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Neville Goddard (1905-1972) offered a compelling explanation of the human condition and an intriguing and empowering path of self-discovery. Join your host Ed to explore from the ground up this most essential mystery: the human imagination.
[edited for clarity]
This is E11, Fantastic Psychological Instructions.
Neville characterizes the Bible as fantastic psychological instructions. Not fantastic in the sense of a fantasy, but rather wonderful, terrific, really great instructions. In this episode, what I want to do is take him at his word, consider a series of quotes, and interpret them psychologically.
1. First, though, what I want to do is discuss why do we even bother to entertain in a serious way Neville's claim that the Bible is worth paying attention to?
Now, is it a romantic attachment to a tradition or to the archaic language that is used in scripture? For my part, it's not [the reason].
Is there a sentimental or guilt-ridden impulse to come to Jesus, the character that is depicted in the stories? Again, that's not my motive, nor is it the motive of many people who are going to be really disillusioned with conventional religion.
Then you've got the argument from people who say, well, don't you realize how the books of the Bible went through so many edits, through so many translations, mistranslations, manipulations -- certain books left out, other ones included -- all seemingly for political purposes (the Council of Nicaea, and so on)? Well, yes, we're familiar with those arguments. Although Neville himself says not a word of Scripture shall be broken, it's not necessary -- at least I don't find it necessary -- to take an absolute and dogmatic position on Scripture.
And finally, you might argue, well, what sets Neville apart from all of the psychological help that you will get from the vast literature in the self-help industry, New Age, and so on?
My inspiration to take Neville at his word with regard to Scripture comes from an explanation of what constitutes true or authentic religious information, or influence, entering into human life. I take this quote from Gurdjieff, from In Search of the Miraculous. He was someone who investigated systems of the East, studied, and eventually brought a system to the West, back in the early part of the 20th century.
He says man lives in life under the law of accident and under two kinds of influences. The first one is the type of influence created in life itself, in other words, nation, education, society, and so on. And then the second kind of influences are created outside life, that is, they're created from a conscious source.
So there you have to you have to accept the notion that human beings are capable of going through psychological change, psychological transformation, and that the ones who are successful in this attain a higher level of consciousness, and are therefore capable of emitting qualitatively different types of influences into society.
Gurdjieff says these influences differ from the first type, first of all, in being conscious in their origin. This means they've been created consciously, by conscious men, for definite purpose. Influences of this kind are usually embodied in the form of religious systems and teachings, philosophical doctrines, works of art, and so on.
Now here's the interesting thing. What happens is, coming into the general vortex of life, these conscious influences fall under the general law of accident and begin to act mechanically. They may act on a certain person, or they may not act, they may reach them, or they may not. And undergoing change, a distortion, through transmission and interpretation, influences of the second kind (that is, the conscious influences) are transformed into influences of the first kind.
That is, they become merged into ordinary life influences, and then they become much more difficult to distinguish, to discern. So there I was reading and paraphrasing from In Search of the Miraculous, page 199. You can find the citation in the show notes.
Just to make a parenthetical remark here. You've probably noticed you can't escape the situation whereby a person's faith, or a person's assertion as to what is true, what constitutes the truth, and the authority that they rely on -- the whole thing -- ultimately comes back to that person's individual personal decision, his belief in his own opinion. So it always comes back to a personal interior experience. That is the nature of truth.
If you think about that, you can see that if it were possible to coerce, to force someone to believe in the truth by some external means, then the whole structure of human life would be something different. It wouldn't be what it is now. So we may lament the fact that it's so difficult to persuade someone of our truth, and yet we have to remember that our truth in itself is susceptible to change, to transformation, until we can arrive at something that truly satisfies the soul. And at that point, it will be a matter of sharing with other people in an effort to see if they might benefit from what you take to be the truth. But that's the furthest you can go.
Incidentally, what I like about Neville's approach is that he removes the pain from that situation by just acknowledging that when he's trying to convince someone, he's trying to convince himself. Okay, so when I'm trying to convince someone, I'm trying to convince myself.
To change someone, the only way (and he's explicit about this) is to see the person differently in your own mind's eye, as to how that person might be behaving, or reacting, or perceiving. As long as you're doing it following the golden rule, then there's no risk of injuring somebody else. And why is that? He says that if you're wishing something for someone else that they do not find acceptable, then the wish will simply rebound to the sender.
2. So at the risk of being overzealous, I'm going to try to present some evidence here as to why I think Neville's interpretation of the Bible and his whole presentation is really esoteric in nature.
It's that second sort of influence, the conscious influence that I was talking about. Now on page 300 of that same book, In Search of the Miraculous, Gurdjieff is talking about prayer. And he says, “I'm speaking about ancient prayers, many of them much older than Christianity. These prayers are, so to speak, recapitulations.” There we go. He calls it recapitulations, something that we might call affirmations in the present day. Now I'm going to continue the quote... “by repeating them aloud or to himself, a man endeavours to experience what is in them, their whole content with his mind and his feeling”. Now that is exactly what Neville is talking about.
“And a man can always make new prayers for himself.”
Now, Gurdjieff does not go as far as Neville in saying that the central figure of the Gospels is actually the human imagination, that's Neville's specific information. Even so, there's a second point where Gurdjieff and Neville's information agrees, where it comes together. And that is in the instruction to become self conscious, to become self aware, to realize that “I am” -- that is the wordless awareness of being. And in Gurdjieff and In Search, that instruction is in Chapter 7.
