QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Neville Goddard – 1970
Courtesy of FreeNeville.com
Here is part one of Neville Goddard answers questions. These are taken from lectures Neville gave in the 1970s.
Enjoy!
QUESTION ASKED FOLLOWING LECTURE, 15 July 1970
Question: Do you believe in the theory of evolution?
Neville: No, I do not believe in evolution as to the creative power of God. I believe in evolution only in the affairs of men. Instead of digging the field with my hands, I now use a tractor. That’s evolution. Instead of walking across the country, I can now take a flight and be there in a few hours.
Instead of going across the ocean and large bodies of water on a raft, I go now propelled by atomic power. So, this is evolution in the affairs of men, but not in the creation of God.
God’s plan was “before that the world was.” This is not any emergency thinking.
The whole thing is done, and to this day, we have no evidence whatsoever tosupport the theory of evolution – none whatsoever! It is still a marvelous, glorious, exciting theory, but it remains a theory. There is no evidence to support the fact thata fish became an animal and the animal became man – none whatsoever.
So, they speak of a “missing link.” Well that justifies anything – beautifully written, exciting, and then it is compulsory reading in all the universities and schools of the world, and man has accepted the theory. Yet we cannot read in our schools God’s Word! Call that a theory, too, but they never read it, because you read the other theory. They say you can’t produce any evidence for the historicity
of Jesus – and we can’t. All right, read it anyway as theory.
If we are compelled to read as fact what has no fact to support it, then why can’t we read this and then call it theory?
But I do not, for one moment, accept the theory of evolution as fact. It’s not fact.
But I do accept evolution in the affairs of man. But don’t tell me that the little tool that is called a hoe in some strange way changed itself and became a tractor. Man changed it from the hoe to a plow drawn by a horse or drawn by an ox, and then he changed that to something even better. Then he changed his way of sailing a boat.
He still sails a boat, but the boat didn’t suddenly go through a metamorphosis in itself and become a steamship. No, man’s imagination conceived this strange thing for himself, and we call that “evolution.”
When you stand in the presence of the Risen Lord, you see man, and he’s Infinite Love – Infinite Love. And you will never exercise Infinite Power until you first are incorporated into the body of Infinite Love, because to have such power without love, you could ruin the universe! So, you will never come into such power until
you are incorporated into the body of Love and become one with the body of Love.
For, he who is united with the Spirit becomes one Spirit with It, and, therefore, you exercise the power through love.
But evolution – let them have it! I would let every man have everything he wants in this world. Let him have it. He has an imagination, and you can’t stop him from using it.
Today there are people who love war – the excitement of war. A war correspondent – he wants war. A professional soldier, especially if he is an officer – why, the most boring thing in the world for the professional soldier who is an officer is peacetime! Why, he’s an ambitious man. He wants more things on his shoulder. You can’t get them in peacetime. These fellows live for a long time, unless they die off or resign, or disappear. You can’t promote them. They can have only so many of one rank and another rank. You can’t have numberless five-star Generals! So, they either die off or have another war, or get killed off or something.
So, a man, if he’s ambitious, he wants to transcend whatever he is. If he is in business, he wants to expand beyond what he is. You can’t blame him; that’s what he wants. If he has made a million this year – turned over a million, he wants to turn over two next year. That is part of business. When he turns over two, he isn’t satisfied with that; he wants to turn over four. It is perfectly all right.
Well, the same thing is true if you are trained, not in business, but trained as a professional soldier. When you come out of an academy, you come out as a Lieutenant. You don’t want to remain a Lieutenant. You are either going to quit the service and go into some other thing, or, if you remain in the service, you don’t want to die a Lieutenant! You can’t afford a wife.
But if war breaks suddenly, our President who was a five-star General – Mr. Eisenhower – when the war broke, I think he was a Major. He quickly, in three years, rose to be General of all the Armies of Europe, and then, with that popularity, he couldn’t fail to carry the country when we were all aroused, and then we gave the victory to the one who led the Army. So, who could defeat him running for office? So, he rose from Major to the top rank in the Army, and then from that to the highest position in our country, and he was loved to the very end.
He was dearly loved. Everyone loved him, even those who were on the other side of the political picture – they loved him. But from Major to that in a few short years!
