and then explore."
When I made my decision to remain, as consciousness followed vision – and I stepped into that place, the room closed upon me. Here I am, in a world just as real as this, in a body just as real as this, and then the world closed upon me, and I am completely shut out in body, but not in consciousness. I know exactly where a body is. The world calls me by a name called Neville. I am still aware that I am Neville. I know there’s a body lying on that bed next to a woman bearing my name. She is Mrs. Goddard. I am Neville Goddard. And I’m going now to explore.
I see the entire room close upon me, and what seemed from the bed, to be a 30-by-10, becomes just a third of itself. It’s now an anteroom, just a dressing room. I do not go through walls; I act there just as I act here.
I went through the door into the hallway. I started down this lovely hallway, with plush carpets, and when I came into another hallway intersecting this, it is all lit – beautifully lit with chandeliers – perfect.
Two ladies are walking down the hallway, and I say to them, "Ladies, this is a dream," because I knew exactly how it started, and I am telling them, "This is a dream," and they are afraid of me, as though I were stark mad.
I hear something that seemed to float from the sky. It wasn’t floating from the sky; it was attached to the ceiling. But I remembered something similar that I had seen in a friend’s home that I had seen not more than six months before, so memory tells me, because I know where my body is, that this is only a dream. So I started there, and I heard it, and it seemed to me very solid, very real. But remembering that I encountered something similar in a friend’s home in the hills of Hollywood, I said, "You see, this is a dream."
I thought at the moment that this would simply be gossamer – just a shadow of what I had remembered. It wasn’t any shadow; it was a solid as this (touching the podium). My hand could not go through it; it was solid. I am solid to myself, and the ladies that are walking down – they are as solid as you are. They followed what I call the "duck file." One got in front of the other, and they got as close to that wall as they could, because they were afraid of me, and they hastened their step and kept on moving toward the end of the hallway. And, then, before they disappeared, they looked back to see if this thing is still in the hallway talking to them.
Then I realized, now there is no way back to my body. I can’t go back to the room, and from the room go back. I am shut out – I am locked out completely from this world, and I am in a world just as real as this.
That world was just as solidly real as this world, but here I am, shut out, with unfinished business. My business is, I have a wife. I have not provided for her adequately. I have an uneducated daughter. She hasn’t yet gone through high school. She is qualified, I know, and she desires to go to college, and I have not made provisions for her college, and I have unfinished business in that section of a world that this seems to be but a section of it.
If I do not return to that body and re-animate it, they will find the body and they will call it a dead body, and they will give some reason for the dead body. They will say it is heart failure. They will find some way to account for it. They have to, first of all, operate on it, for I carried a small insurance policy. So, it is customary to open it up to see why it died. I knew that that is simply the end of that body unless I got back.
I closed my eyes; held it for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes, I am still standing in the hallway. I close my eyes again, and I could see nothing any more than I can see anything now with my eyes shut. I open my lids, and I see you. I opened my lids, and I see that wonderful hallway, with lovely chandeliers and everything lit. And here I am, fully aware of what I did deliberately.
Then I remembered something I did many years before when I found myself awake in a dream. I wanted to experiment, and I held the object in my dream, and I wouldn’t let it go, so I said to myself –
"I know this is a dream. Now hold an object and don’t let it go" – something that is stationary, not a living animal that can move, but something stationary, which I did. And holding it, I compelled myself to remember what I did.
And I awoke in the dream – and here I am, completely awake in my dream. I realized then that I awoke by feeling the solidity of that world. I remembered that I returned to this world by feeling the solidity of this world. So, then, standing there, with my eyes shut now to the obvious, I assumed that my head was on a pillow – the pillow that I knew I had placed my head upon before the whole thing started. I could feel the pillow. That’s all that I did.
Then I felt myself, instead of standing vertically – I assumed I was lying horizontally, and then I could actually feel myself in a horizontal position with my head on the pillow, but I could not move. I was cataleptic. There I am, now, with a body that is as dead as bodies can be, and I am alive in a dead body. I couldn’t move my finger. I couldn’t open an eyelid; I could do nothing!
