Neville Goddard Lectures: “Go Down to the Potter’s House”

19 Jan Neville Goddard Lectures: “Go Down to the Potter’s House”

11/24/64

Tonight is like every night, really, the same story told over and over and over. The title is taken from the 18th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah. “And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ‘Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and so he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do” (verse 1). Now the word potter by definition is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s the potter. So, if I go down to the potter’s house, I simply turn my interest within and wonder what am I imagining? So I hold myself or I hold you or some situation in my mind’s eye and it’s not as I would like it to be, so I am making something that seemingly at the moment is spoiled. But I don’t discard it. I reshape it into another state, as it seemed good to me to do. So I am called upon to practice this wonderful art of reshaping images that are not as they ought to be based upon my desire for them. So I hear something of a friend and it’s not good, alright, I’m holding it if I heard it in my mind’s eye. I am told not to accept it because reason dictates it, my senses allow it, but to reshape it into another vessel as it seems good to me to do.

Now the entire chapter, the 18th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah is devoted to repentance. If I say that I will give evil to this nation and they repent, then I will repent of the evil that I intended. If, on the other hand, I say I will do good and they turn from their way into the evil way, I will repent of the good that I said I would do for them (verse 10). So the whole thing is based upon change of mind and the whole thing is based upon God. There is only God in this world, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. So, I go down to the potter’s house and the potter is Imagination. It shapes, it fashions. One of the definitions is “To determine, to make a resolution.” So you resolve to do this, that or the other. So at the moment when you resolve to do it, to be successful in this world or to be something in this world other than what you are—-at the moment of your resolution reason denies it, your senses deny it, but you resolve to do it— you are told to remain faithful to that resolution. If you remain faithful to it, trusting in your imaginal act as though it were fact, then it will externalize itself within your world…if you remain faithful to the imaginal act. That’s what the story is telling us.