Neville Goddard Lectures: “Raise Imagination To The State Of Vision”

11 Feb Neville Goddard Lectures: “Raise Imagination To The State Of Vision”

2/26/68

Blake said, “We have only to raise Imagination to the state of vision and the thing is done.”

Just imagine it’s all that you and I have to do…to raise Imagination to the state of vision and the thing is done. Anything, no matter what it is. When Blake used the word vision, he used it as the prophets of old used it in scripture. It’s not confined to the single sense of sight but takes in all the senses, either individually or in combinations. When we open the Bible and see the Book of Isaiah, it begins, “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz…Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken” (1:1,2). Here, vision is now sound, it’s audio. In the Book of Obadiah: “The vision of Obadiah. Thus says the Lord God…” again it is sound (1:1). You can take it in touch…sight, sound, scent, taste or touch.

Possibly the most difficult…we follow the Book of Job…to raise Imagination to the state of vision would be the sense of sight…when he said, “I had heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” That is the very last chapter, the 42nd of Job (verse 5). But you do not have to raise it to the state of sight to get the results; you can raise it to the state of sound. That seems to be the most popular in scripture. Yes, in the story of Jacob and his father Isaac it was the sense of touch. We are told that he was blind and he could not see, and the first out of the womb was Esau. Although they were twins the first one out was Esau, and therefore he had the right of inheritance by law. But Jacob, who was the smooth-skinned lad, to deceive his father through the sense of touch killed one of the flock of his father and took the skin and put it on his hands, and came towards the father.

Now, the drama unfolds within us. This is not a man who is blind with two sons that came out of the womb of his wife. No, the whole drama is unfolding in us. My Esau is the objective world that I know by reason of my senses. This room now is my Esau, it’s your Esau. But if I desire to be elsewhere or to see other than what I am seeing, what I desire which is now subjective for the moment is my Jacob. Now, can I use the same technique to supplant what I am experiencing with my outer senses? So Jacob comes clothed in the garments of the outer world; he puts on hairy garments, which is what Esau had at birth. So the outer world is Esau, the inner world is Jacob. But Jacob desires to become objective…so your desire, your longing is seeking some objective existence. And you are the one to grant it, for you are now the Isaac, the father consciousness that can give reality to an unseen subjective state.

So when he comes, he said, “Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not” (Gen. 27:21, 22). Then he said to him, “You have the voice that is the voice of Jacob, but you feel like my son Esau.” In other words, you have the feeling of Esau. Now here, the sense of sound was not equal to his sense of touch, so he had developed the sense of touch beyond that of sound. Others develop sound beyond that of touch, and the last would be that of sight. But in this he said, “You smell the smell of Esau” and that’s when he had the smell and the touch, and he granted him the birthright. He granted him that which belonged to objective reality and gave him the right to become an objective fact in the world.