Now, I know exactly where I am. I am back in Beverly Hills, and the body is cataleptic and I can’t move it. It seemed an eternal time, but after, maybe, about twenty-five or thirty seconds I could move the little finger, and then a few seconds later I could move some more, and then I could move the elbow. I pushed it out, and I could feel the warmth of my wife’s body. And after tremendous effort, I could open the eyelid, and there I saw the familiar objects on the wall. I saw the bureau. I saw all the things return, now, to consciousness; and here is my body that I have shut out completely.
What is a body? Blake is right:
"Man has no body distinct from his soul. That called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age." [William Blake from "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"]
The body I left on the bed is only a portion of this activity of my imagination, which is the real body, and the body that I clothed myself in when the ladies passed by and I talked to them was only a portion of the soul, but still related to this world. That’s not the Divine Body. These are the bodies of flesh and blood. That body would have bled as easily as this body would bleed if I cut it. It’s a mystery.
It’s a miracle how you can produce that body and see it just as you see this reflected in a mirror; how that body can grow, as it grows here; how that body can suffer, as this suffers here; how that body is entangled with the relationships of men and women, as this body is entangled here.
Now, before we come to the Divine Body, let me give you a story taken from the book of Luke.
The wise men of that day are called, in the Bible, Sadducees. They are the scientists of their day. Like Bertrand Russell, they did not believe in the Resurrection; they did not believe in survival. If they kept the law outwardly, they kept it only for political reasons. It was wise to be seen in the Synagogue. It was wise, for business purposes, to be seen as a holy man keeping the laws of Moses, so they abided by the external law, and they observed the dietary law and all these things. But they did not believe in the Resurrection.
So, they turned to the central figure of Scripture, and they said to him –
"Master, Moses in the law said that if a man marries and dies leaving no offspring, and he has a brother, the brother should marry the widow and raise up issue for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers, and the first one married and died, leaving no offspring. The second took her as his wife, and he died leaving no offspring, and the third, and eventually all married – the seven married her. All died, leaving no issue, and then the widow died. Now, whose wife is she in the Resurrection?"
He answered and said, "In this age, the children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are come to glory to attain to that age, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they are Sons of the Resurrection, and they die no more. They are now Sons of God, being sons of the Resurrection."
Something entirely different when one reaches that age; the body differs completely, and he is above the organization of sex. He is neither male nor female there; he is Man, and – "God is Man and exists in us and we in Him." [William Blake, from "Annotations to Berkeley"]
The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is then the Lord Jesus Christ, functioning in an entirely different body. It’s not this body that waxes, wanes, and disappears. It’s not this body that needs the companionship of the opposite sex. It is not this body that, between this and the opposite, produces something similar and calls it a child. Well, it neither marries, nor is it given in marriage – not when it is in that body, which is the Body of the Resurrection.
They asked him no more questions. Now, what is "that body"? I will tell you my own experience, and you draw your own conclusions as to this Divine Body.
I was coming through the Caribbean Sea on a freighter – my wife, my little girl and myself. We were bringing boxite. That is the ore from which we make aluminum. The ship is going to British Guiana, and they load up just a certain amount, and then they come down the river at high tide, and they can get over the bank. If they took a complete load, they could not get over the bank, so they put on just enough cargo that when the high tide comes, it floats them over the bank. Then they come to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and fill it to the gunnels, for they are bringing all the boxite from British Guiana and storing it in Trinidad, for these ships are taking just a certain amount of the load, come to the Port-of-Spain, and then fill it.
We flew from Barbados to pick this boat up in Trinidad. The ship is down to the water’s edge. I wonder how on earth this thing is going to take us to Mobile, Alabama, for that was the port. But we got aboard. They were only allowed to carry twelve passengers, on American freighters, unless you had a doctor. So, to avoid carrying a doctor, they only carry twelve. We had not a thing to do at sea.
