Neville Goddard Lectures: “States and the Meditating Being”

16 Jan Neville Goddard Lectures: “States and the Meditating Being”

3/22/68

One will say, “I don’t think others understand you.” What they really mean is “I don’t.” This question was asked of me to explain from the platform, “When you use the word ‘states,’ I don’t think that others really understand what you mean by states, so will you explain?” Tonight I will try to.

We’re told in scripture that all of us are sons of the Most High, not just a few, all of us. Then we are told, “Nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as any prince” (Ps. 82:1, 6). Now, I mean states into which we fall. When I say we fall, we fall into states. There are an infinite number of states. So let me define states. A state is simply an attitude of mind, it’s a phase of experience, it’s a body of belief, and we live by our beliefs. So we fall into these states; or we can, finding ourselves here, move into these states consciously. If we do not know we’re always expressing a state, then we identify ourselves with the state, and we say “I am poor or I am rich, I am known or I am unknown, I am wanted, I am unwanted” and we go on indefinitely because there are unnumbered states into which we fall. Now, Blake made the statement, “Eternity exists and all things in Eternity independent of Creation which was an act of mercy” and he completes this thought by saying, “You will see from this I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil” (Vision of Last Judgment). So you find yourself in a state, or it seems a seeming other in a state identifies itself with the state or the other, and then we condemn self or the other. Now he said that it must be imputed to the state, whatever you judge it is, and not of the soul or the individual who occupies that state.

Now, when we are told we are sons of the Most High then we are brothers. If we’re all sons of the one Most High then we are brothers. As brothers of this highest unity we are also, at the same time, members of the ultimate reality that is God the Father. The states into which we fall do not and cannot in eternity impair or mar or in any way hurt that immortal son who simply fell into these states. For he did not do it willingly…it’s the Father’s will that we, his creative power, descend into these states. As we are told in the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans: “And the creatures were made subject unto futility, not willingly but by reason of the will of him who subjected them in hope” (verse 20). So that here his creative power is let down—we call it, it falls—into division. There is a unity in God, therefore he’s God the Father; but God the Father is made up of gods the sons. And so the fall into division…as we pass through states they result in resurrection into unity, each bringing back the results of the experience of the passage through states.

Now, while we’re here in states, you can change in a twinkle of an eye, change the state. But the chances are you are not going to remain in that change, for it is also made up of a body of beliefs. So if I actually now operate morning, noon and night from a certain base which is my body of beliefs, the chances are tonight when I go to sleep I’ll sleep in it. I know I can get out of it, but how long will I remain out of it to make that state into which I go a natural one? I can move tonight to a hotel room and then move back tomorrow night to my apartment, or I could decide to move and change my way of living, and after eight years move to another environment, another place altogether. Now when I move to another place then I have actually moved into a different state. In one sense I have…I can move into a different state financially, socially, intellectually, in all the different…because there are infinite states. The occupant of the state is not better than the occupant of another state; we are brothers. We’re all brothers in this highest unity and one in the body of the Father, only one.