So, in peacetime, the most horrible thing for a professional soldier – well, if he’s ambitious – you see, all these things happen in God’s world. You use your mind – your imagination, and have a noble goal, a lovely goal.
And don’t let anybody tell you that you aren’t entitled to it. Why aren’t you entitled to it? If you are not born to wealth, why can’t you earn it? There is no reason why you can’t earn it. Some are born to it, and some earn it and there’s no reason in the world – you have the same talent. He gave you a talent and that talent is your own
wonderful human imagination.
But have faith in God. If you have faith in God, you have confidence in yourself, for God and man – the true Man – are one!
QUESTION ASKED FOLLOWING LECTURE, 15 July 1970
Verne Hanson: In one of your books, Neville – I think it is “Feeling Is the Secret” – you say that you have to have a change in conception to have a change in feeling, but from the lecture platform you tell us that when we hear others tell us they can’t do this because – and so forth, we should use our imagination to help them.
Neville: Why, certainly. I will repeat that.
Verne Hanson: My question is this: If that person will not change his conception, how can we change it for him?
Neville: If you realize that the great confession of the Jewish faith is, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” you look out upon the world, and there seem to be billions of people, but one day you’ll discover it’s only your own being fragmented. There is no other. The whole vast world is yourself “pushed out.”
So, if my daughter fell down the stairs, as she did as a child, I don’t scold her. I rush down and pick her up and bring her back and comfort her. I don’t say, “It serves you right. Let her learn her lesson.”
I told her one day, “You want a dog. All right, you’ll have a dog, but you will take the dog out and air it,” and she didn’t want to go down sixteen flights – we lived on the top floor – to the street and walk up the sidewalk to air it, so she was allowed to take it on the outside of the apartment. We had a lovely little garden on the outside, about 30-square with lovely plants. I said, “You may take the dog out and air the dog there, but you have to clean up the mess.” And after about four days it wasn’t clean, so I said to her, “You know, Vicki, I told you, you can have your dog, but that little place has to be clean.”
Well, at the moment it didn’t suit her, but she had to clean it, so she went outside with her broom and her pail, and she was cleaning like mad. We have three long French doors, all glass, and in her anger she struck the glass and broke it. I didn’t complain. I said, “You see what temper does. Learn your lesson. You simply smashed the door. I’ll put it back. But learn your lesson now. Your anger – your
emotion – caused this thing to happen. Yet, you are supposed to clean this place. You know that. We gave you the dog; we allowed you to have a dog. All right, but you have to do what we said was your condition on owning the dog.” She understood it. She has never forgotten it.
So, in her case, if she is injured, I don’t blame her. As her father who loves her, I don’t blame her; I paint a mental picture of her as I would like her to be, and persuade myself that she is what I believe and want her to be.
So, help everyone in the world. Tell them the story, that they may stand upon their own feet, but in the end, you are God, and God is One, and the whole vast world is yourself “pushed out.” This is just fragmented Being, the whole vast world. But you do it by starting with yourself just where you are, and then you push out your
circle. You start with your family. My wife and my daughter are dearer to me because they are right at my home – my responsibility. But I can’t just limit it to that. I have friends, and then from friends to other friends, and others and others, and then finally it pushes itself out to the whole vast world, taking in races and
nations, because I can’t limit it just to one. But you do start with the circle where you are. And it should be in your case, or anyone’s case who has a wife – it should be right where the wife comes. Or if it is a woman, where the husband comes. If an offspring is there, then naturally the children, and then you start spreading it out. If
one cannot help himself, I would not say, “All right, it serves you right.” You step in, and you do it. It is yourself pushed out.”
As I brought out the first night, if this hand itches, or the back of it and I say, “All right, you are itching, but this hand isn’t itching, so it serves you right.” Well, all right, if I let it itch and this other one can come to its assistance but I won’t let it,
then who is suffering? I am! I am suffering, so instead of suffering because I am stupid about it, I compel this hand to go right over and scratch it, for the whole vast world is myself “pushed out,” and if I cannot, at this moment, do it, then I call upon this to do it. But know a principle. This is a principle of which I speak tonight.
And, so, there are always two within a man, and they are in conflict.
The rational mind is always in conflict with imagination.
