#130: The Greater Me

The Greater Me

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have looked upon your world and found it fixed, and you have wondered why the change you desire does not come. You have seen others move from one state to another, and you have asked why your own state remains. But the answer is not in the world you see. The answer is in the greater Me within you, the deeper self that is ever responding to your conception of yourself. This greater Me is your awareness of being. It is that which is aware before any condition is named. It is the I AM that is the only reality. It is God, not a God afar off, but the very consciousness that is now reading these words, the awareness that is closer than your breath. This is the greater Me, and it is not the little self you have believed yourself to be. It is greater than any particular expression, greater than any name you have given yourself, greater than any limitation you have accepted.

The greater Me responds to your conception of it. Whatever you conceive yourself to be, this deeper self takes that conception and makes it your experience. It does not question the conception. It does not say this is good or that is bad. It simply responds. It is the power that brings to pass whatever you are conscious of being. You are at this very moment drawing into your world that which you are now conscious of being, for the greater Me is faithful to your inner claim. Most decidedly this is so. Man has always decreed that which has appeared in his world, and he is today decreeing that which is appearing. Not one thing has ever appeared but what man decreed it should through his conception of himself. The greater Me within him heard that decree and brought it to pass. This you may deny, but you cannot disprove it, for it is based upon a changeless principle. The principle is that consciousness is the only reality, and the greater Me is consciousness itself responding to the conception held within it.

You do not change your world by working upon the world. You change your world by changing your conception of yourself, for the greater Me will then respond with a new expression. The world is the mirror of your conception. It can only reflect what you have conceived yourself to be. When you look at your circumstances and find them undesirable, you are looking at the response of the greater Me to an old conception. To see a new world, you must give the greater Me a new conception to which it can respond. The greater Me is the father. You, in your present conception, are the son. Yet the father and the son are one. I and my father are one, but my father is greater than I. The greater Me is greater because it is the conceiver, the power that gives life to the conception. The conception is what you feel yourself to be. The greater Me takes that feeling and embodies it. This is why you are ever out-picturing that which you are conscious of being. The greater Me has no other function than to express your conception.

When Moses stood before the bush, he heard the voice say, I AM hath sent me unto you. The I AM is the greater Me, the awareness of being that sends you into expression as whatever you are aware of being. If you are aware of being limited, the greater Me sends you into a world of limitation. If you are aware of being free, the greater Me sends you into a world of freedom. The greater Me is the sender, and your conception is the message it sends. Isaiah declared, I AM the Lord and there is none else. There is no God beside me. I girded thee, though thou hast not known me. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. The Lord is the greater Me, your awareness of being. It forms the light of your good and the darkness of your evil according to your conception. It makes the peace you feel and the conflict you experience according to what you have conceived yourself to be. There is no other God. There is only this greater Me responding to you.

Jesus said, I AM the way, the truth, and the life. The I AM is the greater Me, the awareness of being that is the way through which all manifestations come. It is the truth that sets you free when you know it as your own awareness. It is the life that resurrects whatever you are conscious of being. I AM the resurrection and the life. The greater Me is the resurrecting power. It resurrects your conception into form. If your conception is one of health, it resurrects health. If your conception is one of lack, it resurrects lack. The signs follow the conception. They never precede it. You are told, You shall decree a thing and it shall come to pass. The decree is your conception. The greater Me is the one who brings it to pass. You do not bring it to pass by your efforts. You bring it to pass by your conception, and the greater Me does the work. This is why all things are possible to him who believes. Belief is the acceptance of the conception. When the conception is accepted, the greater Me responds.

The story of Mary is the story of every man. Mary is the awareness of being, the greater Me that ever remains virgin, no matter how many conceptions it gives birth to. You are this greater Me. You are impregnated by your own desire. When you conceive a desire, you are the greater Me becoming one with that desire. The greater Me then brings forth the child, the manifestation. For thy maker is thine husband. The greater Me is your maker, your husband, the one who brings forth what you have conceived. Secrecy is observed because the conception must be held within until it is established. If you discuss it with others, you are likely to receive their doubts, which are their own conceptions, and these may disturb your own. The greater Me responds to your conception, not to the conceptions of others. Keep the conception within, and let the greater Me bring it to pass.

