Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Original Sin”

15 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Original Sin”

By Neville Goddard (3/8/63)

Tonight’s subject is “The Original Sin.” Undoubtedly you’ve heard time and again that it’s some sex violation. It hasn’t a thing to do with sex. It’s ancient, yes, but not a thing to do with sex. The Bible is a mystery. You can only understand it as it is revealed to you or believe it when you are told it by one to whom it has been revealed. It’s not a book that you just pick up and read as you would a novel. As we know, there are sixty-six books and you would start at taking Genesis and go through Revelation, and say that’s the way that it’s done. Because that’s not the way the Bible really is presented.

All the attributes of mind are personified in the Bible, and you and I take them as persons, and they’re not persons. All the characters are simply personifications of attributes of mind, eternal states of consciousness. So we must find out the first state that appeared in the Bible. What is that first state? For it is against that state which is the ideal that man has sinned. Sin means “to miss the mark,” or I could disbelieve it or I am ignorant of it. And these are different levels of sinning: To know it and not to heed it is the most serious state; to hear of it and disbelieve it, that is a secondary state; never to have heard of it, that is not really a severe case. Yet all carry with it certain responsibilities. So we must search the Bible for this initial state that was presented to man. Man heard it but didn’t believe it; man heard it and believed it but didn’t quite find it; and man never heard of it.

So this initial state is personified as a little child. You will read it in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When he marked out the foundations of the earth, I was beside him like a little child, delighting, ever a delight before him, rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the sons of men. He who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” Now that’s Proverbs 8:22-36. That’s the first state that is set up.

As we told you last Tuesday night, Jesus Christ is not a person. Jesus Christ is this eternal state, a state of salvation, and a series of mystical experiences in the depths of the soul. If man finds it, he passes through this series of experiences, which leads him to God. “For no man comes unto the Father save by me.” This is the state called Christ Jesus. But no man comes—“I am the way”; there is no other way. The earliest Christians were called the people of the Way—as told us in the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts and all through the Book of Acts, the people of the Way. For here is the way: “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

So here is a state personified as a little child, as told us in the 11th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “And a little child shall lead them” (verse 6). Lead them where? Lead them to the Father. Everything is personified. Well, here is the personification of the initial state that was his eternal delight, delighting in his inhabited world, rejoicing ever before him, and delighting in the sons of men, hoping that the individual man would find him. If he found him, then would come the unfoldment within that man who found him of the series that would take him to the Father. There’s no other way to go to the Father than through that series that he laid down.

So here, the first state is the state ___(??), the original state. Man hears it, and he doesn’t believe it. Paul heard it and Paul didn’t believe it. But Paul then confessed in his first letter to Timothy: “Formerly, I blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I ignorantly acted in unbelief.” I didn’t believe it. I heard it, but I just did not believe it. And so I received mercy. And so mercy is in all of us. If you don’t receive mercy, which completely sets you free from your horrible acts, as he confessed, well then, it is from the extreme state to the modified state because he never heard of it.