Neville Goddard Lectures: “Natural Effects Have Spiritual Causes”

23 Feb Neville Goddard Lectures: “Natural Effects Have Spiritual Causes”

5/3/68

Every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems; it is a delusion of the perishing vegetable memory. We do not remember these moments in time when we imagined certain states. So when that imaginal state takes form so we can see it with the outer eye we do not recognize our own harvest and deny that we had anything to do with these natural effects that are taking place in our world. Because our memory is faulty, we do not remember them.

“There is a moment in every day,” said Blake, “that Satan cannot find, nor can his watch fiends find it, but the industrious find this moment and it multiply. And when it once is found, it renovates every moment of the day if rightly placed.” Now, by the word Satan he simply means doubt. Doubt cannot find it. I desire a certain state in this world. Reason tells me it’s difficult, my friends tell me it’s impossible, and so if I doubt that I could ever realize it— that’s the voice of Satan speaking to me. He’s always challenging God. God is my own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. So the protagonists are God and Satan…simply faith and doubt. Can I imagine that I am the one that I would like to be, and remain faithful to that assumption as though it were true? If I can, and remember that assumption and when I did it, then I can see when it happens in my world the relationship between the natural effect and its spiritual cause. The spiritual cause is that moment of assumption.

Now let me share with you what was given to me this past week in the form of a letter (he’s here tonight). His father was a low man on the totem pole when he first encountered him. There were four in the shop and he was the fourth man. If you’re familiar with the barber shop—maybe you ladies don’t know—the boss always has the first chair, so if it’s a slow day, he gets the man. By the time he is through if the second one comes in, he gets the second one…he doesn’t share him. If three should come in, they go to the different chairs. But four chairs…the fourth one waits for his customer. Well, this friend of mine, one day he happened to sit in his chair and he liked the way he cut his hair, and gathered from what he said he liked cutting hair. He was proud of the profession as a barber, proud of it…not making excuses as so many barbers do. He was proud to be a barber and wanted to be the very best barber and win competitions. So having heard this man express this desire, he imagined that he was tops. Well, in a little while he bought out his father and then dismissed him, and rearranged his setup, and from then on began to proceed to the top.

Well, three weeks ago, while sitting in his chair—which is not the boss-father is his father, for he was the low man and now he’s top man—he said to him in a very excited way that there was a contest to be held in San Francisco and he would like to enter this contest for hair styling and cutting of hair. “Well, when I discovered that he really wanted it, and no one goes to a contest unless he wants to win, I saw on the wall the trophy that would be his and I heard him tell me how he won. Well, there were four men in the shop, one committed for that weekend, and so this past weekend he took two with him…so there were three from that shop of four men. There were only nine trophies given in the state in this competition, and that one little shop won four. The boss-father won first prize and the second prize, and his two men who went with him each won a second prize. So they came back from San Francisco bearing four out of the nine.”