Morality: Neville Goddard, God, and Me--"Like God" Has Its Benefits
It took nearly 10 years, but I finally got a comment on my post "Unpoor By Imagining." Anonymous asks how to reconcile my views on morality--right and wrong--with what appears to be Neville Goddard's broader view that there is no right or wrong.
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Hello Dan,
I refer to this portion of your post:
“The key to success on earth is having conscience and choosing right. Love is right, so let everything you do be done in love. Imagine loving thoughts in vivid 3-D. Be dedicated to the lordship of the Ineffable, be right in relationship with others, with right actions and right thoughts.”
I refer to these words in Neville Goddard’s lecture titled “Divine Signs”, 1 May 1968 (Alt.: https://icebluezen.com/divine-signs-neville-goddard-audio-and-text-lecture-archive/):
“Man, having eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, decides what is right and what is wrong, thereby descending into the mire of confusion. But when he turns around, he discovers that nothing is either right or wrong. On a certain level it is right and on another level it is wrong. So, learn to accept every level, and as you do you will ascend the tree of life, to discover that every level, when viewed from there, is right when you know how to interpret it.”
Perhaps, in short, my comment is about morality. After reading many of your posts, I can see clearly that you do believe in morality. That we are to be like the Ineffable (bold emphasis mine), to love what the Ineffable loves, to do what the Ineffable does, etc. So, there is a moral realm. We are to choose—and to choose best, choose rightly, choose lovingly, etc.
In other words, there is a standard, there are morals, there are “God’s laws”? How then do I reconcile this view with Neville Goddard’s view—as per the quote above?
Also, it is not just the above quote. It is obvious from the entirety of Neville Goddard’s material that we have that Neville does not care much for morality.
The closest he gets to morality is when he quotes the Bible on “whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Other than quoting that verse, Neville Goddard does not instruct or define what exactly are “true,” ‘just,” virtuous, pure, etc. I trust I have made a fair assessment of him in this regard, and I believe you are even more familiar with his material.
For a book (the Bible) that has the mosaic law, the Book of Leviticus; For a book that spawned such a legalistic system as Judaism (for all their errors, they did build their system FROM much of what we call the Old Testament) or even much of Christendom; In a book whom the fulfilment of the OT (Jesus Christ) clearly stated that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfil it; In a book where the epistles continue to instruct on DOs and DONTs, and finally, in Revelations, where it clearly states that all kinds of evil and wicked people will perish directly under the acts of “God”: Why did Neville Goddard not say much about morality other than Philippians 4:8? (bold emphasis mine). I am at a point where I see that you have a morality, but I see that Neville Goddard does not have a morality (other than “his” The Law, which we know to be ONLY about creation: imagination creates reality. And this mechanism does not consider morality, hence justifying the Hitlers and Stalins, and, actually, the ability of all human beings to create all the bad and ugly too.)
I am for you. I am for Neville Goddard. So help me reconcile the two of you!
I know I have asked you about morality before, but my comment here relates more to “you vs Neville Goddard”, rather than “does "God" care about morals?”
I see a distinction between you and Neville Goddard regarding this matter, hence seek clarification.
Thank you very much.
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Thank you for the interesting puzzle, Anonymous. I am not sure the distinction between Neville and myself is our views on morality. I personally do not see any difference between us. I have never heard or read anything of Neville advocating im-morality. We both reject strict legalistic moral codes imposed by clerics, but that is because such obedience is selfish, meritorious - not heart-based, and should be used as examples of what is like God.
Neville started out with Abdullah as a strict ascetic, and returned from Barbados a libertarian. Yet he always held to IMAGINING what was right and good, loving and beneficial, with the prevision that it was GOD HIMSELF who would do all the orchestrative ACTION in manifesting of the good desired. Morality is thus in God's court. THINK what you will, and DO good. E.g., Neville imagined being on a ship which no available berths. Then, mysteriously, someone decided to give up their stateroom, and it went out of order to Neville. I think that perhaps the difference you see between myself and Neville is he is talking about imagining, and I am talking about doing.
You correctly discern that my position is: we are to be like God in all we think, say, and do. That is pretty much my whole theology: we are God's manifestation as He becomes manifest. God, the consciousness of the Ineffable, developed over time. From the Ineffable's first awareness of Its own existence, through Its discovery of Its powers and abilities, to Its resolve to exist in Its mature state in this dimension, the consciousness of the Ineffable has a foremost, primary purpose: to become manifest. What determines good from evil in anything is: is its end like or unlike God? It may be hard, very hard to comprehend, but all the horror and evil in the world, all the sickness, pain, and heartache--hell itself--ultimately gets this dimension into His condition. So nothing is good or evil of itself, but it is going to be progressed from whatever it is to being the Manifestation of God at its end. We are to give whatever we can a head start by both thinking and acting as God would. Jesus Christ is the Progressor in God's nature. Said Neville in Divine Signs:
"He has made known unto me the mystery of his sacred will according to his purpose, which he set forth as a plan in Christ for the fullness of time. I now know that Christ is not a person, and regard no scriptural character from the human point of view, but rather a state of consciousness personified. I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, but now I see him as the creative power of imagination and the wisdom of imagination, with a plan buried in that power" (bold emphasis mine).
I want to thank you, Anonymous, for getting me to see one special little thing Alexander didn't make clear to me. He noted that the Tree of Life yields the knowledge of good and evil. To know good and evil our knowledge of our own Godhood had to die into ignorance. This was "before that the world was." For life our as God has to DEVELOP over time just as it did for the Ineffable. "Good" is like God and going that way; "evil" is unlike God and going that way. All evil will ultimately be "oblivionated" (Alexander). I am not exactly sure what that means, but I am pretty sure it isn't good for evil--"And whoever misleads* (confuses) one of these small ones who believes in me, deserves to have a donkey's millstone thrown on his head and be thrown into the sea" (Mark 9:42 Alexander). That person is guily of bad, unlike-God action. We need to go for like-God action, which has its benefits and promised rewards.
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