Why Did Neville Goddard Mention Blake So Much

Why Did Neville Goddard Mention Blake So Much? While reading Neville Goddard’s lectures, you will inevitably find him quoting the 18th-century poet and printmaker William Blake. Blake wasn’t just an artist to Neville. He treated him as a prophet who mapped the human psyche. “When you discuss Blake, you are discussing one of the great spiritual giants of all time. You might just as well discuss St. Paul, for they had the identical vision, the vision of reality. But Blake’s radical ideas didn’t appear out of thin air. To understand why Neville relied on Blake, we have to look at the historical bridge that connects them: the 18th-century scientist and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg, at the age of 75, holding the soon to be published manuscript of Apocalypsis Revelata (1766). The Swedenborg, Blake, and Neville Pipeline. In the mid-1700s, Emanuel Swedenborg shocked the theological world by claiming that Heaven and Hell were not physical locations in the afterlife but “From this it is clear that the states of the interiors are what make heaven, and that heaven is within everyone, and not outside of him; as the Lord teaches when he says: The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, neither shall they say, Lo here, or Lo there; for behold, the kingdom of God ye have within you (Luke 17:20, 21). He also introduced the concept of the “Divine Human” that God isn’t a formless void but has a fundamentally human character. , Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley “Blake owned and annotated at least three of Swedenborg’s books: ; he mentions two others in such a way as to suggest that he read them: ]. He and his wife attended the first General Conference of the New Jerusalem Church in 1789. Then, turning sharply against the Swedenborgians, he satirized them and their Messenger in (1790–93). After that he mentions Swedenborg twice in his published writings—in While Blake embraced Swedenborg’s concept that the spiritual world is internal, he eventually rejected what he saw as Swedenborg’s lingering religious moralism.n1621 ¶1

Blake took Swedenborg’s teachings and pushed it to a radical conclusion that God is not merely “human-like” (Divine Human) but Blake expressed this in his late engraving “The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION, that is God himself The Divine Body } ישע [Yeshua] JESUS we are his Members” “All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity, The Human Imagination… Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination. So for Blake, Imagination isn’t a faculty given God. This is the core of what Neville Goddard later celebrated and attempted to turned into a practical teaching. I’ve told you night after night, Jesus Christ is the core of man, the true identity of every being in the world.n1621 ¶2

Now, listen carefully to one who really saw it so clearly and told it so beautifully and this is William Blake. In his last chapter, he addresses it “To the Christians”…this is his 77th Plate [Jerusalem]…and he said, “Devils are false religions. There is no other devil. Now he defines Christianity, he said, “I know of no other Christianity and no other gospel than he liberty both of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of Imagination, Imagination, the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our eternal or imaginative bodies when this vegetable, mortal body is no more. Now he makes this bold assertion, “The Apostles knew of no other gospel. “What,” asked he, “is that talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the treasures of heaven that we are to store up for ourselves, are they any other than mental studies and performances? That’s the only Christianity that he ever heard of; he never knew any other gospel, no other Christ.n1621 ¶3

So, Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, that is Christ. And everything said of him in scripture you will experience. But you must first accept him as your own wonderful human Imagination and practice this great divine art of Imagining, which in scripture is called “repentance” which word simply means a radical change of attitude towards anything in this world that you want to change…a radical change. You simply in your wonderful human Imagination set up a picture which is different from what you are seeing with your senses; and you persist in that picture until you are persuaded of the reality of that picture, and then it takes the place of what you are seeing outwardly.n1621 ¶4

Then you know who Christ is, for “by him all things are made, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). So if you do it and prove that it works, then you know who he is. This is the only Christ that Blake ever heard of, for as he said, “The Apostles knew no other.n1621 ¶5

There was no other, and anything other than this is a false religion and he called that the devil. So you make some picture on the outside, and you worship some little thing in conflict with the Second Commandment “Make no graven image unto me” (Ex. 20:4). You make something other than yourself and think it is Christ—that is nothing more than a false religion which is the devil. Both Blake and Neville knew that the greatest block was the belief in a transactional, external God who punishes and rewards. To takes this idol apart, Blake gave this false god a sarcastic name: “Nobodaddy. Fusing “Nobody” and “Daddy,” Nobodaddy was the “Father of Jealousy,” “silent and invisible,” hiding himself in clouds. Blake’s caricature of this external God being a distant patriarch invented by human fear. Blake used this sarcasm to point out this tyrant in the sky is literally a “nobody” because he does not exist. He calls out this God hiding behind obscure laws that make knowledge a secret sin so prudish society will applaud strict moral rules. The Most Practical, Yet Most Profoundly Spiritual Now, the world is looking for some external Christ, something on the outside. Now if tonight…suppose someone in this community could be assured that Jesus Christ as an external being was present.n1621 ¶6

Why, the entire social world would turn itself over for the privilege of entertaining him. Why, you would have such a battle in the social world to entertain him it would be like a slaughter. Just to give him a piece of bread, a glass of water, just to touch him, to talk to him.n1621 ¶7

They’re looking for the wrong Christ. “As much as you’ve done it to the least among one of these my brethren, you did it to me. If perchance you had a chance, wouldn’t you simply jump to serve a Christ?n1621 ¶8