That letter which you wrote me, which I got the other night and read with great, great interest, for all your things are perfectly wonderful and your interpretations are marvelous, but the quote that you gave of Paul Brunton I thought was perfectly stupid. Here is a man who tells us that the credulous mind is a weak mind. But if
you aren’t credulous, what on earth could you ever do in this world?
I could not go to the moon if I could not be credulous and believe it. I wouldn’t dare to cut a piece of cloth and believe I could put it into a dress if I wasn’t credulous. So, what on earth does he mean? That’s why I said earlier, 99 percent of the stuff that finds its way into print isn’t worth my eyesight. I can’t read it.
Now, he has a name, and he has written all kinds of things and he speaks of an Oversoul.
In quest of something outside of himself, he’ll look forever, and he will never in eternity find it other than himself. But he has books, and they sell because it’s highly publicized. Well, when you quoted that, I said, “My lord!”
You quoted it at the very beginning of your letter, but I love you, so I went through your entire letter and loved all that you said about your personal experiences. But that quote at the beginning annoyed me; I would have closed the whole thing up if that was the
preface. If that simply determined what followed, I would have closed the whole thing up, but I didn’t in your case because I like you.
A Lady: I am exposed to so many young people right now. How can I correct the way they dress without telling them right to their face? [This question was not very clear on the tape.]
Neville: Well, first of all, I do not know what they have done to displease you. I know many of them dress unlike the way we dress, but I can’t blame you. I mean, if that is their choice of dress, all well and good. I only have to go back a few centuries to find in the western world they all looked that way.
If they go back and take the pictures of the western world three or four hundred years ago, they all had beards and long hair, and they never bathed – never bathed! A little bit of perfume here and a little bit of perfume there, and that was the last of it. But they didn’t clean themselves.
I can’t say they are not moving back like a circle into that same state. I, for one, like a daily shower. When I was running a temperature of 104 and 105 last year with that silly flu that I got, I still took my shower every day. I took it unknown by my wife and other members of the family because they would have protested, but I
didn’t feel clean until I took my shower.
Well, I am not going to say that I am the criterion of what others should do. Who am I to be the criterion? I would not allow
anyone to set himself up as the criterion for me, therefore, I would not set myself up as the criterion for another. I like to shave every day. I like to have my hair cut short. But why should I say you should do the same thing?
But when these kids come and they force strange things on you – well, then, be a lady and tell them of the difference between your thinking and their thinking.
I was waiting for the bus in L.A., and these two kids came up, 18 years of age, thumbing their way and no car was stopping for them. They were going by like mad, but buses were running every 20 minutes. So, I at least thought of them for thirteen minutes anyway. Then one fellow said to me, “Could you loan me a dime?”
I said, “I do not know who you are. You have no collateral. I do not know where you live. And you want a loan! If you want a loan, you must prove that you are capable of paying it back. You don’t want a loan; you are asking me to give you a dime. Why didn’t you say that?”
He said, “Well, I’ve got to go back to school and study the English language.” I said, “You’d better do that. Now here is a quarter” and I gave him a quarter. He said, “Man, man! You are a gentle man.” And the other one, he said to me, “Man, man, man! You’re a gentle man.”
That’s all he could say. Everything was, “Man,man, man, man.” I said, “You’d better go back to school if you ever went to school, and then come out so you can actually tell me what you want. You want a loan – a loan of a dime, and without collateral!”
QUESTION ASKED FOLLOWING LECTURE 16 July 1970
Question: Neville, would you talk a little on the 40 days and 40 nights?
Neville: Well, you see, in the Bible, numbers have their symbolical meaning. They have multiple meanings. Forty is the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter is “MEM.” Its symbol is the womb of a woman, that which gives birth.
So, here he goes into the period of creativity. Will he accept the test? He accepts the test, but he plays only Scripture in defiance of his own temptation. It’s not a being outside of himself tempting him. The whole story unfolds within the mind of the individual.
Will I believe what I have heard tonight? Then the test starts. Will I accept what I’ve heard tonight and bring forth from it, or will I simply go back?
So, he said, “If you are the Son of God” – do this, that, and the other. You should not test the Lord. If I believe it, will I accept the tests?