The Captain called me in the very first morning. He was in an open shirt – a khaki shirt. He said, "I am dressed for the entire voyage, Mr. Goddard. We have our breakfast between 8:00 and 9:00, our lunch between 12:00 and 1:00, and our dinner between 5:00 and 6:00. If you are hungry in between, in this little kitchen here you will find coffee 24 hours a day. There is milk in the refrigerator, cold cuts, cheese; the breadbox is always full of bread, with butter. You’ve got everything you need if you are hungry in between. This is a union ship, and we do not serve before or after time. You see all the buttons in your stateroom; every one works. Every one is perfect, but don’t push one of them, because no one is going to come, and if they do come, at the end of the voyage, I am going to get a huge, whopping bill for overtime. This is a union ship."
I said, "All right, Sir. I will not be pushing any buttons. I will go into the kitchen and get myself coffee if I need it. If my little girl wants milk, there’s milk. I have all it takes.
"If you drink," he said, "I hope you brought your own with you, because we don’t have it aboard the ship. But the ice is there, and the setups are here, so you can have everything you want right here, but not alcohol, although you are allowed to have all you want if you have it already aboard." So, I thanked him and told him, "Yes, I had my supply." So, the ship started. You could do nothing of an evening – just a small little deck. So, I retired quite early for my entire trip.
Well, this night in question, out of the blue – with the most thunderous suddenness it came, and I found myself fall like a spiral out of my head.
And here I am, fully aware, and a heavenly chorus is singing, and they took just three words, "Neville is risen," and this heavenly chorus is singing, "Neville is risen."
And I found myself in a body of fire and air. It felt that way to me, and the body was self-luminous. I didn’t need the sun, the moon, the stars. Wherever I wanted to go, I just simply floated – I glided. Here is a body that is fantastic. I did not lose my identity; I am still Neville, but I am clothed in an entirely different body, and the body – though human, is a body of fire and air. And I am a little bit off the surface of the earth.
And, then, as far as my eye could see, I saw this sea of human imperfection. There were the blind, lame, halt, withered, shrunken – you name it! Here they were in this enormous sea of humanity. I had no compassion. I simply glided by, and I knew they were waiting for me. And the chorus is simply singing out. How they could take three little words, "Neville is arisen," and play upon it as they played upon it, is beyond description – but the most heavenly music, only using three words – "Neville is risen."
As I glided by, eyes that were missing – empty sockets; they came out of nowhere and these beautiful eyes reappeared in the sockets, seeing perfectly. Arms that were missing came back. Feet that were missing – the lame jumped for joy. The deaf heard. Everything in this world was made perfect as I walked by – That is the Divine Body.
I know now, from my own experience, that Heaven is not a realm. It is the Divine Body; for wherever you are, clothed in that Body, everything is perfect. Nothing can remain imperfect in your presence when you are clothed in the Divine Body.
Trees long dead, if you walk through the forest of dead trees – petrified forests – they would all burst into blossom. Barren fields must erupt into lilies of the purest white. The blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame jumped; everything was perfect as I floated by. And when I came to the very end and the end was made perfect and everyone was perfect, then this heavenly chorus exulted, and it said
"It is finished."
Well, I felt myself actually crystallize into this body that is really like – I would say – a strait jacket that you put the insane in. This body, to me now, having experienced that, is just like a strait jacket. I must wear it, and I must suffer in it, and I must take care of it like a slave.
I must feed it, water it; I must assimilate all that I put into it. And what I cannot assimilate, I myself must expel, and no one can do it for me. I am a slave of the garment that I wear here in the world of flesh and blood, but I have tasted of the power of that garment when the chorus sang out, "Neville is risen." That is the Divine Body that everyone, one day, will wear – and that Divine Body is in you now.
