Neville Goddard Lecture: “Occupant or Inmate” (1966)

13 Jul Neville Goddard Lecture: “Occupant or Inmate” (1966)

11/22/66

(This lecture was slightly abbreviated and originally typed by someone else. Tape?)

Tonight’s subject is Occupant or Inmate. An occupant dwells in; one who establishes title to unknown property by dwelling in it. An inmate is confined, as in a prison or asylum. An occupant is free to come and go; chances are he doesn’t really move and remains just where he is. The inmate feels he can’t move, feels he’s retrained by law. He doesn’t know he’s just as free as the occupant and vice versa. The occupant is free by our standards, the inmate is not free; but by this law both are free. Christ is what God means by man. If you know who Christ is, then Christ is what “man” means to God. “Christ in you is the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27); “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26); “Christ is the very image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). So I say, Christ is what God means by man. If you know who Christ is…I tell you he is your own wonderful human Imagination…then that is what you should mean by God. So, you tie God and man together. God is man and man is God. God is infinite man and man confined to his senses is finite God.

So tonight I am going to try to show the difference between the two and how both really are free, though they don’t know it. In the beginning of John they asked him, “Where do you live?” He said, “Come and see, follow me” (1:38). Well, to follow him is to move, isn’t it? If you said to me, “Where do you dwell?” and I said, “Come and see, follow me,” and then I start and you follow me, aren’t you moving from where you are to where I’m going to take you? So here we find motion. Come with me, I’ll show you where I dwell. Where do we dwell? That state to which we constantly return constitutes our dwelling place. It is a state. For example, a lady called to say people don’t like her where she works. This same pattern has happened many times, one job after another…she knows they don’t like her. When I tell her, do you realize the whole vast world is all Imagination? No, not for a moment can she grasp it. The world of reality is the world of Imagination, and you imagine they are talking against you and don’t like you time after time? Then where are you dwelling?

Well, tonight I want to show you all how to move. Because if you move from one state where you are into any state in this world, that state is waiting for occupancy. And the great fallacy of the world is perpetual construction and deferred occupancy. I don’t occupy it. If I would only occupy the state I have constructed in my mind’s eye—wouldn’t it be wonderful to be and name it in my mind’s eye. But then I say, “Oh, it couldn’t be. I’m not born to it, I don’t have the social, educational, etc.” So because I believe I can’t, I remain in my present state. Now listen to these words, “Do not think that I came to bring peace upon the earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword; to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother…and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Mat.10:34). No other enemies! These words are everlastingly true; you have no other enemies but those of your own household…my physical wife, son, etc.? No, they aren’t my household. My household is all within my own wonderful human Imagination. These are my intimates, and all my enemies are in my Imagination, personified in what I think is this one or that one whether it be when I go to work and think they are ganging up to get me out of this job though my record is good. I am my only enemy, for the whole vast world is within myself. If it really is so, and all the states are really waiting for occupancy, how do I move into another state?