#50: Imagination Is Christ in You

Imagination Is Christ in You

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You sit tonight perhaps weary, perhaps heavy with the sense that life has fixed you where you are, that circumstances have sealed you in some undesired condition. You call it reality. You call it fact. Yet I tell you with the quiet certainty of one who has tested it in the laboratory of his own being: your imagination is Christ in you, the hope of glory, the redemptive power itself, and not the idle fantasy the world mistakes it for.

This is no poetic flourish. This is the central mystery made plain. The Christ that the scriptures proclaim as dwelling within you is your own wonderful human imagination, awakened. It is the power that forgives sin, that lifts you out of every limitation, that redeems you from the Egypt of your present state and carries you into the promised land of your fulfilled desire. Men have sought a redeemer outside themselves, a savior coming from afar, when all the while the redeeming Christ has been closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. It is your imagination, clothed in the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Consider what redemption truly means. Sin, in the language of the spirit, is simply missing the mark, falling short of your ideal. You feel imprisoned by lack, by illness, by discord, by any unwanted condition, and you say, “This is my lot.” But the moment you discover that your imagination is Christ, you possess the power to forgive that sin instantly. You forgive it by identifying yourself with the ideal you long to embody. You enter into the nature of its opposite. The weak man does not remain weak when imagination, which is Christ, arises and declares, “Let the weak man say, I am strong.” You do not argue with the senses. You do not plead with an external God. You simply assume the feeling of the strength, the health, the abundance, the harmony you desire, and in that assumption Christ is awake within you.

This is the supreme work. This is the test of Sonship. Can you, in the face of all contrary evidence, enter lovingly into the state of your wish fulfilled and remain there until it hardens into fact? That is the work of awakened imagination. That is Christ redeeming you. Not by some future miracle, not by waiting for external change, but here and now, in this very moment, by the quiet inner act of assuming you already are what you long to be.

Many confuse imagination with fantasy. Fantasy drifts, it wishes, it scatters itself in idle pictures that never take root. But the imagination that is Christ is not fantasy. It is the creative power of God Himself. It is the very Word that was in the beginning, the Word that became flesh. When you use it with purpose, when you sustain the feeling of your desire as already realized, that imagination objectifies itself. It does not merely entertain; it incarnates. It redeems. It takes the clay of your present limitation and refashions it into the vessel of your ideal.

You who feel stuck, hear this truth deeply: the conditions that seem so solid, so unyielding, are only the out-picturing of your former state of consciousness. They have no power in themselves. They live only as long as you remain identified with them in imagination. But Christ in you, your imagination, has the power to dissolve every such condition and to build in its place the new. The moment you discover this, acts which the world calls miraculous become your normal experience. The prison walls of circumstance fall. The barren places blossom. The dead hopes rise again. Not because some force outside you acts, but because you, as Christ awake, have chosen a new state and have clothed yourself in its feeling.

Let this sink into your being. Reality lies within you. Others appear to have lives of their own, bodies, circumstances, yet their reality is rooted in you and ends in you, even as yours ends in God. Your imagination is that God. When you exercise it lovingly on behalf of another, you are feeding and clothing Christ. When you imagine evil, you crucify Him. But when you turn the power upon yourself, when you identify with your aim, then Christ is fully awake in you and all things become possible.

You may ask silently, “How shall I know this imagination is indeed the Christ?” By its fruits. By the fact that it forgives sin without the slightest effort of will. You simply feel yourself into the new state, and the old state vanishes as though it had never been. The senses may still shout their old story for a little while, but you remain faithful to the inner assumption. You do not fight the appearance. You do not resist the seeming fact. You simply know that the only reality is the consciousness you now accept as true, and that consciousness, which is Christ, will externalize itself in its own good time and in its own wonderful way.

Tonight, right now, you can prove this. Take some area of your life where you feel most stuck. Do not look at the outer picture. Turn gently within. Feel the joy, the relief, the naturalness of being already free of that condition. Dwell in that feeling until it becomes natural to you. That is the redemptive act. That is Christ in operation. You are not pretending. You are not fantasizing in the shallow sense. You are exercising the one power that created the universe, the power that upholds all things, the power that is now individualized as you.

This imagination, this Christ, comprehends reason yet transcends it. It recognizes the facts of sense yet masters them. It is sufficient unto itself. After you have assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you need not guide yourself by anxious reasoning. The assumption itself contains within it the power of its own fulfillment. Your actions will flow naturally from the new state. You will move in the world as one who is already the man or woman you have claimed to be. And because you have claimed it in imagination, which is Christ, the outer world must rearrange itself to confirm the claim.

See how majestically this truth unfolds. You are never the victim of circumstance. You are the operant power. The world presents different appearances according to your state of consciousness. Change the state through imagination and the appearance must change. No idea presented to the mind can realize itself unless the mind accepts it. But when imagination, which is Christ, accepts it fully, when you feel it as true, then nothing in heaven or on earth can prevent its objectification.

