Neville Goddard Lectures: “Imagination’s Power”

09 Nov Neville Goddard Lectures: “Imagination’s Power”

9/15/69

___(??) with the series. May I tell you, each night is complete in itself. And I want to tell you it will take between forty and forty-five minutes, that is followed by a short silence and then that is followed by questions and answers. But each night is complete in itself. There’s no commitment…come when you feel like it. I hope I will see you often, but there is no commitment. Every night I try to complete the thought.

Tonight’s subject is “Imagination’s Power.” I hope you will listen carefully. I hope I will get a nice response; that you will agree when I tell you that when I use the word Imagination, I mean God, I mean the Lord Jesus. To me they are interchangeable terms. Well, I can’t stop every night to explain this is what I mean. I take it for granted that you will know when I use the word Imagination I might just as well use the word Lord, the word God. Now we are told, “Commit your work to the Lord and it will be established” (Prvb.16:3) and that anyone who believes what he says will come to pass it will be done for him. No restriction on the power of belief. It doesn’t say that if you are good or that if you’re evil…this is wide open whether you’re kind or unkind. It’s a principle. I will share the principle with you and hope you will use it wisely and lovingly, but I can’t deny you the right to simply do it as you want to do it. You may be wicked in the doing, but it’s entirely up to you. But this is the principle: “The eternal body of man is the Imagination and that is God himself” (Blake, Laocoon)…the eternal body spoken of in scripture is the Lord Jesus. That is the being of whom I speak night after night.

Now let me share with you in the beginning before we develop it what I mean by it, so you’ll be fully aware of it. When my wife and I returned from San Francisco—we were there for a few weeks—and we checked in two suitcases. When we arrived in L. A., one was missing. We asked what must we do and they said to go to the Lost Department and register your complaint, so we did. They said to describe the bag and give us the contents which I did. Well, I couldn’t remember all as my wife packed the bag, and so I told what I thought was there. Then they said to me that when it comes, if it does, we will send it over. Well, it didn’t come…four days…we called several times, they called us several times, and it did not appear. At the end of the fourth day they said to us that it’s lost and to put in a claim; itemize the contents and the value, what it would take to replace the contents of the suitcase. So my wife having packed it, she did it. Got the entire thing settled to be sent off to headquarters in San Diego.

Early on the fifth day I said now I’ve done all that Caesar has asked of me—“render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”—that’s what Caesar demands. In my Imagination I saw the bag…not more clearly than you would now see the interior of your living room if you thought about it. Think of your living room. You don’t see it as clearly as you see me or see your neighbor, but you can see it. You know exactly what it looks like. It was not clearer than that. It was a black and grey bag, a very big bag that my daughter gave me two or three years ago. When you go for a long trip it’s heavily packed, and so it was a heavy bag. In my Imagination I lifted the bag and felt the weight of it. I could see it clearly just like this…not as clearly as this room, but I saw it clearly. Then I held it in my hands until I got the emotion of relief. For, of all the pleasures of the world relief is the most keenly felt.