In New York City, I was on a midnight panel that went through the night, and a professor of philosophy from an eastern college said to me, “If what you say is true, that imagining creates reality, then turn this pencil” – ( It was a yellow pencil.) “Turn it into red.” I said to him, on radio – and all his students were listening in because he told them he was going to get the better of me.
I said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are a scoffer, and I’m told that the scoffers come in the last days who will deny and say, ‘Where is he who is to come?’ But ever since the world was made, things have gone on just as they did in the beginning of time.”
He blushed and blushed and blushed. I said, “You want me to turn this – I would not turn it into any other color than it is. If you want to turn it into any other color, go and paint it! That’s simple enough. If you want the yellow to turn to red, go and paint it.”
Don’t take the challenge of anyone in the world. It’s all within you. The challenge comes from within you. Do you believe it, or don’t you believe it? Don’t let anyone else challenge you. But they will, only when – within you – there is still that little question mark. But don’t accept it.
If I have a cold – so I have a cold. And many will say, “Why should you have a cold?” I am in the world of Caesar, and the body decays, as all bodies here decay.
So, I get a cold, as anyone else here gets a cold. And I have demonstrated – People are always demonstrating something. We came from New York City through Chicago on our way to San Francisco, years ago, and a lady ran ahead of us and knocked my little girl down – she was only three – knocked her down on her way to get a table in the dining room. I picked my little Vicki up and walked quietly forward and sat down at a table. There were lots of seats. And she was a
Christian Science practitioner on her way to some convention in Chicago, and she had demonstrated a table. She had demonstrated a seat by almost killing my daughter. Well, I don’t call that demonstration.
She was a lovely practitioner, and I learned from the conversation that she would go to the convention and tell them how she had demonstrated a seat in the diner. Lovely, isn’t it?
Well, I don’t go for that. Let them all pass by – there will be a seat there for me, and, if not now, I will wait until they get up. I don’t call this “applying the principle.”
She must live in constant confusion demonstrating. And if she gets a cold, she’ll remain at home where no one will know, and swear by all the bibles in the world she never had one, because they didn’t see it. If she has a headache, she will take a couple of aspirin. No one knows that, you see. No one will ever know she took two aspirin to simply ease the pain, and, so, when she really can’t see, she will go to the oculist, and he will give her good glasses, and she will see with nice glasses. When she has a pain in her mouth and the dentist says, “You know, this has to come out,” no one knows she is going to the dentist, but she will have it out, and get a good tooth put in that God gave the dentist the intelligence to make for her.
So, why try any of these stupid things? I wear this body. It is almost 66 now, and it’s wearing out. It used to be very, very strong – unusually strong, but when it reaches its peak, then it starts going, and it is moving towards complete disintegration.
Well, what am I trying to do? Compete with the young boys of 20? I have no desire to compete with these handsome young fellows in their 30’s and 40’s. I’ve had that!
Then came that day when the energy that went down into generation is turned around and moves up into regeneration, when the serpent within me turned up as a fiery being right back into my skull from which it came. What a joy now!
Just imagine to be able to say, with complete honesty, “If you unveiled the entire world of three and a half billion men and women and put them all before me, they would leave me cold and completely unmoved.” I could not always say that. So, unveil it all –
just one would be enough. But, then, suddenly it turns up, and it is completely turned around from generation into regeneration. Now, unveil the whole vast world before me – it would mean nothing to me.
I remain completely unmoved, for the energies have been turned up, where before, they were turned down. They were all turned down – that fiery being, and we simply went berserk, exercising that power
in a thousand and one different ways.
All of a sudden came that bolt of lightning that split me in two, and there at the base, the blood of God! And I fused with it, and then I became it, and like a fiery serpent went right up into the interior of my own being; and, from then on, the whole vast thing that formerly disturbed me ceased to be. That’s peace – the only
kind of peace in the world.
QUESTION ASKED FOLLOWING LECTURE, 17 JULY 1970
Question By A Man In The Audience: What is the meaning of the statement,“Down with the bluebloods”?
Neville: What does the statement, “Down with the bluebloods,” mean? Blueblood in Scripture is church protocol, external worship, ceremony; anything that is external is the blueblood. Down with all such worship! No matter how they justify it or tell you that it was in order. I was commanded to clear from my own mind’s eye all external worship. I don’t care how beautiful it appears to be in pageantry, it is not in order. It does nothing for the soul.
