An E-mail Exchange I Had With a Christian About Neville Goddard, Part I.

Edited 01-10-2015:

A young man discovered Neville Goddard and has asked me if I would help explain his views, because he is having trouble reconciling Neville with his own understanding of Christian doctrines. Being a Pentecostal myself, I have begun an attempt to explain the differences.

I have edited portions of the correspondence for clarity and privacy.
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Dan,

I would love to correspond with you. I am new to the teachings of Neville Goddard but not to Christianity. I was raised in a Methodist family, but I am now a Pentecostal believer. As you must know, many things are setting uneasy with me. I feel you may be a kindred spirit able to share much knowledge, if willing. I look forward to hearing from you.

Jake
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Jake,

It would be my pleasure to correspond with you. I check my e-mail only occasionally, so you will have to be patient with me. As a Pentecostal, you realize that God is real, but what He is and what He is doing, well, we have a lot of discovering to do.

Neville will seem quite heretical in insisting that Jesus was never a separate human apart from us. I see his point. He may be right, but I do not know--I wasn't there. I do know, though, that Jesus spoke to me, saying, "Come unto me." My imagination? Yes, but supposedly this imagination IS Him. God seems quite intent that I approach Him by imagining Him as the bearded man with a sash. Does that make any sense? A preferred image, or did He become Him?

There is quite a bit of tension is the fact that God is One, with EVERYTHING in that one. That there is no separation in separately defined things is a hard concept to maintain, but there it is: It is all Him.

Sorry, I have a tendency to ramble on these things. I am perhaps too anxious to stress the ONENESS of God. I hope you enjoy listening to Neville's recorded lectures. Like reading the scriptures, there is always something new that comes out in them: "What did he just say?" I keep hearing myself think. "I've listened to this lecture thirty times already and never heard THAT before!"

I apologize for the poor writing in my posts. I have much more that I want to say, but I have to refrain from burying my readers.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Dan Steele
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Dan,

I was very glad to see that you responded. I have yet to find a real person that I can speak with in this manner to try to clear up some of this. I not only consider myself a Pentecostal, I actually belong to a apostolic Pentecostal church whose distinguishing characteristic is that they do not believe in the Trinity, rather that Christ was God and fullness ..."before Abraham was I am."

I have only heard about seven or eight of Neville Goddard's preachings and would say they definitely seem radical. Do you still attend a church, or have you left it? Also, have you had any peace at heart reconciling Neville with the writings of the New Testament? The more I went down the rabbit hole of his teachings and looked into Kabbalah and things regarding metaphysics, the more "away" from scripture I felt.

Thanks for your time, and I look forward to more correspondence. I rarely find threads such as the one you spoke on, and I definitely would have a hard time finding my way back and corresponding through those mechanisms.

Take care!

Jake

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Jake,

There is an awful lot of stuff to go over. It will probably take me a number of iterations to get various points across. Please be patient. A short review: I was raised in the Methodist church through high school. I was sent to San Francisco right after the Summer of Love and spent four years in the Navy ('68-'72) as an out-of-place quasi-hippie. I never really was a hippie, but I was much influenced by the introduction of Eastern religions and philosophies, New Age perspectives and values, etc.

I had left the church and was independently reading about the Sufis, the Hare Krishnas, the occult and metaphysics in Honolulu, but my Charismatic mother kept sending her best friend who lived there and me Jesus tracts and testimonials. In a meditation at the metaphysics school I attended, I encountered a demon. Hmm. If he is there, and he is, and he can't do anything to me unless I let him, and someone else opened my eyes to see him and did NOT need my permission to open my eyes . . . Dude! You're going the wrong way!

That same day my mother's best friend had a migraine from reading all the Jesus tracts my mother had sent her. She said to her Christian friend to rebuff his testimonies, "It was Jesus who gave me this headache, and He can have it!" The migraine left her that instant. She couldn't make her head hurt. Two days later she took me to the House of Praise in Kaimuki. Long story short, I soon became a tongue-speaking (now tongue-thinking) Pentecostal and somehow got sent to Melodyland School of Theology. I've been sorting things out for the last forty years.

Before I mention that your Pentecostal Church is absolutely correct in not believing in the Trinity as defined by the believing-in-error Christian Church, let me ask you to look at everything as a whole. We've got the Ineffable, a real God, and real bodies. Something is imagining us, imagining IN us, and there is the imagination-directed universe. The whole of the mass of STUFF, spiritual and physical, is triune.