It came out like a fiery serpent, but it came out of my head, and I was it. I was the body. I was not only wearing it; I am that body when I am clothed in it. It needs no substance from without. It needs nothing. It is self-sustained, and it’s perfect. So, when you read in Scripture –
"Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," (Matthew 5:48)
it is that body. And that is Heaven itself.
So, when we read in Milton, where Milton makes Satan say –
"Wherever I fly is hell, for I myself am hell," [from "Paradise Lost"]
This body is Heaven, and wherever it goes is Heaven, for I myself am Heaven. I cannot go any place clothed in that body and not find it perfect as the body is perfect. Nothing can be made imperfect in the presence of that body – It is Heaven!
So, Heaven is not a realm. Heaven is the Divine Body. It is waiting in every man to clothe that one when the work in him is finished. It will be finished. No one will be lost!
Tonight you may drop, this very moment, and find yourself not necessarily in the year 1970. You could find yourself in the year One Thousand, and be just as comfortably adjusted to the year One Thousand as you are now adjusted to the year 1970. You could find yourself adjusted to the year Three Thousand just as easily now as you are adjusted to the year 1970.
But the work that is to be done in you will determine what section of time you will find yourself awake in, but the body in which you will awake will be just like this. And if marriage is in order because it is necessary for the work yet to be done, you’ll be married. If something else is necessary, that’s going to happen to you.
You can drop now this very moment, and you could be the Queen of England and find yourself tomorrow the maid of the latrines. It hasn’t a thing to do with your present position in this world. You could be now the biggest thing in the world in the eyes of the present world and find yourself tomorrow, if that is necessary, shining shoes for a living.
"He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1:6, RSV)
He does not judge anyone from their present external position in the world. What you are is irrelevant.
It’s what He is doing in you – And what is He doing? – He is transforming you into Himself.
Metamorphosis is the central theme of the Bible – the transformation of man into God the Father. And when He has completed the work, because He is God the Father, His son stands before you and calls you, "Father." And then, and only then, do you know who the Father is – only when He, the Son of God, calls you, "Father;" for –
"No one knows who the son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal it." (Luke 10:22, RSV)
So, when the Son reveals you and you are unveiled in the presence of the Son, you are God the Father. That is the end, the climax, the purpose of it all.
So, judge no one superficially. Judge no one by his position in this world, for you do not know how near he is to the unveiling of the purpose of God, which is to unveil him as Himself.
It is God’s purpose to give man Himself, actually and literally so that, when the work is done, you are God the Father, and you will wear the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that body – I can’t tell anyone what it is to wear the body of the Lord Jesus Christ – the Divine Body. It is perfect.
And may I tell you, when I walked by this sea of human imperfection, I did not heal them by stopping to ask anything of them. I did not raise a finger in compassion. Where I am, everything must be perfect. If they are blind, they cannot remain blind. If they are dumb, they cannot remain dumb. If they are lame, they cannot remain lame. No matter what they are, they must be perfect in the presence of the Body that is perfect, and everything is made perfect. That is Heaven.
So, Heaven is not a realm. Heaven is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus, and everyone will be saved by being incorporated into that body. So, this is what I mean by the Divine Body.
If, in this world, you have to feel important – all right, feel important. It’s far better than feeling unimportant. If in this world you’ve adjusted yourself to a way of living, and you must have a certain income, adjust yourself.
Don’t think for one moment that poverty is nearer to God.
Don’t think for one moment that wealth is nearer to God.
None of these things have any indication as to the nearness to the end of the work that is being done in you. You can’t judge by any outside picture as to how near you are to the unveiling of the work – but when the work is unveiled – you are Jesus Christ. You are the Divine Body of the Lord, and this is the great mystery that you find in Scripture when you have experienced it.
I can’t tell anyone the thrill in store for him – laid up for him until that day when he experiences Scripture. When you actually, literally experience Scripture, it’s the one true book in the world. It is not based upon theory. It’s all reality. And the day will come; you will experience it.