You go to church and a man prays audibly, and you can’t get into the Silence. “Let us pray,” in a very solemn, solemn voice, he says; and then repeats all these words. That’s not what you want. You
went to church to hear about God. And if you are going to pray, you pray for a friend’s recovery or a friend’s good fortune or your own recovery and your own good fortune, and you want something very tangible and right down here. And he’s leading with all this pompous, pompous stuff, and is crossing himself and crossing this, and genuflecting that, and you see all the pageantry. He said, “Down with the bluebloods.” Down with all ceremony, all external rites whatsoever! That’s what I heard.
The word “blueblood” has nothing to do with the social order. If you read the Scripture, he never once tried to change the social structure. Not once will you find in any part of Scripture where there was any attempt on the part of the central figure of Scripture to change the social order. There were slaves in those days.
There was no statement as to changes in structure. He only brought the message of Salvation, the message of redemption. And man has missed the thought and built all kinds of peculiar things round about it.
I know, when I was a child in the Episcopal Church, why, the pageantry! All the little boys coming round with their collars, all the little ruffs and the red tunics, oh, undoubtedly they looked very pretty to the mothers who saw them. I recall vividly when someone told my Mother that her boys should be in the choir, so she was
persuaded by this very serious and interfering neighbor who was always giving advice to my Mother – she had two children. She couldn’t raise them well, but she thought she could tell my Mother how to raise her ten! So, my Mother said, “All right, you’ve got to go and try out for the choir.”
Well, we didn’t want the choir; we wanted to go and play football or cricket – play all the games, go swimming, fishing; but we had to go and try out for the choir!
Well, I was determined I was not going to have a voice, and my brothers, I shared my knowledge with them. I was the fourth one. There were four of us, and so we all agreed that we were going to pretend that we had never heard singing before.
So, when he struck a note on the organ, he struck C. We struck everything in the world but a C. He said, “Don’t you have any ear? Try again. We tried this one, that one, the other one – you never heard such caterwauling in your life! He said, “You go back and tell your Mother that I’ve tried my best, and you just don’t have it.
That’s all there is to it.”
Well, I thought, Now this is really fun! I am going to have a little fun before I go, too. Now, my eldest brother, Cecil – and so I said to Mr. Taggert, who was the organist; just as we were about to leave, I said to Mr. Taggert, “Oh, Mr. Taggert, my brother Cecil can whistle.”
Well, he could have killed me! We all “broke up,” and Cecil couldn’t whistle unless he started laughing, so Mr. Taggert knew it was a joke, and dismissed us. But when we got out, he really could have killed me! I said, “He can whistle.”
To see myself all dressed in this robe coming down on Sunday mornings – well, I wanted to get out and start whistling. So, we just beat that little neighbor at her own little game.
But I was told in no uncertain terms, “Down with the bluebloods!” And it hasn’t a thing to do with any so-called blueblood in the world. If you want to feel that you are a blueblood, feel it. There are those in every walk of life who feel that they are in the highest of the social stratus. It’s perfectly all right. I wouldn’t change it at all.
Leave it alone. I personally have never felt inferior to anyone I’ve ever met. I have never in my life felt inferior to anyone. I admire them if they have money – much more than I have. I have little, and they have much, but that doesn’t mean that I am impressed. Also, there are those who come into the world, and they have all the
lovely things in the world. I admire them – go to their homes and admire all the beauty that they can afford, and lovely pieces, but it doesn’t make me feel inferior to them. I feel one with it all!
My maid comes and cleans for me once a week. I like to look upon Doris as a friend. She’s a friend. I talk with her just as I would with a friend. She cleans for me and does all the lovely things that I wouldn’t do for myself, so I treat her as a friend. I can’t see that, because she works for me, she must be below me. On the
other hand, I can’t see, because someone has a billion dollars, that I should think him important.
As someone said, I think it was Lloyd George – he tried to put through the House of Commons a bill making some kind of a change in the land ownership of England, and he said to the entire House – he said, “You know, if you are all honest with yourselves, you all know that any Englishman can prove ownership to his land by tracing his ancestry back to the first one who stole it!”
