NEVILLE GODDARD LECTURE: SELF ABANDONMENT

Neville Goddard Lecture – Self Abandonment . . 06-1-1970Show more

Week after week, as I take this platform, I know what I want to say. It is merely finding out how to say it so that it is intelligible, for we are dealing with a mystery. It’s not something you can spell out and say, “Now this is it.”

It’s peculiar, the most fantastic mystery in the world. To me, to experience Scripture, to experience God’s plan of salvation, is my interpretation of the whole purpose of life. That is what I firmly believe. I firmly believe that the roots of our ‘being’ are rooted in God, and God unfolds Himself creatively in us.

When I make that statement, I put myself on the side of that which is being transformed, say, a man. For metamorphosis is the theme of the Bible. That is the complete transformation of man into God. When I make a statement as I have just made it, it seems that this is man, you and I are the man, being transformed by a means other than ourselves, and I don’t mean that at all. But man is so conditioned to believe he is a little worm that you approach it from that angle. You and I are the God transforming man into our image, into our likeness.

But then, if I said that to a large crowd, the curtain would come down and they wouldn’t hear one word I had to say beyond that. But you and I took the plunge. We were the “sons of God,” together making God, for the word God is a plural word. The word is Elohim.

“In the beginning God.” That word is Elohim; it is plural. And “God said, Let us make man in our image.” The same word is Elohim. It’s a compound unity, one made up of others.

We are told in Deuteronomy that “He has set bonds to the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” No child can be born unless God occupies that little temple. These are the gods that came down. You and I are the gods that came down. We are transforming these identities, these men and women with which we are identified, into our likeness rather than being transformed by something other than ourselves. We are the gods that came down; and when we awake we are the gods spoken of in the very beginning.

“In the beginning God” ‘Elohim’, plural, the gods . . “created the heavens and the earth,” like creating a theater for the display of its might and its creative powers. And then the God said, “Let us make man in our image”; so we came down and clothed ourselves in these garments.