You have perhaps carried burdens long enough. You have perhaps believed that redemption lay somewhere in the distant future, after death, after some great event. But I tell you the kingdom is within you this night. The Christ that redeems is within you this night. Your imagination is that Christ, and it stands ready, eager, able to lift you into the very embodiment of your desire.

Dwell upon this. Let it echo through your being. Imagination is not a faculty among others. It is the central character of all scripture, the Lord Himself individualized in you. Every time you assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, you are doing exactly what the Christ of the gospels did. You are laying down one life, the life of limitation, and taking up another, the life of fulfillment. No one takes this power from you. You lay it down and you take it up again by the free act of imagination.

This is the comfort beyond all comforts: everything you experience is the result of your own standard of belief. You are the center of your own web of circumstances. As you change in imagination, so must your outer world change. The world you see when identified with lack cannot be seen when you are no longer fused with lack. By state is meant all that you believe and consent to as true. Consent, then, to the new state. Consent through the quiet, dignified, majestic act of feeling yourself to be what you want to be. That consent is the forgiveness of sin. That consent is the awakening of Christ.

You who listen tonight, perhaps with a heart that has known disappointment, hear me: there is no condition so fixed that this power cannot transform it. There is no habit so deep, no circumstance so oppressive, no sense of unworthiness so heavy that the Christ of your imagination cannot redeem you from it. The only requirement is that you identify yourself with the ideal. Not with effort, not with strain, but with the naturalness of feeling that it is already so.

Let me repeat this truth in another way so it may take deeper root. When you discover that your imagination is Christ, you accomplish acts which on this level can only be called miraculous, yet to you they become the normal, inevitable outworking of the law. You no longer see everything in pure objectivity. You see the subjective relationship. You know that every condition is related by affinity to your own mental activity. You know that you chose it, consciously or unconsciously, and therefore you can choose anew.

Man must firmly come to believe that reality lies within him and not without. This belief is the beginning of redemption. This belief awakens the Christ who has been sleeping in the tomb of your former misconceptions. Rise, then, from that tomb. Claim your identity as the Son of God by claiming your imagination as the one redeeming power.

Every imagination of man is either the cup of cold water or the sponge of vinegar offered to Christ. Offer the cup. Imagine lovingly. Imagine constructively. Imagine from the end. Imagine yourself already in the state desired, and remain there until the feeling of naturalness possesses you. In that possession is the redemption. In that possession is the birth of the new man.

You are now at the point where the great decision can be made. Will you continue to accept the evidence of the senses as final, or will you accept the testimony of your imagination, which is Christ? The senses testify to limitation. Christ testifies to fulfillment. Choose this day whom you will serve. Serve the Christ within by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and every barrier must melt before you.

This power is not distant. It requires no special preparation. It is yours now. Right where you sit, you can enter the state. Feel the relief. Feel the gratitude. Feel the quiet joy of being the one you want to be. Let that feeling permeate you. Let it become the very atmosphere of your consciousness. That is the redemptive act. That is the mystery of Christ in you.

As you walk through tomorrow and the days that follow, carry this realization as a living flame. Whenever the old condition tries to reassert itself, do not fight it. Simply return gently to the feeling of the new state. That return is the work of the awakened imagination. That return is Christ forgiving, redeeming, resurrecting. You will find, to your amazement, that the outer world begins to conform. People, events, opportunities, all move in new directions, all bearing witness to the state you have assumed.

This is not theory. This is not hope. This is the law of your own being. Imagination creates reality. Imagination is Christ. Christ redeems by assumption. Assumption hardens into fact. Therefore you are redeemed the moment you assume.

Let the realization deepen still further. You are complete in Him. In your imagination dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily. You lack nothing when you claim through feeling that you already possess it. Grace is sufficient. The power is sufficient. The Christ within you is sufficient for all things.

Tonight, as this talk draws to its close, I ask you to do one simple, majestic thing. Retire to your bed in the consciousness of the wish fulfilled. Sleep in that assumption. Let your last waking thought be the feeling of gratitude for having already received. In that sleep Christ works. In that sleep the redemption is sealed. You will rise tomorrow a new creature, not in some vague spiritual sense, but in the practical, tangible sense that your world will begin to reflect the new you that you have assumed.

You are the Christ. Your imagination is that Christ. Use it tonight. Use it without reservation. Use it as the one and only redeemer. And you will know, beyond all argument, the truth of these words: “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” That Son is your imagination, awake, alive, and forever redeeming you from every limitation into the fullness of life.

You are not the man or woman of circumstance. You are the operant power. You are the imaginer. You are Christ in expression. Let this truth live in you. Let it breathe through you. Let it be the single, glorious fact upon which you stand from this moment forward.

All things are possible to you because all things are possible to Christ, and Christ is your imagination. Claim it. Feel it. Live it. And the redemption you have sought is already accomplished.

The outer world will confirm what you have done in the inner. It must. It has no choice. For imagination, which is Christ in you, is the Lord of all.

Go now in peace, knowing that you carry within you the one power that can and does redeem every situation. You are free. You are whole. You are the fulfillment of your own desire, because you have dared to let your imagination, which is Christ, assume it is so.

And it is so.