This is season two, episode 11, Neville's Christianity the Forgotten Key to Regenerating Western Civilization. 

We'll continue today with the theme that we started in the previous episode. Neville offers a way to reconcile the picture of a discredited Christianity with the great stature that it actually possesses in truth. This involves an appreciation of the psychological approach. Just to clarify our definitions here, psychology has to do with mental principles. Spirituality has to do with the application of those principles within one's own mind and their effects upon being 

Judeo Christian values disgraced yet irreplaceable. 

So here's a strange juxtaposition. One, Christianity is widely discredited because of institutional abuse perpetrated in its name. Two, Judeo Christstian principles as the foundation of civilization express unparalleled conceptions of human dignity and liberty. Now, you couldn't overstate the magnitude of this division. On the one hand, you've got not only abuses by the state and the corruption within the church, but the whole litany of Christian wars of persecution and conquest. And on the other hand, you've got the grandeur and nobility of the precepts of Western civilization, which give you the rule of law, freedom of conscience, natural unalienable rights, justice with due process, constitutionally limited government under God, and so on. 

Neville's interpretation fulfills Christianity. 

What is the third element that will effect a reconciliation of these two massive rival forces? Neville Goddard is vastly underrated. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that his contribution, were it understood and realized, is as momentous as the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther himself. Except that it would not unleash endless violence, but instead rather a quiet renewal from within the hearts of men and women. 

So how does Neville's presentation of Christian scripture justify this claim? How does it solve the great contradiction between Christianity's past failure and continuing promise? It is specifically his psychological interpretation and metaphysics and declaration of man's nature and identity. These are the aspects of Neville's Gospel - all biblically derived by the way - that allow the individual to fulfill the essence of Christianity. 

Psychological grounding. 

If I fully realize my own awareness of being in the moment, I can see that conscious experience is the sole window into reality. If I refrain from introducing anything assumed or Invented, that is, if I preserve parsimony (Occam's razor), then I can propose a plausible explanation for reality. 

Materialism (people don't seem to realize this) requires the awkward imposition of a series of assumptions that just don't hold up either in the physics labs or in daily empirical observation. 

Neville saw this metaphysical explanation [of idealism] in the Supreme Commandment: 
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. The interpretation by Neville is:

'Hear, O man, made of the very substance of God, you and God are one and undivided. Man, the world and all within it are conditioned states of the unconditioned, one God. You are this one. You are God conditioned as man.' ~That's from Freedom for All. Chapter one. 

The elegant thing about this proposal is that, it requires only a provisional acceptance on a trial or hypothetical basis. It is so self assured that it does not need to be a coercive doctrine, but invites you at each stage to test it and discern inwardly - 'Test yourselves.';  'Prove me now herewith...' 

Identity and nature of man. 

If awareness of being consciousness is the sole litmus, and God himself is resident in man, then God and man are one. Now, the immediate objection is that God in totality could not possibly be my narrow surface ego. Well, that's correct. We are sons of God, that is, fragmented and dissociated from source, something explained by analytic idealism. And check out, S02E04 for an explanation of that. But if we study this concept and start seriously to entertain the idea, the effect is to remove all intermediaries between ourselves and the creative source itself. Now, this gives you confidence in your destination in life. 

Well, let's carry on with a little thought experiment that is intended to capture the insight of the psychological approach. For us, there is a separation between what we take to be the material object and the inner meaning that it conveys. This view perpetuates dualism. 

There are physical objects and then there are the interior invisible thoughts and feelings, and the apprehension of meaning itself, associated with the physical object. 

Well, suppose now I wanted to take Neville at his word. All right. We live in a world that is nothing but mentation. All perception, or what we call perception of seeming external objects, is encounter with mind itself. That is supported by bothHermetic principles and the more modern Analytic Idealism 
(which is soundly argued and it has evidence on its side). Now take this idea one step further. 

As we saw in the last post, in remote antiquity and in the Middle Ages for that matter, there was no clear separation between objects and the subjective self. Somehow they blended into one. And why wouldn't they if they were all psyche, all imagination, communing continually within the mind of God? The biblical quote is: ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’. 

