Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Rock” (1965)

07 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Rock” (1965)

12/10/65

….but suddenly before me came a quartz, I would say about that big. As I looked at it, it broke; it became fragmented into numberless pieces, and then quickly it was assembled into a human form seated in the lotus posture. As I contemplate it, I noticed I am looking at myself. Here is the very being that is contemplating and the being contemplated, and they are one. It was only a moment before, a rock, and the rock fragmented, the rock gathered into human form, and a living, breathing being not made of rock. Here it is now living. It’s breathing. It’s flesh. It’s alive. Then as I became interested it began to glow, and it began to glow with increasing intensity. When what seemed like the apex or limit of such intensity the whole thing exploded and here I am, still seated, pondering over this strange, peculiar vision.

I say God actually achieves his limitless purposes by self-limitation. The word rock is defined as “to compress, to confine, to restrict; to take on the limit of contraction, the very limit of opacity.” So we’re told in the Book of Philippians: And being in the form of God he emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of man. And being formed in the image of man became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross (Phil.2:7). Now, the cross I know from experience is not outside upon a tree of wood but man himself is the cross; that man himself is the tree of life; that here on this cross God is crucified. That I know from experience. I am not theorizing, I am not speculating. I know this experience to be fact. And this is the limit of contraction that God assumed. As the poet Blake said, “God himself enters death’s door and lays down in the grave with those that enter, and shares with them their visions of eternity ‘til they awake and see the linen clothes lying that the females had woven for them.” Here again is the linen cloth. The word linen means “white as snow, bleached, blanched.” And that’s exactly what you see the very day of your resurrection. You’ve never seen such a ghastly whiteness on the face on the body out of which you’ve just emerged. Talk of death…there is really the appearance of death…really bleached.

So here, this is the Rock. The occupant is your own wonderful I am, that’s God. Your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. And he shares with you all of these wonderful visions of eternity. Most of them are nightmares, horrible dreams. But to you they aren’t dreams, they are objective, they are facts. But if the day will come that you will awake, then the experiences preceding waking must have been a dream. So he lays down in the grave with them and shares with them their dreams of eternity ‘til they awake. So when they awake, all that preceded it seemed so real. Just like the dream of the night, it seems so real when we are in it, and only on waking and reflecting on it does it seem like a subjective experience, a dream. Well, this whole vast experience of man when God awakes in man will be to him a dream. But it had a purpose, an infinite purpose: for man to expand as God. God became man so that man may become God. There is only God in the world…there is nothing but God.