Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Art of Imagining”

03 Sep Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Art of Imagining”

5/11/65

Tonight is “The Art of Imagining.” I hope you will listen carefully and apply it. It will not fail you. Every natural effect in this world has an imaginal cause; the natural effect is only seeming, it’s an illusion. I don’t care what the effect is…the most normal natural thing in this world…and the reason why we do not recognize that it is produced by some imaginal, or you could use the word spiritual, cause is because that our memory is so fading, is so short. We can’t relate the thing that is taking place physically to anything we did in some imaginal moment. And so, if one could only believe that we’re not contending, as Paul said, against flesh and blood (meaning the natural world) we’re not contending against flesh and blood but against this darkness, the present darkness (Eph. 6:12). What does he mean by “this present darkness”? It means our ignorance of these invisible, spiritual causes. So we contend not against the flesh and blood but against spiritual darkness. Then he invites us to take the sword, the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, and then he tells us to pray at all times in the Spirit. Now, how would I take this instruction given to us in scripture and apply it in a practical manner?

Last Sunday night, a couple of friends were home for dinner. I must tell you the story that you may appreciate how this thing works. They both worked at RCA, that is, the show room that RCA had in L.A. One was in the Whirlpool Division, the other in the TV Division. The one who was in the TV Division is still there, and he’s been there for years. The one who was in the Whirlpool Division was there for two years, and he worked honestly and faithfully up to the end of last year. All through the great rush at Christmas he was on the job, his sales record was terrific, everything was perfect. Then came New Year’s Eve and he was paid off and told that that was the end of his service, after two years there. This chap came from Duke University. He’s an intelligent fellow. He worked for years downtown with Gulf Industries and then after almost thirteen years he quit. He was tired of it, took off a few months, and then got this job with RCA. He’s only forty years old…he will be forty his next birthday…and after two years at RCA, doing a wonderful job, he was fired.

Well, Sunday night at home, he asked me this question, he said, “Neville, when we create reality, as you say imagining creates reality, must we always do it consciously, deliberately, or can we do it without knowing that we’re doing it?” Well, may I tell you, you can’t stop doing it. It’s not only in the waking day, it’s through the night. There is only one creative power and that is your own wonderful human Imagination. So then he told me this story. He said, “We live together, as you know, we have a home in Eaglerock, that’s our home. We have two cars. But when I got the job I would drive to work taking Bob with me for a week, and the next week he would drive and drive me. So we had a saving of car, saving of gas, saving of everything. But it was bumper to bumper! We would take the Santa Ana Freeway and I would simply despair. We got to the job at eight o’clock in the morning and we left…we took only a half-hour for lunch…so they gave us a half-hour off in the evening so we could simply get home a bit earlier…instead of taking a whole hour. But we had to be on the job at eight.