The key to it all is Deuteronomy 6: 4, the mechanism of God is an integrated, multi-part unit. This one, YHWH, is big enough to include us, even with all of our shortcomings, as the mechanism of its expansion. This part of the Ineffable is growing and maturing to be just like that part: the Imaginer and the Imagining and the Imagined are all one. Ever read Genesis 1: 1? The Trinity includes us. That is what the Holy Spirit is testifying to all day every day. To deny it is the Blaspheme of the Holy Spirit, which we are all guilty of 24/7. We will never in eternity graduate to the next level without repenting of this denial. Dude, God is One. He cannot be two. Ever.

The church finds everything named and delineated, and thus believes every individual thing to be separate from every other individual thing. THAT is the error of unregenerate man's perception. Actually, there is no separation or division of anything from anything else. All is the Ineffable's imagining.

Yes, I know that is weird, but a well as I can figure out what the Bible is actually saying: the Ineffable is imagining, and we, the whole mass of the stuff, are Its imagining.

The Ineffable's imagining is not separate from Itself, and the Ineffable has planned for us, in our individuality, to become just as It is. The nature of the Ineffable is "the Law" that is to become our nature. THAT is what the Bible is about.

The Bible is a success manual for our becoming the Ineffable of whom we are. But we have got to learn how to read the Bible! That is why I like Neville--he could read it and understand it. When I listen to him, I am like, "Oh. Oh. Oh."

We are not going away from the Scriptures by learning Neville's view. Going "down a rabbit hole?" But "down the hole" is their MEANING. That is what we are ferreting out. Nothing could be more "away" from the Bible's actual meaning than the literal-physical-secular-historical perspective of those who call themselves the church. No, I haven't found a church that thinks the way I do, but I am quite happy in my own mind. God is worthy of our seeking, but seekers are inherently lonely.

If you haven't seen the post(s) about it yet, Moses' account of the burning bush on Horeb and Adam in the Garden are accounts of the SAME event. It is an event every believer needs to have. "Adam" was Moses' consciousness. Adam's "rib" was Moses' desire. "Eve" was Moses' desire coming to pass. Running around "naked and unashamed" was Moses' wantonness.

Eve being "tempted by the tree and the serpent" was Moses' recognizing the forces behind "Jethro," which was not a man as much as the bounty and increase that comes into our lives by imagining. "Cain" was the increase, and "Abel" was the insight that man's imagination is God.

There was no "Devil" in the Garden, except Moses' ignorance. When we flip into this life, we FORGET everything that we are as God. We cannot recognize our being God, because our thinking is limited to our worldview (see Romans 10: 14). Because we cannot perceive our imagination being God, we go on living in Nod--forgetfulness. Up until his encounter with the Glory of God in the Garden (his meditation), Moses lived in "Egypt," that is, in wantonness--he was "naked," and he was not ashamed of it.

It was Moses' desire for God's abundance, Jethro, led him to the "tree" of the knowledge of God's nature, the Law. There, at the revelation of God's nature IN MOSES' SELF, Moses found the Glorious Wisdom of God and the Power of God, Jesus Christ, who had become Moses. THAT is what Exodus chapter three and Genesis three are about. "Adam and Eve in the Garden" is an object lesson for success in finding God IN AND AS US.

The "Devil?" This creature comes from the separatist view of unregenerate men who have not heard the Gospel of our oneness with God. The "adversary" is the separatist view OF our ignorance. Even if Christ/oneness is preached, people cannot really hear it until their worldview is expanded and matured to include it. It is "Line upon line,line upon line; here a little and there a little."

Separatist religions are the enemy of man, yet the friend of God. People who do not know God in oneness nevertheless preach that oneness mixed in their separatist views. We are weak for our separatist position, yet strengthened in Christ. It is guaranteed that Christ will win out, for Abel is never able to be quieted: "If it works, you have found Him" to be your own, wonderful, human imagination.

Dan Steele
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Dan,

I waited up late to get an email out but wanted to send a short one your way... I think I have a grasp on the general concept (very general) on the teachings-help my ungrasp.... first, am I to believe that the entire bible history didn't physically occur? no great flood, no parting of a red sea, no dying on a cross? Most importantly, the last secondly, please point me towards some new testament "neville" stuff. Thanks! I appreciate your sharing your time with me, lots of apprehension mixed with intrigue and other emotions.

Side note question, do you have any thoughts on end times, one world disorder, mark of beast and how do these topics seem to fit with Goddard philosophy?