So, behind the masks we now wear – these garments of flesh and blood – the male and female garments and all their children – male and female, but in the Resurrection we are above the organization of sex. We do not need any sex split into two in order to create.
We create by being the Divine Body! And when we create, it’s automatic, and it’s perfect. Everything is perfect.
Now, you draw your own conclusions. Can it be that men who depart this world not yet resurrected, clothed in their broken bodies, are gathered together and wait for one who has been missing to walk by to set them into a new frame in new bodies?
My Mother, when she died at the age of 61, looked about 90. She died wracked with cancer. She bore her twelve children. Nine boys and one girl survived, and one boy and one girl died at birth. And my dear Mother – and she was altogether precious – a wonderful mother at 61 she looked about 90, a thin, small, little, withered creature. Mother was always plump, blonde, blue-eyed – a precious person. For the last two years of her life she came down with cancer – riddled with cancer, and she was in constant pain. The pain showed upon her body. The day she died I was seated in my place In New York City, and she appeared before me, a girl of 20.
Mother was actually fond of flowers. She had a lovely garden. She had two gardeners always doing her bidding. I would see her in the morning – she didn’t call it an umbrella; she called it a parasol – taking her parasol, giving orders to these two young gardeners: how to cut it, how to do it, what to do. In her garden, she was always with these two gardeners, telling them what to do.
She appeared before me, and she was under an arbor of flowers. There she had a brush in her hand, brushing this long, beautiful, blonde hair. She was very, very blonde. She had the lightest blue eyes. And there she was, brushing her hair, and she looked to me as a girl of 20.
Mother died in ’41; I was born in 1905. So, you can see how much older I was than the girl who appeared before me, yet, there was my Mother. She appeared as a girl of 20, but she didn’t talk to me. I spoke to her; she looked at me and smiled.
I sat right down and wrote my sister, Daphne, and told her what I had just experienced, in the hope that it meant – it seemed beyond the wildest dreams that man could ever hope for – that something had happened and Mother was released at that moment.
There is a difference of one hour in time between New York City and Barbados, where Mother died. And in that interval of one hour’s difference, my sister wrote and told me that Mother had passed, and she gave me exactly the time.
You see; the war was on. There were no airplanes flying to Barbados, and you had to wait for an occasional ship, and they censored every cable. All things were censored. So Daphne wrote, and placed it into the normal mail, so I didn’t get the letter for eight days – eight or ten days, and she described the entire passing of Mother. And allowing for one hour’s difference, that was the moment in time when my Mother passed, wracked with pain, looking like 90, and she appeared before me at 20.
The same thing happened with my father. He died at 85. And here was my young, wonderful, handsome father. He was a tall, strong, strapping man – a man of my pigment. And here, my father appeared young.
Others I knew appeared in the distant future, but because they are in the year Three Thousand, it doesn’t mean they are wiser than they were when they were here. In this 20th Century we’ve had the Einsteins; we had men in the 30’s that could unlock the secret of the atom. And, yet, in the Twentieth Century, they are just as dumb people as they were in the Year One!
They are just as stupid as they were then. You go all over the world, there are three and a half billion of us, and there are those who do not know how "to come in out of the rain – and this is the Twentieth Century. They are just as foolish – don’t think for one second that we are moving forward into some wonderful, progressive understanding.
No! In the midst of stupidity you find Einsteins; you find the "this," you find the "that." So, to find yourself tonight, should you depart this world, in the year Three Thousand – there is no transforming power in death.
It is He who is doing the work in you that is important, and He is God the Father. And when He completes the work that He set out to do, you are God the Father. And, then, all wisdom is yours, and it’s not the wisdom of man, for –
"The wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God." (I Corinthians 3:19) It is the Wisdom of God.
And what is the Wisdom of God? The Bible defines the Wisdom of God as Christ, in the first chapter of I Corinthians, the 24th verse –
"Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God."
So, you find yourself in possession of the power and the wisdom of God. You don’t need any wisdom of man, when the work is completed in you.
