Neville Goddard Lecture: “The Bible is Addressed to the Imagination” (1967)

13 Jul Neville Goddard Lecture: “The Bible is Addressed to the Imagination” (1967)

By Neville Goddard – 11/6/67

Blake asked the Reverend Trussler, who always criticized him, “Why is it that the Bible is more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because it is addressed to the Imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and only immediately to the understanding or reason?” If you’ll take this thought of Blake, take it seriously, you’ll be amazed at what you get out of it. When you think there are sixty-six books, it’s a library in that one book of ours…sixty-six books. It’s a challenge, something addressed only to the Imagination. The understanding is simply like the mediator…it passes through, as though someone comes in to mediate some problem. And from the depths of your own soul you’re speaking to the surface of your being, the enormous, infinite Imagination speaking to human Imagination. So it’s not really addressed or directed to understanding or to reason.

Now, let us take just a simple theme tonight. I challenge you to test it. May I tell you, you will not disprove it; if you test it, you’ll prove it. This is what Paul said in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (5:7). Now, what does he mean? You and I when we walk by sight we know our way by objects that the eye sees. For instance, while we are seated here suppose the entire city was suddenly rearranged. Take a simple example, here is Wilshire…if all the buildings on the south were suddenly transferred, still related to each other, to the north of Wilshire, and all of the north to the south; and this building here, which is now north of Wilshire is just as far south as it is now north, and all the buildings that are now on this side equally distant…and you started home tonight and you turned here and turned toward Wilshire, and by habit you turned, say, to the west but as you go the Ambassador is on the north side, well, you know right away you’re going in the wrong direction. Then here is the Brown Derby, that’s on the south side. Well, you know you’re in the wrong direction. So what do you do? You turn around. Do you know you’ll never get home?

But fortunately for us in our simple childlike manner, these things are fairly stable. Not completely, because if someone came back from the last century into New York City today, who knew New York City well, they would not know New York City. They would have to be directed and ask question after question where to go and so and so. I came back to New York City in 1922. Well, I have lived there for years, and go back every year, and every year an old landmark is gone and some towering thing is in its place. So I know the city well…I haven’t really left it, because going back every year for at least five or six weeks at a time, I keep in touch with it. But if you are gone, say, for a long spell of time, you wouldn’t even know it. They change the names of the streets. What was, when I first came there, Sixth Avenue is now called the Avenue of the Americas. You wouldn’t know where you are, because that was not something…it didn’t exist. So now, that’s how I walk by sight. When I walk by sight I know my way by objects that my eye sees.

Now how do I walk as Paul said he walked and invites us all to walk? He said, “I walk by faith, not by sight.” When I walk by faith, I order my life by objects that only my Imagination sees, that’s all, when I know where I want to go. Where do I want to go? I want to go to the top of his particular business. I want to be promoted from where I am to where I want to be. Well now, how do I rearrange the structure of my mind? I can’t rearrange the structure of the outside physically, that doesn’t help me. But if I walk by faith, I will now walk by a rearrangement of the structure of my mind, all the things of my mind, and so set them up that that’s all that I see. I must now remain faithful to this state.