Neville Goddard Lectures: “Pursue Truth With Ceaseless Questioning”
20 Mar Neville Goddard Lectures: “Pursue Truth With Ceaseless Questioning”
6/9/69
Take nothing on external authority of a church or the Bible without pursuing it with ceaseless statements. Here we have all these statements in scripture, statements from the church and statements from individuals like the speaker. Do not accept it because it comes from the Bible, comes from a church, and comes from a speaker…not until you have found God or a living truth in what they say or what the speaker says. If I tell you something, I am telling you from my own experience, but still don’t accept it until you with ceaseless questioning prove it within yourself.
To accept it because a church said it or the Bible said it or Neville said it is really silly. You must pursue it with ceaseless, ceaseless, I would say, questions. Why? Because along the pathway of the Spirit world where you and I are traveling there are many Babels, and like Babel no two speak with the same tongue. One will tell you give up all meat and you’ll enter the kingdom of God; another will tell you give up so and so and you will enter, and no two will speak with the same tongue. So you will find it all the way as man travels the spiritual way, the road called the road of Babel. It’s not multiple tongues as we have it today—we can overcome that with someone translating for us—but when someone tells you this is the way and that one tells you this is the way and they don’t agree this is Babel. So here we find Babel along the pathway of the Spirit.
You will find it very restful if you always fall back on first principle. Tonight we’ll fall back on first principle: “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps.46:10). No matter what happens to you, let that be your first principle: Be still and know that I am is God and with God all things are possible. Well now, put that to the test. If you put that to the test regardless of any change in your outer world and it proves itself in the testing, then you are free. It doesn’t matter what one calls on this side, what calls on that side, you know you’ve gone back to the first principle. And you don’t have to give up this and give up that and do anything in this world to enter the kingdom of God. So we go back to first principle, which is “I am God.” That is the first principle. Is it true? Well, just test it.
Now, let us go back to some of the “I am” statements in scripture: “I am the resurrection and the life. I am the way. I am the truth” (Jn.11:25; 14:6). Well, is this really true? Long before I proved it to be true I took it in this way…being human I wanted certain things, as undoubtedly you want certain things, and so I took it getting things. Like a trip when I could not afford it and I didn’t have a nickel and the trip would cost quite a lot of money. So I took it, “Be still and know that I am God.” Well, if I am is God and all things are possible to God, what I am imagining within myself should come to pass. So I tried it and it worked. I tried it again and it worked.
Having proven this in my own experience, I waited then for the other great statement that “I am the resurrection.” Now, how would I go about that? I knew no way to go about that. How would I prove that “I am the light”? I couldn’t do that. “I am the way, I am the truth,” these I couldn’t do. I could prove it in the world of Caesar that “I am” does create things in my world if I have absolute faith in it. So I am…and I named it. I began to imagine that I am on a ship when I didn’t have a nickel and I’m sailing in a certain direction. Then I got a letter from the family saying that “you’re the only member of the family not present at Christmas. We’re enclosing a draft to buy passage. We’ll take care of all expenses on the ship, use it freely; and we’ll greet you on the ship when you arrive and take care of all expenses. This is simply to buy maybe a suit and some linen that you may need, and then the draft will take care of these things. We’ve notified the agency in New York City to issue you a ticket.”