Well, that is just about what you will find in all kinds of fabulous things, but I don’t envy them. I’m all for it! If I have a dollar when I die, I want my wife, if she survives me, to have it. And if I had a million, I’d still want her to have it. If she goes before I do, I want my children to have it. If they inherit it, what’s wrong with that? I see not a thing wrong in that, because it comes within the code of that wonderful law, where it says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Wouldn’t you like to receive a million dollars? Or, would you give it back? All right, I wouldn’t give it back. I would take it. Well, the same thing is true of all inheritance laws. My father gave us all that he could; he gave the ten of us his entire estate. None of us gave it to the government, although they took much of it
without asking.
QUESTION ASKED FOLLOWING LECTURE, 20 JULY 1970
Question By A Man In The Audience: Will you elaborate on the technique of arresting the action?
Neville: Can I elaborate on the technique of arresting the motion within man? Sir, I can only tell you the first time that it happened in me. I came upon a scene that seemed to be about a hundred and fifty years ago in the New England states. I could tell from the dress of the people that it was about a hundred and fifty years
prior to that moment in time that it happened to me.
It seemed to be a Sunday afternoon when they were dining, – I would say about 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon. But I could tell from their dress that it was about a hundred and fifty years prior to that moment in time, which was about twenty-odd years ago, when it first happened.
I came into a restaurant, and there were four people seated at a table, two sons in their early 20’s and their parents, the father and mother. One boy was bringing the food to his mouth to eat it, and the waitress came through a little door, and she was all dressed in the same kind of a dress she would have a hundred and fifty years ago – very stiffly starched; her collar was starched, her sleeves were starched, and she was animated.
Through the huge, big bay window I could see leaves falling. It was the Fall of the year, and I could see the leaves coming down slowly. I could see a bird in motion, and I could see the wind blowing the grass. Here was an animated restaurant.
At that moment I knew intuitively that if I could arrest that activity that I felt within me that everything would stand still. And, strangely enough, I knew how to arrest it. Now, you want to know how to do it.
I can only say, at that moment when you come upon such a scene and you know – you will know how to do it. I simply stilled an activity in my own brain, as it were.
Yet, I was in Spirit. Here my body was on the bed. I felt something in me stand still, yet my consciousness was alive and completely alert. I knew what I’m doing.
But at that moment the boy bringing his food to his mouth couldn’t bring it. The waitress walking, walked not. The bird flying, flew not. The grass waving, waved not. The leaves falling, fell not.
Everything stood still. I examined them, and they were all as though they were made of clay. Then I released – in me – the activity,
and the bird continued to fly, the waitress continued her intentions to serve the food, and the boy eating the food brought it to his mouth, and everything moved on as it had intended.
That was my first experience of life-in-me. Prior to that moment, I did not understand that statement in Scripture that says, “As the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”
Then I knew what it meant to have life in myself. The whole vast world, believe it or not, is the individual “pushed out”; and he has animated it, but he doesn’t know how to stop it or change it. He can only change it without stopping it.
You can change it now by bringing into your mind’s eye an individual in your world and changing him for the good. You can change it for the worse if you want to, but don’t. Change him for the good, because “he is yourself “pushed out,” and then let him conceive in his world a change in motivation.
But the day will come that you can still the entire, vast world, and change it, motivationally, and it will be changed. But you do it all within you. You feel it in your head. Everything is felt in the head. It’s a peculiar thing, but I can tell you how to stop it here, but the day will come, you will taste of the power of the Age to
come, as told us in the book of Hebrews. He has “tasted of the power of the age to come.” (Hebrews 6:5, RSV1)
And when you are completely “born from above” – because unless man is “born from above,” he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom of Heaven is made up of those whose bodies are in complete control by the individual who wears it. And that body has life in itself. That is, it stops and starts anything in the world. It has no fear, because everything is itself “pushed out.” How can it be hurt
by its own being pushed out and still be in control of its pushed-out self?
It is in complete control, but you will never completely harness this power unless you are first incorporated into the Body of Love. God, truly, is Love, because to use this power without love, you would wreck the universe. But no one would actually be given the power until he is first called by the Risen Lord and incorporated into the Body of Love. So, you will always be guided by Love.