Now stare at a tree or a cloud or a stack of books on your desk and consider the object's APPEARANCE - which is, remember your conscious experience of the object - and its very name and MEANING, which you believe to be inwardly existing somewhere (perhaps as a concept in the brain). These two are actually one and the same thing!

Judeo Christian values as essentially psychological. 

Can the Judeo Christstian precepts oriented towards worldly and secular organizations, like a written constitution or the separation of powers, really be derived from Neville's psychological view? Or have I stretched the analysis of Neville's Christianity too far? Maybe it's better to forget that we live in a world that is all imagination (or psyche, or mind) and leave governmental and juridical matters to secular authorities. 

Well, let's take a look at a few examples, just like we did in the last episode, to see whether this psychological interpretive key really applies.

Example one, a written constitution. Now consider: an individual has conscious awareness. Is the Christian principle governing an individual, as Albert Pike, the great Satanist and Freemason once put it, 'Do as thou wilt' ? No, the individual conceives instead high ideals or law, which then find expression in that phase of mind we call external or outward reality. In other words, they take on documented form. The scriptural ideals now take on the character of durability (they're no longer ephemeral); they have immutability (they don't change on a whim); and they have shared access (they are universal). 

So, to complete the analogy, let's look at the state. The state is an anthropomorphized version of this same process. Does the Christian principle provide for a king or a pope or an emperor, or for that matter, a deep state, to wield arbitrary and secret power? No, obviously not. Rather, we conceive high ideals, express them in concretized written form as a legal constitution. Now, this is what we take to be a physical expression of the law, when it takes documented form. But notice how psychologically it changes the law. The law is meaningfully transformed so that it takes on the character of durability, immutability and universality, to guide life at the societal level, just as the scriptural ideals were taken to guide the conduct of life at the individual level. 

Let's look at example 2, the separation of powers. Now you might think that this is sort of an artificial and formal arrangement that really doesn't arise from psychology. But consider that in the Christian conception of the individual there's a recognition that there are sub-identities and mental states that can threaten to overtake the whole personality. This is our common human condition. What is needed is an internal division of power. A faculty of conscience, and consideration of the consequences of actions, acts as a filter of internal impulses. A conscious application of one's chosen ideals, such as scriptural principles, also acts as a sort of self discipline; and an ethical sense to assess one's own conduct -- all cooperate to guide the individual. 

Now at the state level, of course, the same functions obtain at the familiar executive, legislative and judiciary to provide checks and balances. 

Well let's take one more today, example 3, and that is natural rights. What is the biblical precept? It is that Man is created in the image of God. For Neville, the psychological reality is that Man and God are one. So whether you take the conventional interpretation, or Neville’s, the effect is the same. Divine character is accorded to man. His origin in God is honoured, and it is written into law in the form of unalienable rights which, as we mentioned, confers to them permanence, immutability and universal application. 

That is how Christian precepts work. Adoption of Christian values at the individual level scales up to the organizational and societal levels. 

Now lets NOT imagine that other systems work this way. Under socialism or communism for example, there is no psychological or spiritual truth, because the individual and his mind simply dont exist. He is only a biological entity that is the property of the state - of course, with no rights, because there's no God. 

Communism is entirely material and absolutist in its conception. If you don't believe me on that, check Cleon Skousen, 'The Naked Communist' or even 'The Black Book of Communism'. 

Now if you consider other systems, even if they do purport to worship a deity - are their forms and laws respectful of the individual, or do their governing principles tend toward the glorification of their own administrative system, with dire consequences for those who do not conform? 

Christianity, while it does not consent to be a doormat and immolate itself, does graciously allow freedom of conscience. 

And why is that? It's because truth can only be discerned and apprehended internally, within one's own personal individual psychology. That's what Christianity recognizes and honours. 

So my purpose today was to discuss how Neville's approach to Christianity, which is rooted in individual self realization, and a particular metaphysics that construes everything as mind, is really an extraordinary way to reconcile the huge discrepancy between discredited Christianity, and the incredible promise of its principles and precepts. 

We tried a little thought experiment to try to move us into the mindset of people in antiquity, who would live and move and have their being within the mind of God. And finally, we saw a few more examples of how Judeo Christian concepts are actually rooted in personal psychology, whether it's separation of powers, written constitution, or natural rights of man.