Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Art of Dying” (1965)

23 Jan Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Art of Dying” (1965)

1/26/65

Tonight’s subject, the title may seem strange, I call it “The Art of Dying.” If it seems to you at the moment too spiritual, may I tell you, whatever is most profoundly spiritual you will find in the end to be most directly practical. There’s nothing more practical in this world than that which is most profoundly spiritual, and tonight this is the art of dying. The art of dying…in the Book of John we’re told, “Greater love has no man than this that man lay down his life for his friends” (15:13). Many people have taken this passage and interpreted it as a man going into battle and offering his body to protect his friends. It’s a noble gesture, and certainly marvelous, but that hasn’t a thing to do with this passage, not a thing to do with it. When I lay down my life for my friends, I do not step before the knife or the gun and give my body in place of theirs. This is something entirely different. Tonight we will show you the inwardness of this law.

Paul said, “Every day I die!” (1Cor. 15:31). Well, if every day I die and if today I gave this body, I couldn’t tomorrow die; but every day while I wear this body I die. Well, how do I do it? Let us turn now to Blake, one who had a clear, clear perfect vision. In his 96th Plate of Jerusalem he made the statement: “Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image, nor can man exist without brotherhood.” Can’t exist but by brotherhood. Well, how do I do it? Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image. Man is only the sum of all of his beliefs, all of his impressions, that’s what I am, that’s what you are. If you want to know a man you’ve got to get behind his words, even his thoughts, to the beliefs from which they spring. So I am the sum total of all of my beliefs.

So I meet you on the street or I hear of you, so I meet you and you don’t look well, or someone writes me and they tell me that you are not well, that’s an impression. So thereafter if I think of you that impression comes into my mind’s eye. I must learn the art of dying to that impression. I must bring you into my mind’s eye and put you into an entirely different light and see you as I ought to see you were you the one that I would love you to be. When I am self-persuaded that you are that new impression, I have died to the other impression. So every kindness on my part, every little kindness, is a little death in the Divine Image. That Divine Image is death…it must die and die all through love. For what is the Divine Image? Listen to it carefully as Blake defines it: “Mercy, pity, peace and love is God, our Father dear; and mercy, pity, peace and love is man his child and care.”