Neville Goddard Lectures: “Living Water”

15 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “Living Water”

by Neville Goddard April 19, 1963

The very first symbol given us in the Bible is that of water. You find it in the 2nd verse, the 1st chapter of Genesis. Before his first creative act, we’re told that God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” Before his first creative act, he moved upon the face of the waters. Water is a very precious symbol to me because of my first vision at the age of seven.

But what is this water that he is speaking of? Here we are told in the 2nd chapter, 13th verse of Jeremiah, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that hold no water.” So here, he now defines himself as living water. In the 4th chapter, the 10th verse of John we are told, “If you only knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Here we find the same living water. He’s telling you he has the power to give you living water, which God defined as himself.

So what is the living water? Here, you listen to it carefully, for now we have the truth. And this is in the Book of Proverbs, the 27th chapter, the 19th verse, “As in water face answers to face, so the mind of man reflects the man.” Now we see what the water is: as in water face answers to face, so the mind of man reflects the man, not the mind. The mind is but a reflector—it reflects the man, the operant power. He has living water.

Blake, of whom I am very fond and speak about all the time, his first vision was that of a tree of angels, at the age of eight or nine. So he came into the family, and he told his parents he’d just seen a tree full of angels. His father, to make him a sensible boy, prepared to give him a sound thrashing. Fortunately for Blake, his mother interceded and saved him. Maybe that’s what mothers are for, to protect us from our violent fathers. Nevertheless, he wasn’t thrashed, but the father wanted to make him a reasonable, sound, solid citizen; and he was seeing angels in a tree. That’s the earliest thought we have of Blake, of anything said about Blake, and the last thought is said about a neighbor woman who was present at his deathbed. Then she went home, and she told her relatives she had just been at the death not of a man but a blessed angel. That’s what Blake taught all his life: “We become what we behold.” And here a neighbor could say she saw the death not of a man but a blessed angel.

No, he didn’t become it immediately. And undoubtedly there were unnumbered moments in his life in the seventy years that he lived where there were many, many an unangelic moment, if you read the story of Blake carefully; but in the end, he fulfilled what he beheld. All through his greatest poem, Jerusalem, that one thought permeates the entire hundred plates. “They become what they behold.” We do, every one of us. And so what is your concept of yourself today? Is your concept truly what it ought to be? A child of God or a child of Mrs. Brown? Sweet and lovely as Mrs. Brown is, sweet and lovely as your parents are in this world, it can’t compare to the concept you could hold of yourself, which is “I am the child of God.” If that truly is your concept of yourself, and you look into the mirror of your mind and behold such a concept of self, it may not appear immediately in your world, but it will appear. For by this law, we become what we behold.