And may I tell you, all the world will not undo what your Father has done in you – He will not turn back until He completes the work. He said –
"I will not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my Mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly." (Jeremiah 30:24)
And the "latter days" are simply when He unveils Himself in you as Him.
So, this is what I mean by the "Divine Body." It’s a real body. All I can say to you: it is simply the most glorious, luminous thing you’ve ever known. It is something that you are. You are the Body itself – rather than wearing it – you are the Divine Body – your Immortal Self – your Eternal Self. And wherever you are is Perfection.
So, you could go right into hell, and hell would cease to be where you are! You will transform hell instantly into the harmony that is Heaven, and if you are not clothed in that Body, you can go into Heaven and transform it into the hell that you are.
So, this is the Divine Body that is housed within everyone, and one day we will be awake in it, and the heavenly chorus will sing your praises too.
When I told the story in my little book called "The Search," I was persuaded by a dear friend of mine not to tell it in the first person, for people would think me arrogant and think it blasphemy, so I told it in the third person. I should not have listened, but I told it in the third person. I told it saying that they said, "He is risen." They did not say, "He is risen," they said, "Neville is risen." When I said in the story I knew intuitively that they meant me, I did not have to know it intuitively – they were calling me by name. I knew I was the one who was risen. I knew I was the one of whom they sang and I was the one who wears the Body of the Risen Lord, and I was the one whose presence transformed the sick, the lame, the dying, the dumb into perfect states, and certainly once more in the world terrestrial just like this to continue the work that must be done in them.
So, I have shared with you my own personal experience concerning the Divine Body. And my experiences with this body [indicating the physical body] are like a body within a body within a body, because this was on the bed in Beverly Hills, and yet I was clothed in a body just like this, just as limited, just as weak.
Fortunately I remembered what once I did through feeling to return and, so, with unfinished business, with a wife not yet provided for and a daughter not yet fully educated, I knew I had to return or I should return. So, I took the feeling that I once experienced and I felt the pillow and returned through feeling to that body, to find it cataleptic – to find that I could not move it, and after a while I could move it, and then a little bit more and a little bit more and then it came back to a normal state.
So, I know that it is like bodies within bodies; that you seem to exude with them in this world terrestrial, until that Body, which is the Immortal Body – and it doesn’t need anything but itself – and, clothed in that – you are Heaven itself! You are the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let’s enter the Silence.
Audience Questions
Question: I realize from what you said that the Father has no concept of time, as we know it. Then, my question is – You made the remark that somebody would die now and wake up in the year Three Thousand. Will you explain that difference in time?
Neville: Right, my Dear. The world is finished, but man will not believe it. The book of Ecclesiastes is possibly the most discussed and the most critical book, possibly, in the 66 books of the Bible. In the Bible you read in Ecclesiastes "There is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"? I tell you, it has been already in ages past, but we have no remembrance of former things, nor do we have any remembrance of things to come among those who will come after." (Ecclesiastes 1:9-11)
Then, we are told in this book, "There is a time to be born, and a time to die… a time to weep, and a time to laugh… and God has put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." (Ecclesiastes 3:2, 4, 11)
It’s like a play, and you can be inserted into any section of the play and find it perfectly natural, for you are not going to be inserted into an unnatural state. You are already rehearsed in the part that you will play.
A very dear friend of mine, who was born and raised a Roman Catholic – he, his father and mother and brother lived in a very small area in Iowa. They had 150 acres of corn, and that’s all they had to support them. The two boys and the father drank heavily in fact; they were alcoholics. What can you do with three men on a farm when they are not contributing? They were alcoholic.
Well, this chap in particular, he spent so many days and weeks of his life in jail through sheer drunkenness. Then he joined AA. He hasn’t had a drink now in possibly twelve years – not one drop. You could not pour it down his throat; he knows he can’t take it. But he’s never had a vision, never had a mystical experience. He comes to all of my meetings, and one thing he wanted above everything else was an experience to prove to his own satisfaction, although he believes me – my experiences are not satisfying to another; they want a similar experience for their own satisfaction.
