#98: The Crown of the Mysteries

The Crown of the Mysteries

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have walked through your days believing that imagination was a pleasant diversion, a faculty given to lighten the burden of the senses, something to be indulged when the outer world permitted and dismissed when serious affairs demanded your attention. But tonight you make a discovery that changes everything forever. This discovery is that your own wonderful human imagination is divine. It is not a power you own among other powers; it is the very presence and action of God within you. It is the creative force by which the worlds were framed and by which your personal world is continually made and remade.

All the mysteries that have perplexed the mind of man are crowned in this single realization. When you discover that imagination is divine, you understand why assumption has power to objectify itself. You understand why the feeling you entertain in the secret place of your mind inevitably clothes itself in form and circumstance. You are no longer dealing with a psychological trick or a mental exercise. You are dealing with God himself, individualized as your own consciousness and operating through the faculty you have called imagination.

The assumption of the wish fulfilled is the crown of the mysteries because it is the highest use of this divine imagination. In the moment you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are lifted up in consciousness. You are no longer thinking about the thing desired; you are thinking from it. You are no longer hoping that it may one day be yours; you are conscious of being it now. This lifting up is not an effort of the will. It is the natural movement of the divine imagination when it is allowed to assume its rightful office. The assumption carries you over the unknown seas to the fulfillment of your dream, and realization follows as a subconscious and effortless process.

You ask how this can be. You ask because you have not yet fully accepted the discovery. If imagination is divine, then it cannot be limited by the evidence of the senses. If imagination is divine, then its assumptions are creative acts, not idle fancies. If imagination is divine, then the feeling you give to an idea is the very substance that will clothe that idea in your world. These are not statements to be argued; they are truths to be lived. The man who has made the discovery does not argue. He simply assumes the feeling and lets the divine imagination do its work.

Consider what this means in the quiet of your own mind. When you shut the door of the senses and retire into the stillness, you are not escaping reality; you are entering the only true reality there is. In that stillness the divine imagination is free to assume any state you will give it. You do not beg or petition. You do not outline the ways and means. You simply feel yourself to be the person you desire to be, or to possess the thing you desire to possess. That feeling is the assumption. That assumption is the crown. In that moment you have exercised the highest power given to man, and the world without must conform.

The drama of your life is a psychological drama, and every scene is written and produced by your assumptions. The divine imagination does not argue with your feeling. It accepts the feeling as its command and proceeds to objectify it. Therefore, watch your assumptions with all diligence, for out of them are the issues of life. If you assume lack, the divine imagination will clothe you with the circumstances of lack. If you assume fulfillment, the divine imagination will clothe you with the circumstances of fulfillment. It is not partial. It is not selective in any moral sense. It is divine, and therefore it is faithful to the feeling you have given it.

This discovery transforms your entire sense of self. You cease to regard yourself as a victim of conditions and begin to recognize yourself as the operant power. The conditions that once seemed so fixed and unyielding are now seen as the out-picturing of former assumptions. Change the assumption in the divine imagination, and the conditions must change. There is no other way, for consciousness is the only reality, and imagination is the creative arm of consciousness. When you know this, you no longer strive to change the outer world by outer means. You assume the new state in imagination, and the outer world rearranges itself to match the new assumption.

The end of all longing is being. You have longed for this or that because you believed yourself to be other than the thing longed for. But when you discover that your imagination is divine, you understand that you can translate your dream into being by assuming the feeling of the dream fulfilled. Perpetual construction of future states without the consciousness of already being them is the fallacy that keeps men in bondage. The divine imagination does not deal in futures. It deals in the present. When you assume the feeling, the future has already become present in your consciousness, and the divine imagination proceeds to make it present in your world.

You will find that this discovery brings a quiet certainty that nothing can disturb. The senses may report the opposite of your assumption. The circumstances may seem to deny it. But you remember that the divine imagination is the cause, and the report of the senses is the effect. The effect cannot dictate to the cause. You persist in the assumption, not because you are stubborn, but because you have discovered the true nature of the power you are using. Persistence is not effort; it is the natural staying in the state you have assumed until it becomes your dwelling place.

