Neville Goddard Lectures: “No Barrier But Self”

01 Nov Neville Goddard Lectures: “No Barrier But Self”

This is from Margaret Ruth Broome’s notes from either the San Francisco talks in 1953, and those given at the Science of Mind Church in 1954.

William Blake, the greatest bard of Imagination, was one of the truly great poets of our time. Poets can take liberties; that is their privilege. Blake did not take the prose of history and lift it to the level of poetry; rather, he wrote the poetry of his faith. This I know, for my visions have dovetailed his experiences, as well as those given in the greatest Book on Imagination – the Bible.

Christianity rests on the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God fulfilled his promise to Israel, to save mankind. These events have unfolded in me.

Although I can talk about these visions, and record them in the written form, I cannot bring you to the point of their experience. But I know the truth of Blake’s words when he said: “Man is all Imagination, and God is Man and exists in us and we in Him. The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination; that is God Himself.”

Blake, recording his experiences in poetic form proclaimed: “The true method of knowledge is experiment and the true faculty of knowing is experience.” This faculty I will speak of now.

In 1925, while visiting London, I met an old Scotsman who told me that my attitude of mind determined my life. That I need not be enslaved by life but could control my future by my present thinking. This idea intrigued me. I was fascinated by the thought that, in spite of my limited education and background, I could transcend my environment. Seeing my interest, this gentleman gave me some twenty or thirty books. These I read from cover to cover, as I was hungry for the knowledge I found there.

In 1927, I experienced my first involuntary astral projection. This particular night, while in my hotel room I felt a peculiar sensation begin in my head. It intensified and I found myself catapulted out of this body and placed on a beach among strangers. I knew what had happened and desired to return to my room. The moment my desire was expressed, I was back in my room in my physical body once more.

With my eyes closed, and knowing I was in my hotel room, I intensified the feeling in my head and was again whisked out of the body, but this time I remained in the room. I then moved around the room and looked down at the body on the bed. The body, itself, was clearly visible, but the head was covered with a white substance like a cloud which parted briefly allowing me to glimpse the face. Then I told myself that since I was spirit, I could go through the wall. I tried, but the wall was so solidly real I could not penetrate it. Frustrated, I made a running jump and hit the wall so hard I knocked myself out and came to in my body with a frightful headache.

A few months later I again found myself released from the confines of my body. Remembering my former experience, I quietly imagined myself elsewhere, and in the twinkling of an eye I was there. Then I knew that I was all Imagination.

I had given reality to the wall so I could not go through it. Although I gave reality to the interior of that room, the instant I imagined myself elsewhere, I was there, even though I had no feeling of having moved.

As I began to experiment, I realized that there was no barrier except myself. That my feeling of stupidity or lack was within me, limiting me, keeping me from fulfilling my desires. I realized that it was up to me to exercise my great talent of Imagination, as it is up to you, for as Blake says, “Man is all Imagination and God is Man.”

Begin now to prove to yourself that you are all Imagination. We are told in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Paul does not say this earthly body will be redeemed, but that when it is destroyed, we will have a house made without hands, eternal in the heavens.

The body you now wear is the limit of opacity and restriction which you, all Imagination allowed yourself to reach when he entered its skull. At that moment Imagination became a living soul. It is from this restriction that God can turn around and awaken, allowing you to know that you are God. Then and only then will you clothe yourself with your garment that is made without hands and is eternal in the heavens.