So we've got the instruction to enter into the state of the wish fulfilled as a method of prayer, as recapitulation or affirmation. And then the instruction as to self awareness, self consciousness. Those two factors I find really compelling in connecting Neville's teaching with the esoteric tradition. Gurdjieff was talking back around 1917. And these factors that I was talking about fulfil the requirements that he sets out to be esoteric in nature, to be from a conscious influence, that is, they're distinctly not originating in ordinary life, not in any educational or governmental system. Nor do these instructions originate from within, let's say, clinical psychology, or even the vast majority of the self help and popular psychology that we have today.
3. But let's look at a series of quotes.
That's what I wanted to do in this episode: to substantiate the idea that the creator, the creative source, is actually resident in the human being, as Neville claims.
Now, in these examples, I'm dependent on Neville and his interpretations, his presentation of scripture and how he interprets it, although I did go back and check the translations in Strong's concordance to verify what he was saying.
i. “And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us”. That's from the book of John. Neville says “among us?” -- he says, no, that's a mistranslation. The word among is actually in the Greek preposition “in”. Therefore, “the word was made flesh and dwelt in us”. And what is the “word”? The word is the Greek word called logos. Now, I got a definition of that from an online site called yourdictionary. And here's the definition that they gave. “In classical Greek philosophy, logos is reason regarded as constituting, the controlling principle of the universe and as being manifested by speech.” And then in a secondary definition, they say ”...made incarnate in Jesus Christ.”
So there we have logos, not just the word (that's sort of an inadequate translation). It has to do with a controlling principle of the universe. Sounds a lot like the creative imagination.
Now, in one place, Neville insists that logos actually means “meaning” itself, although I was not able to find that. If that's the way it is, then it does make sense, because it's the moment of self remembering, self consciousness, when you suddenly realize, well, the very meaning that you hold in your psyche, that is life, that is life itself.
Now he differentiates between mere “animated bodies” and “life giving spirit”. So you could see life, in our daily experience, in various animals and so on, where they're just animated bodies. There's really nobody home, so to speak. But once you have self consciousness, once consciousness enters the picture in a proper sense, then he uses the term “life giving spirit”. So this is the immediate miracle that we don't really see. We sort of take ourselves for granted, and life for granted, although we see those stories like in Frankenstein and various scientific reports where they try to create life in the laboratory. The immediate miracle that we don't see is that we are the living principle, we are life itself. We are life itself, conscious of itself. So that is the significance of this first quote, the word, the logos was made flesh and dwelt in us.
ii. Second quote ”...as God hath said, I will dwell in them”. That's from Paul -- 2Corinthians. So it's quite explicit. The Creator himself, the creative principle, said, I will dwell in them. This is echoed in Blake, whom Neville quotes all the time. Blake said, “Why stand we here trembling around calling on God for help and not on ourselves in whom God dwells?” There we have explicit quotes pointing out the idea that the creative source is actually indwelling.
iii. Third quote, “Do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? -- unless indeed you fail to meet the test” That’s 2Cor. -- Paul again.
Neville says the test that is referred to -- he has actually two explanations of that. I didn't find the explanation of what the test is in the immediate vicinity of that quote. But Neville gives two explanations. He says in one instance, well, you just had the test. If you hear the name God, the name Jesus, the name of Lord, and your mind jumps to something outside you, well then you failed the test.
The other test is (and this is in another lecture)... He says, it's to imagine something, to believe in it wholeheartedly and then await its manifestation. That is the test.
iv. Fourth quote, this is suggested by the author, Robert A. Russell, whom I quoted in the last episode. “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” That's from Philippians. So Russell asks at that point, why were the words switched around? -- not Jesus Christ, but Christ Jesus?
He said it was done in order to emphasize the fact that it's the spirit rather than the personage or the character that is referred to.
v. And he gives yet another quote again from Paul, Galatians: ”...until Christ is formed in you”.
So Neville explains that the mind of Christ did not take up its residence in just one man in history. On the contrary -- and this is such a small intuitive jump -- Jesus Christ is the pattern, the end state (illustrated in the character in the Bible); the end state of development of a personal psychology towards spiritual fulfilment.
Christ Jesus is the pattern for everyone to follow, the potential that is already innate, built into everyone, into their own nature.
4. I’ll try now to take all of these quotes and to express them in just in plain everyday language to describe our own nature.
The Creator, the Absolute, makes its living place within the psychology of an individual man or woman. So if he is in me, then I must be able to find him or experience him somehow -- or else the whole instruction is really nothing other than just empty theory.
Of course the totality of the Creator -- it would be ridiculous to suggest -- that he's represented by the surface level ego. So he's not expressed in the surface level ego, which is anyway, in a sort of a continual state of hypnotic fascination with one thing or another on the plane of ordinary life.
All right then, how do I find him or discover him? Well, first of all, by following these esoteric instructions, by coming to conscious awareness, self remembering -- wordless, vivid awareness of one's own being in the moment. Second, by noticing what we're conscious of, how we condition that consciousness, what we take ourselves to be, and what we continually consent to and accept as true, whether we're doing it deliberately, consciously, or just inadvertently and mechanically. And then experiencing the result, as it is manifested in the seeming outer world.
So far today, to sum up, we talked about why we bother to entertain in a serious way Neville's claim, and also to consider how it has the character of esoteric information. Then we considered a series of quotes from the Bible and explored how they are actually fantastic psychological instructions. Finally, we ended with a summary description of our nature.
5. Today I'll end with an affirmation.
Whatever I accept and consent to as true becomes quickly manifest in the seeming external world. Now I take responsibility for the indwelling creative principle and I use it wisely.
I feel as though a huge burden is lifted. I am so grateful to know that... [to be completed by the reader]