Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Mystery of Imagination”

08 Nov Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Mystery of Imagination”

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Tonight’s subject is “The Mystery of Imagination.” I could have titled it “The Mystery of God, the Mystery of Man, the Mystery of Christ.” It would have been the same thing. But I took for tonight the use of the word Imagination—it would not offend. But these three are interchangeable words.

So here, I imagine as do you. We cannot imagine differently. All the differences lie in content. And so, we ask the little question “Who am I?” and our response to that question determines content…and there we differ. The whole vast world differs based upon their response to that enormous question, which we find in scripture. Who am I? I could tell you that you are God. You wouldn’t believe it. You can read it in scripture: “Be still and know that I am God.” You’ll read it in the 46th Psalm, but you won’t believe it. If I told you that you are Christ, you might be offended; you may have some external concept of a being and you call him Christ. When I say that you do imagine, that wouldn’t offend you because you know we do imagine. And you may not believe for one moment that this power of imagining is the power of God, but, nevertheless, you do imagine. That wouldn’t offend anybody.

So tonight we’ll take…first of all, we’ll start with Blake’s Jerusalem. Now Blake claimed this entire poem was dictated by the Spirit of Prophesy or the Savior of the world. He said, “Morning after morning, when I return I’ve found the spirit of the Savior spreading his beams of love over me and dictating the words of this mild song.” And in this he said, “Babel mocks, saying there is no God nor Son of God, that thou, O Human Imagination, O Divine Body, art all a delusion; but I know thee, O Lord, when thou arisest upon my weary eyes, even in this dungeon and this iron mill…for thou also sufferest with me.” And then the Divine Voice replied: “Fear not! Lo, I am with thee always, only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death thy Brother who sleepeth in Albion” (Plate 60). Now could you honestly believe to that point that you would say, “But I know thee, O Lord” meaning your own wonderful human Imagination, no other being, your Imagination, the eternal you. Could you say with him that “Man is all Imagination and God is man and he in us and we in him. The Eternal Body of man is the Imagination and that is God himself” (Laocoon/Annot. to Berkeley). Could you believe it?

Well now, let us show you. We’re told in scripture that all things were made through Christ and without him was not anything made that was made, but all things, good, bad and indifferent (Jn. 1:2). Now who made this? The year is 1951—my brother-in-law because he is married to my wife’s sister—called and asked if I would see him that evening…it was very important. He knew that we were sailing for Barbados in about two weeks and he wanted to see me before we sailed. So he came home and this was his problem. First, I’ll give you his background. He graduated from Harvard and then remained on and took the business course at Harvard, Harvard Business School’s graduate course. Came out of college and went straight into the bank, the Bank of New York. Well, as you know banks have different departments and some departments do not advance rapidly. He was in the Trust Dept. That is almost a service; that is not a money making section of the bank. So he was in the Trust Dept. and after eighteen years he concluded that traveling as he’s traveling now at the bank he couldn’t see how he could possibly put his two children through college. He went through college and his wife went through Smith, and he couldn’t see how he could possibly put these two children through college. They were bright, desired to go to college but with that fixed salary he couldn’t see how he could do it. So he went to the president and the manager of the bank and explained the facts of life. They in turn reminded him that that department did not allow any further increases in salary, that eventually someone would resign or someone would retire, someone would leave the bank, or they may die. In that event, he would be promoted, but without this, he had to remain and move forward just as they all do in banks. They made it very, very clear to him that if he didn’t like it he could quit.