He wanted to be assured that his mother survived. He knew what hell he, his brother and father gave her – if he could only be assured that his mother survived. Well, this night in question, he became fully awakened in a dream. He felt it a dream, but it was more than a dream; and there he saw his mother.
The mother knew the relationship of herself to this man – this friend of mine. She said, "I am living. When I died, I found myself a girl of 20 years of age" – now that was twelve years before he had the vision, "I felt myself 20, and I looked 20. I found myself in the year Three Thousand and Eight in the State of Pennsylvania."
Now, she never saw Pennsylvania before; she was born and raised in Iowa, and died there. Here she was 20 years of age; now she is 32, She has matured in the twelve years. He said, "I knew she was married, but I felt it was not to my father. I felt that she was married to some one else. My father followed her in death, and she is remarried, but not to my father. She spoke to me, and I said to her, ‘You know, you sound like Neville. You are talking Neville’s language.’ She said, ‘I never met him, never heard of him. Then I was rebuked, for we all know of him here. We know his teaching, and this is what I have experienced. I have found myself in the year Three Thousand and Eight, living in Pennsylvania. Here we marry, too, and here we are just as afraid of dying as we were when I was your mother’" – just as afraid of dying.
There has been no change. She was a simple woman, a peasant, living on a small farm in Iowa. She is still a simple woman. The work – the true work – is still being done in her. Now she has become aware of a teaching that she did not know existed when she was here in the Twentieth Century. She was born and raised an ardent Catholic, as she raised her family, but she never heard it in Catholicism, as she understood it. That was something entirely different. So, here is the evidence one person – a simple person – has concerning the change in time without a change in understanding.
But when I was born in 1905 my mother, so she told me years later – she said, "The church bells were ringing when I felt labor. You came at 9:15 on Sunday night in 1905 the 19th of February. And before you were born, I knew a bit of your destiny. I knew what you were going to do; only I interpreted it as a minister. I knew in some strange way you were sent to do the work of God, but I thought that you would be a minister in the Episcopal Church," which we then called the Church of England. Well, I never became that, not in her eyes. In her eyes, I hadn’t yet accomplished what she felt inwardly that I came to do.
I was three weeks old when she was walking the floor with the little child in her arms, and she said to me – the babe, "What should I call you? And she said, "I heard a voice, and the voice said, "His name is Neville," Then she said, "I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and I thought it was your father." My father’s name was Joseph, and she said, "Joseph, is that you?" and the voice replied, "No, it is I, Rollo."
That was her brother, her younger brother, who lived with us. And he said to her, "What are you doing up so late?" and she said, "Well, I am waiting to name this boy. What name should I call him?" And she told me that Rollo closed his eyes as though he listened, and then he said to her, "Call him Neville." Then she said, "I went cold, and felt as if I dropped and the world came to an end – your name was Neville," so she called me Neville.
And, then, when I was a boy of about seven, a very strange lady from England, who was out on some pension, lived in Barbados – lived back in a wild, wild area where everything is balanced by the sea. All trees are bent by the sea winds as they come forward. And I sat with her one day, and she said, "You are going to leave Barbados, and you are not going to return, save to visit. You are going to be the first one of your family to get married, and you are going to have two children. You will be married more than once, and you will have two children."
Then she said, "You know, you are going to talk to unnumbered people, and you will be selling something. I don’t know what it is, but you will be selling something. But centuries and centuries after you are gone, they will use your name and link it with two others who did similar work." She said, "Your name and two others." She didn’t tell me whether they preceded me, whether they would be contemporary, or if they would follow. But she told me that unnumbered years after I am gone and future generations were gone – centuries afterward, "They will tell of the work that Neville did."
And I know I was in the presence of the Risen Lord. He sent me to do exactly what I am doing, and to tell my own personal experiences concerning God’s work.