Sincerely,
Jake
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Jake,

It isn't that the Bible's history did or did not physically occur, but how it occurred. You have to get a hold of how the Bible was written. It was composed, not recorded. The Bible was composed as lessons by teachers who had something they wanted to teach. And there were thousands of teachers, not just in Palestine but all over the place. When the Dead Sea scrolls were found, there were several editions of some of the same books. The crew at Qumran had been busy cutting and pasting together new scriptures. "Let's try it this way." "No, let's try it THIS way. Hmm. How do you like it now?"

We are here and are far removed from the history of those distant paths. The authors of the Biblical "record" were removed from them, too, but they knew things that had happened historically that they could use as a validating basis for their lessons. We know that there really was a Moses and a migration from Egypt to Canaan. George Stanley Farber wrote about it in The Origin of Pagan Idolatries volume III, around page 595 to page 600, I think. There were real catastrophes in Egypt, too. And sometimes winds do blow to reveal a sandbar across the Red Sea.

The author of Genesis only had to know about one really big flood to write the story of Noah. The physical flood, though, had absolutely nothing to do with the flood the author was writing about. The physical history served as a metaphor for the lessons the author wanted to teach. He was teaching stuff that was spiritually literal. He hung it on physically literal history, but physical history didn't happen exactly like his story goes--he had to adjust the frame a bit, he composed it.

I know Jesus Christ, but if I think of him as a separate person outside of myself, Paul says I am a reprobate! The faith is that "he is in me, that he has become me and lives AS me." When I say, "I . . ." -- that is Him! THAT's the lesson they were all trying to get across.

I like to think that Mark could see "Jesus" thoroughly exemplified in Jacob, whom we call James, the "brother" of the LORD. Mark saw all the conflict between the Jews and James and composed the Book of Mark about the Jesus in James dealing with the Jews. A real, physical James? Yes. Areal, physical Jesus? Aren't you real and physical? Same Jesus. Did the Ineffable imagine HIMSELF being a separate man among us? I don't know; I wasn't there. I'm not sure that would make Him any more Him than He is me, anyway. No, in fact, it wouldn't.

I saw Jesus being crucified, but I realize now that that is how he became me. Time is such a weird thing in eternity. The crucifixion is past. Jesus--God--saves us WHEN HE BECOMES US. Our bodies are the staff he is crucified upon. But we are NOT our bodies, we are Him who is crucified upon them. Listen to Neville's God's Law and His Promise and Imagination Plus Faith. I especially enjoy Unless I Go Away, too. God goes away . . . into us. Here he composes us into his poem. I've got a post on the more practical Neville lectures. Please try to understand the flip. We are the many consciousnesses of the One, following every move of God like an orchestra. Beautiful, but not free and independently like him, like He is. We flip down to the school of this death in becoming us, into complete amnesia, to learn through the afflictions and opportunities of this hell how to be exactly like him in independent freedom. Who ascends but he who descended? We are to be ascending.

Let me think awhile on that last question. Let me suggest that if so much of the Bible is allegorical metaphor for spiritual literalities, Revelations is, too.

I also suggest searching online for comments on Robert Young's introductory notes in his Literal Translation of the Bible. The reason for this is Young (author of Young's Analytical Concordance) did an extensive search of the Hebrew verb tenses used in the Hebrew Old Testament. As I understand it, the Authors used only the present and the past Hebrew verb tenses, because, well, that's all they had. Many, if not all of the 'shall's and 'will's are contrived by the foreign language translators!!! Those things of future that you are so worried about are conditions PRESENT in us. In each, the Lamb is worthy. The Lamb is God's spirit who became you.

Lastly, C. H. Dodd demonstrated beautifully in Apostolic Preaching and Its Development, (certainly chapter 3, certainly, your apostolic preachers have this) that young and naive Paul wrote Thessalonians from his early perspective of our being separate from God, that heaven was far, far away and Christ was far, far away up there getting ready for a road trip down here. Then he spent fourteen years knocking his head against the wall (my words) for not seeing that it all occurs here and now in us, where Christ IS. Compare his later Ephesians. Wow. Same guy? Yeah, just like us--dumb as a rock to begin with--reading the Bible as literal history and making stupid predictions about the future, then learning what the Scriptures actually MEAN: we are God, becoming here and now.

Dan Steele
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Interestingly, Jake has stopped communicating. Perhaps I seem too heretical, or I haven't come through with the New Testament "Neville" stuff he asked for.

Actually, almost everything Neville wrote or preached was New Testament. His interpretation was just beyond the level most in the church are prepared to hear.


Please visit Part II, http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2015/01/an-e-mail-exchange-i-had-with-christian.html