You are told to magnify the Lord. The Lord is the greater Me, your awareness of being. To magnify the Lord is to expand your conception of yourself until it feels natural. When the conception feels natural, the greater Me has accepted it, and the birth takes place. The naturalness is the sign that the greater Me has taken the conception as its own. Do not speculate as to how the greater Me will bring forth your conception. No man knows the way. The greater Me has ways that you know not of. Its ways are past finding out. Your part is to conceive and to feel the conception as true. The greater Me takes care of the how. When you try to figure out the how, you are doubting the power of the greater Me to respond. You are putting your trust in your own wisdom rather than in the greater Me.

The greater Me is not mocked. You are ever receiving that which you are aware of being. If you give thanks for something you have not yet seen, but feel as though you have received it, you have established the conception, and the greater Me will bring it to pass. The thanks is the sign that the conception is accepted. Thank you, father is the inner feeling of having received. The greater Me honors that feeling. To get into the nature of the thing desired, you release all condemnation of others. For if you hold anything against another, you are binding that condition in your own world. The greater Me responds to your conception, and if your conception includes blame, it brings forth the experience of being blamed or of blaming. Release all, and the greater Me is free to respond to your new conception without the old weights.

Tithing is giving to the greater Me the quality you desire. When you claim yourself to be wealthy, you are giving wealth to the greater Me. When you claim yourself to be healthy, you are giving health to the greater Me. The greater Me, being no respecter of persons, returns to you pressed down and running over with that quality. You tithe by your conception. You give to the greater Me what you wish to receive. I AM the vine and ye are the branches. The greater Me is the vine. The qualities you are conscious of being are the branches. As long as you are conscious of being limited, the branch of limitation is fed by the greater Me. When you withdraw your attention from that conception and become conscious of being free, the old branch withers and the new branch is fed. The greater Me sustains whatever conception you hold.

To dissolve a problem, you remove your attention from it and feel yourself to be the solution. The greater Me then responds to the new conception and the problem dissolves. You have seen this happen when people in debt have taken their attention from the debt and felt themselves to be free. The greater Me responded, and the debts were removed. You have seen those given up as incurable take their attention from the disease and feel themselves to be well. The greater Me responded, and the disease vanished. Your answer to Whom do you say that I AM? determines your expression. The greater Me is asking you this eternal question. Whom do you say that you are? Your answer is your conception. If you say, I am poor, the greater Me brings forth poverty. If you say, I am the one in whom all things are possible, the greater Me brings forth that state. The question is addressed to your self by your true being, the greater Me.

You believe in God. Believe also in me, the greater Me within you. For the greater Me is the God you have been seeking. It is not afar off. It is nearer than your hands and feet. It is your awareness of being. Before the world was, I AM. When the world shall cease to be, I AM. This I AM is the greater Me, and it is yours. Except the greater Me build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except your desire is first established as a conception in the greater Me, you labor in vain to find it in the world. All things must begin and end in the greater Me. Blessed is the man who trusts in the greater Me, for his faith in the greater Me is his confidence in himself.

No man taketh away your life. You lay it down yourself by your conception, and you take it up again by a new conception. The greater Me gives you the power to lay it down and the power to take it up. Nothing happens to you that is not under the guidance of the greater Me responding to your conception. There are no accidents. There is only perfect response. No man comes unto you except the greater Me within you draws him. And you and the greater Me are one. Believe this truth and you will be free. You have always blamed others for that which you are. You will continue to do so until you find yourself as cause of all through your conception. The greater Me comes not to destroy but to fulfill. It destroys nothing but ever fulfills the molds or conception one has of one's self.

It is impossible for the poor man to find wealth in this world no matter how he is surrounded with it until he first claims himself to be wealthy in his conception. For signs follow, they do not precede. To constantly kick and complain against the limitations of poverty while remaining poor in conception is to play the fool's game. Changes cannot take place from that level of conception, for the greater Me is constantly out-picturing all levels of conception. Follow the example of the prodigal son. Realize that you yourself brought about this condition of waste and lack by your conception, and make the decision within yourself to rise to a higher level where the fatted calf, the ring, and the robe await your claim. There was no condemnation of the prodigal when he had the courage to claim this inheritance as his own. Others will condemn you only as long as you continue in that for which you condemn yourself. So, happy is the man that condemneth himself not in that which he alloweth. For to the greater Me nothing is condemned. All is expressed according to conception.

Life does not care whether you call yourself rich or poor, strong or weak. It will eternally reward you with that which you claim as true of yourself through your conception. The measurements of right and wrong belong to man alone. To the greater Me there is nothing right or wrong. It simply responds. As Paul stated, I know and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Stop asking yourself whether you are worthy or unworthy to receive that which you desire. You, as man, did not create the desire. Your desires are ever fashioned within you because of what you now claim yourself to be in your conception. The greater Me honors the desire by responding to the conception that gave it birth.