In your daily experience this discovery changes everything without strain. You walk the streets aware that every person you meet is yourself pushed out, the embodiment of some assumption you have made concerning the world and concerning yourself. You do not judge after appearances, for you know that appearances are the children of assumption. You assume the best for yourself and for others, and the divine imagination proceeds to objectify the assumption. Relationships that once seemed fixed in conflict soften and rearrange themselves. Opportunities that once seemed closed open. Health that once seemed impaired responds to the new assumption of wholeness. All this happens without your taking thought for the how. The divine imagination knows the way.

The assumption is everything. Realization is subconscious and effortless. When you have truly assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you do not need to wonder whether it will come to pass. You know that it must come to pass, because the divine imagination cannot deny its own assumption. You go about your affairs in the outer world with a quiet mind, for you have done all that is required of you. You have assumed the state. The rest is the automatic response of the divine imagination to its own command.

Many who hear these words will say that it is too simple. They will look for complications because they have not yet made the discovery. They still believe that imagination is something other than divine. But you who have heard and who are willing to test the discovery will find that simplicity is the mark of truth. The divine imagination does not require elaborate techniques or prolonged rituals. It requires only that you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and remain faithful to that assumption. Faith is not belief in something outside yourself. Faith is the assumption that what you feel within is already so.

When doubts arise, as they will, you do not fight them. You simply return to the assumption. The divine imagination is not disturbed by doubts. It is faithful to the dominant feeling. Therefore, make the assumption dominant. Let it be the feeling to which you return again and again until it becomes your natural state. Then the doubts will fade of themselves, for there is no room for doubt in the consciousness of one who knows that his imagination is divine.

This discovery is not something you acquire once and for all. It is something you remember and re-enter daily. Every night as you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled before you sleep, you are crowning the discovery anew. Every morning as you rise in the consciousness of already being the person you desire to be, you are exercising the divine imagination. The crown is not a distant attainment. It is the present act of assuming the feeling. In that act the mysteries are resolved, and your life becomes the visible expression of an invisible power that is none other than God himself.

You are not asked to believe something that is foreign to your nature. You are asked to discover what has always been true of you. Your imagination has always been divine. You have simply used it unconsciously, and therefore you have out-pictured both the things you desired and the things you feared. Now you use it consciously. You assume only the states you wish to experience. You give the divine imagination only the feelings you wish to see embodied. And because it is divine, it will not fail you.

The present moment is all-important, for it is only in the present moment that you can assume the feeling. The future must become present in your mind if you would have it become present in your world. You imagine that you already are what you will be when the assumption is fulfilled. You feel the naturalness of it. You let the feeling fill your consciousness until it crowds out every other feeling. In that moment the divine imagination has received its command, and the command will be obeyed.

There is no need to force anything into being. Creation is finished. The divine imagination does not create something new; it manifests what already exists in the infinite. Your assumption selects the state and gives it expression in your world. You do not make wealth or health or love. You assume the feeling of being wealthy or healthy or loving, and the divine imagination objectifies the assumption. Your only impotence lies in refusing to assume. Your only power lies in the willingness to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Live, then, in the sublime spirit of this discovery. Disregard appearances. Disregard the evidence of the senses when it denies your assumption. Rest in the knowledge that your imagination is divine and that its assumptions are creative. The world you desire already exists in the infinite. Your assumption is the bridge by which you cross from the state you are in to the state you desire to be. Walk that bridge in feeling, and the divine imagination will see to the rest.

You will find that this way of living is effortless once the discovery is made. There is no anxious planning, no feverish striving, no bargaining with life. There is only the quiet assumption and the quiet trust that the divine imagination is faithful. You move through your days as one who knows that all things are possible to the consciousness that has discovered its own divinity. You are not arrogant. You are not boastful. You are simply certain. And that certainty is the crown you wear.

Tonight, as you close your eyes and enter the stillness, remember the discovery. Your own wonderful human imagination is divine. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Let that feeling be as natural as breathing. Do not question how it will come to pass. The divine imagination knows the way, and its ways are past finding out. Persist in the assumption until it becomes your dwelling place. Then rise from your bed or from your chair as one who has placed the crown upon the mysteries and has found himself to be the operant power in his own world.

This is the crown of the mysteries: the discovery that your imagination is divine, and the daily assumption of the feeling that proves the discovery true. All else follows from this. The world without rearranges itself. The circumstances yield. The limitations dissolve. And you walk as one who has found the kingdom within, for the kingdom is the divine imagination assuming the states you give it. Assume the state of your desire fulfilled, and the crown is upon your head tonight and forever.