Neville Goddard Lecture, Sharing in Creativity

Sharing in Creativity

Complete Neville Goddard Lecture Audio Available in Members Area

SHARING IN CREATIVITY

There is no greater thrill than sharing in divine creative activity! This activity, however, cannot be earned, for it is given by grace. When someone proclaimed: “I am of Paul and I am of Apollo,” Paul asked, “Who is Paul and who is Apollo? I have planted and Apollo has watered, but God gives the growth.” An idea is a seed which can be planted in the mind; but having no life in itself, the thought will remain dormant unless God gives it birth. Speaking of a remnant, Paul said: “When Elijah petitioned God against Israel because they had killed his prophets and destroyed his altars, and I alone am left, what did God say? He said: ‘I have seven thousand men who have not bent their knee to Baal.” Then Paul added this thought: “So, too, at this time there is a chosen remnant, chosen by grace; and if it is by grace, then it is not based on works – otherwise, grace would no longer be grace.” (Romans 11) The remnant is chosen by grace, yet no one knows the secret of God’s selective love, and therefore cannot boast if he is elected. I, like Paul, say that at this time also a remnant has been chosen. Now, although Paul speaks of seven thousand men, these are not people, but the number seven – which means spiritual perfection, a perfection which cannot be earned. Fitness for the kingdom is the consequence, not the condition, of God’s grace. The moment an individual is called, embraced, and has union with the Holy Spirit, he is spiritually perfect. Prior to that moment in time he is not fit, therefore he is chosen by grace.

The entire epistle to the Romans rests upon Paul’s argument for the paramount importance of faith in God’s plan of salvation. To Paul, Christian teaching was teaching Christ as a great mystery. He defines Christ as God’s power and wisdom wrapped in a pattern which unfolds within an individual. And the faith of which Paul speaks is faith in the pattern he calls Christ. The churches have distorted Paul’s faith in Christ, making it a person; yet Paul asked: “What came you out to see, a man that can be tossed by the wind? How can men call upon him in whom they do not believe? And how can they believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how can they hear unless there is a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news.” Using Isaiah as his marvelous argument, Paul asks: “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” Then he concludes: “Therefore, faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes by teaching Christ.” Paul is speaking of his faith in the vision of the end, when he told Timothy: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” No matter what happened to Paul, whether he was in prison or shipwrecked, he held aloft the mighty works of God, which must come to the individual at the end of this age of death. Your departure from the age of death and entrance into the age of life occurs when the power of God and the wisdom of God is born in you individually. This act fits you to function consciously in an entirely different age – a world which is unknown to anyone here, as nothing here relates to what is seen there. Although perceived, that age is unknown until your garment of death is removed for the last time.

Now, those who are sent are conscious of being sent. They are aware of that moment of union with God, as well as every event which takes place thereafter. Paul tells us that only the sent can be the preacher. But as we are told in the gospels: although some bring forth a hundred-fold, others sixty-fold and still others thirty-fold, all are qualified to enter the kingdom of heaven, and exercise their creative power of different levels. Although many here have not brought through the full consciousness of birth, one lady has had all of the experiences but the dove. I will now tell her story. In her vision she was on a ship moving down the coastline of California, when she asked someone to let her know when she would pass Point Conception. A man at her side said: “We passed that thirty miles back, don’t you remember?” Feeling a little foolish, she admitted she had forgotten – but I say to her: this was thirty years, not miles. Your conception happened thirty years ago, and therefore your birth from above is imminent. A short time later she awoke, hearing a voice say: “Father, father.” Feeling fatherly love, she answered: “Yes, my son.” This vision was not an adumbration, but her very Being, telling her in symbolic form what has already happened, for this vision was followed by another. The next day a beautiful infant appeared before her. This was followed by a handsome youth. As the vision continued, she found herself in a house with a man who was both a thief and a murderer. Running toward the kitchen, a terrified female companion blocked her entrance. Turning, she found an alcove with an unusually small window. Sticking her head through it, she had to squeeze her body through, when suddenly everything gave way as though made of paper.

At that moment the man appeared with a jackknife in his right hand and a butcher knife in his left. Approaching him from the rear, she grabbed both of his hands and, slamming the jackknife shut, she cut his right hand and somehow wounded the left. Then her female companion entered with an enormous saw which she held above her head with both hands and asked: “Shall I saw him in half?” Screaming, “No,” my friend moved between the two and – with her back to the lad – she said: “I love him.” With that, she took the man in her arms and embraced him. As she looked into his face she saw, not a criminal, but a friend who had died many years ago, yet one she had always respected because of his integrity, his courage, and most of all for his individualism. In his poem, ‘The Hound of Heaven’, Blake tells of being chased all through the nights and days, down through the arches of the years, all through the labyrinthine ways of his mind; and in the midst of tears, he hid from him. But at the very end he discovered he was the one he had been seeking. That seeming other – his tormentor – was in truth his lover, who is God the Father. In her glorious vision, the companion severed her when she faced her tormentor. At that moment she experienced the splitting of the curtain of the temple from top to bottom. She did not see the act, for she turned her back on the lifted sword. She doesn’t remember the blow any more than she remembers the conception or the birth, but the whole thing is over for her. It was brought back to her in beautiful imagery. Her Father knows why he kept the experiences away from the surface mind, but it is my hope that she will remember the descent of the dove.

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