Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Rock, the Water and the Wine”

26 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Rock, the Water and the Wine”

2/18/66

Last Tuesday, we spoke of the three levels of the Bible, the rock, the water and the wine. So much is said in the Bible about the rock. We’re told, “Of the Rock that begot you you are unmindful, and you have forgotten the God who gave you birth” (Deut.32:18). So we find the Rock equated with God. Then we are told, “They drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1Cor.10:4). We are told that the people rejected this Rock and yet it eventually became the chief corner stone. And throughout scripture so much is said about the Rock.

From experience I tell you that truth is literal…although the words used may be figurative. When you experience scripture you will see though before experience they were to you just metaphor and, well, figurative, when you experience scripture you will see how literally true these words are. How could God be a rock? How could Christ be the Rock from which man not only drank but the Rock that gave him birth? How can it be? Well, here is an experience that I will share with you. It was in the thirties. I meditate daily, no special hour, not always to bring about changes, just because I like it. So while sitting in the Silence with my attention turned inward and contemplating nothing in particular, just the brain as it were, and usually after about a minute or so, sometimes it’s a matter of seconds, all the dark convolutions of the brain break and they burst into light, golden liquid light that simply pulses and goes all around one’s head. Well, honestly, I was thinking of nothing in particular, but suddenly before me came a quartz…I would say about that big. As I looked at it, it broke, became fragmented into numberless pieces; and then quickly it was assembled into a human form and seated in the lotus posture. As I contemplated it I noticed I am looking at myself. Here is the very being that is contemplating and the being contemplated, and they are one. We had only a moment before a rock, and the rock fragmented. The rock was 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. It began to glow and increase in intensity, and 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 purpose 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 on the cross” (2:6). Now, the cross, I know from experience, is not outside on a tree or wood, but man himself is the cross, the man himself is the tree of life; that here on this cross God is crucified. That I know from experience. I’m not theorizing, I’m not speculating, I know this experience to be fact. This is the limit of contraction that God assumes. As the poet Blake said, “God himself enters death’s door and lays down in the grave with those who 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 marble, bleached, blanched.” That’s exactly what you see the very day of your resurrection. You’ve never seen such a ghastly whiteness on the face of the body out of which you’ve just emerged. Talk of death…there is really the appearance of death, really bleached.