When a man is hungry, without thinking, he automatically desires food. When imprisoned, he automatically desires freedom. Your desires contain within themselves the plan of self-expression. So leave all judgments out of the picture and rise in consciousness to the level of your desire and make yourself one with it by claiming it to be so now. For the greater Me's grace is sufficient for thee. Its strength is made perfect in weakness. Have faith in this unseen claim until the conviction is born within you that it is so. Your confidence in this claim will pay great rewards. Just a little while and the thing desired will come. But without faith it is impossible to realize anything. Through faith the worlds were framed because faith is the substance of the thing hoped for, the evidence of the thing not yet seen. The greater Me is the substance. Your conception is the evidence.

Don't be anxious or concerned as to results. They will follow just as surely as day follows night. Look upon your desires as the spoken words of the greater Me, and every word or desire a promise. The reason most of us fail to realize our desires is because we are constantly conditioning them. Do not condition your desire. Just accept it as it comes to you. Give thanks for it to the point that you are grateful for having already received it. Then go about your way in peace. Such acceptance of your desire is like dropping seed, fertile seed, into prepared soil. For when you can drop the thing desired in the greater Me by feeling it as true, you have done all that is expected of you. But to be worried or concerned about the how of your desire maturing is to hold these fertile seeds in a mental grasp, and therefore never to have dropped them in the soil of confidence.

The reason men condition their desires is because they constantly judge after the appearance of being and see the things as real, forgetting that the only reality is the greater Me backing them. To see things as real is to deny that all things are possible to the greater Me. The man who is imprisoned and sees his four walls as real is automatically denying the urge or promise of the greater Me within him of freedom. A question often asked when this statement is made is: If one's desire is a gift of the greater Me, how can you say that if one desires to kill a man that such a desire is good and therefore the greater Me sent it? In answer to this let me say that no man desires to kill another. What he does desire is to be freed from such a one. But because he does not believe that the desire to be free from such a one contains within itself the powers of freedom, he conditions that desire and sees the only way to express such freedom is to destroy the man, forgetting that the life wrapped within the desire has ways that he, as man, knows not of. Its ways are past finding out.

Thus man distorts the gifts of the greater Me through his lack of faith. Problems are the mountains spoken of that can be removed if one has but the faith of a grain of a mustard seed. Men approach their problem as did the old lady who on attending service heard the priest say, If you had but the faith of a grain of a mustard seed you would say unto yonder mountain be thou removed and it shall be removed and nothing is impossible to you. That night as she said her prayers, she quoted this part of the scriptures and retired to bed in what she thought was faith. On arising in the morning, she rushed to the window and exclaimed, I knew that old mountain would still be there! For this is how man approaches his problem. He knows that they are still going to confront him. And because the greater Me is no respecter of persons and destroys nothing, it continues to keep alive that which he is conscious of being.

Things will disappear only as man changes in consciousness. Deny it if you will, it still remains a fact that the greater Me is the only reality and things but mirror that which you are in the greater Me. So the heavenly state you are seeking will be found only in the greater Me, for the greater Me is the kingdom of heaven within you. You can see now why this truth is the key to all fulfillment. The greater Me responds to your conception of it. There is no other way. There is no other power. There is no other God. The greater Me is all, and it is yours. To know this is to be free. To live this is to see your world transformed. For the greater Me is faithful, and it is ever at work responding to you.

As you rest in this truth tonight, you can feel the greater Me as the reality of your being. It is not something you must become. It is what you are. Your only task is to conceive of yourself as you desire to be and to let the greater Me respond. It will respond. It always has. It always will. For the greater Me is your own awareness of being, and it cannot deny itself. This is the peace that passes all understanding. This is the joy that comes when you know that the greater Me is on your side, responding to your every conception with perfect fidelity. You are not alone. You are not powerless. You are the one whose conception the greater Me is bringing to pass. Rest in this. Live from this. And see your world become the response of the greater Me to the greater conception you now hold of yourself.

The greater Me is you. And you are the greater Me in expression. There is no separation. There is only the response of the greater to the conception. And the conception is now in your hands. You hold it. You feel it. You are it. And the greater Me, being one with you, brings it to pass without fail. This is the truth that was before the world began and that remains when the world is no more. This is the greater Me responding to you now.