Well, can you believe when you do anything to anyone in this world, you’re doing it to Christ? If you don’t, you don’t know Christ. If you do not know that whatever you do to anyone in this world you are doing to Christ, you do not know Christ.n1621 ¶9

You’ll wait forever to see him coming from without. He can’t come from without, he is within. “Awake! Awake!” said Blake, “you sleepers in the land of shadow, wake! expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine. I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and a friend. Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me” (Jerusalem, Ch. 1, Lines 6-26).n1621 ¶10

But the man does not believe it. “And the perturbed man away turns down the valleys dark. He will not believe it.n1621 ¶11

He’s looking for some external savior, some external God. Swedenborg mapped out spiritual “states,” but Blake adopted the concept to explain human behavior and the illusions of morality. “I do not consider either the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme State, but to be every one of them States of the Sleep which the Soul may fall into in its deadly Dreams of Good and Evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent. Neville used this exact concept constantly to teach his audience how to detach from their current circumstances. If poverty is just a “State,” you don’t need to feel guilty about it, and you don’t need to physically fight it. You simply move your consciousness out of it. to leave a state, Neville frequently referenced a conversation Blake had with his friend Henry Crabb Robinson regarding the concept of “death.n1621 ¶12

Neville realized Blake was not talking about physical death, but the psychological act of leaving an old state behind: And now we come to Blake. And then, Blake in his wonderful thought to his friend, Crabb Robinson, Blake said to Robinson one day, “There is nothing like death. Death is the best thing that can happen in life, but most people die so late and take such an unmerciful time in dying, God knows their neighbors never see them rise from the dead. You see, Blake had this strange use of words, and he gave an enlarged meaning to words. So, you say something died; you think, well, now we put it in the grave. No, we’re in the grave, and we are in the grave of what is now our problem.n1621 ¶13

And so we won’t believe in him to get out of it. For he is the resurrecting power, he can pull us out of every problem in the world.n1621 ¶14

And so, if I now believe that I am poor, unwanted, this, that and the other, if I believe in him I am pulled out of the grave, and my neighbors will see me rise from the dead. But if I don’t know this, I take such a long time disengaging myself from the state that I seem never to rise from the dead. Well, how would I rise from the dead? By this simple little technique that I’ve told you over the years now: When I know what I want to be, I simply assume that I am it.n1621 ¶15

But I’m not dumb, and so if I were it I would share my good fortune with others and I would tell them, and they, in turn, would talk to me and tell me, as a friend, how they rejoice because of my good fortune. So now I carry on a mental conversation from the premise of my wish fulfilled, carry it on with them, and listen carefully until I actually hear the sound of their voice within me. Physically they may be in Timbuktu—I don’t care where they are physically—the fact that I bring them in my mind’s eye and carry on with them this mental conversation. Then, in a way that I do not know in my conceptual mind, the thing happens, and I’m resurrected from my former state, which was a dead state, into this now new living state.n1621 ¶16

So Blake was quite right. But he said, “There is nothing more wonderful than death”; then he observed that man trying so hard to get out of poverty and getting all the more into it like quicksand. He’s trying to get out of something but going all the more into it, because he doesn’t believe in Christ Jesus. He’ll go to a church and pray to some saint on the wall, and light a candle, and do all these things on the outside. But he doesn’t believe in Christ Jesus. If he really believed in Christ Jesus he wouldn’t go any place. Wherever he stands…it could be at a bar with a drink before him and maybe two in him…and simply shut out the bar completely, and carry on a mental conversation with a friend who is not physically present from the premise of fulfilled desire; and that is believing in Christ Jesus. Because wherever such a man stands is holy ground….n1621 ¶17

Now, the question is asked: “How can men call upon him in whom they do not believe, and how can they believe in him of whom they’ve never heard? And how can they hear of him without a preacher? And how can there be a preacher unless he is sent? So “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom. 10:14,17). There’s nothing else to preach, the preaching of Christ.n1621 ¶18

You have a problem? You don’t know what…it’s a mechanical problem, so it’s a problem. He is the solution of all problems. So you carry on a mental conversation with a friend that it’s solved. And maybe tomorrow you’ll have an accident in your lab, a seeming accident, and the solution is the result of the accident.n1621 ¶19

It has happened all over the world. Jerusalem copy E, plate 53 (see enlargement). Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1992.8.1(53). When students struggled with the reality of their physical senses and ask, “If I imagined it, why hasn’t it happened yet?n1621 ¶20

Neville used Blake to explain the illusory nature of the 3D world. All are Human & when you enter into their Bosoms you walk In Heavens & Earths; as in your own Bosom you bear your Heaven And Earth, & all you behold, tho it appears Without it is Within In your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow. “Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. “All that you behold; tho’ it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake, Jerusalem, Plt. 71).n1621 ¶21

You cannot conceive of something that is not already contained within you. If you imagine it and enter into that state as though it were true, the outer world will respond to bear witness of this imaginal activity within you….And we go forward giving what is called advice, more and more so-called good advice when scripture doesn’t speak of giving any good advice; it speaks only of giving good news. Go and tell them the good news, that you created it, and you will simply extract yourself from it. And so, you are the immortal being. Don’t give any good advice. Let people be just what they want to be. I don’t care what they are, let them be. They want to grow beards and long…well, there was a time that everyone grew a beard. Let him grow his beard, let him grow his mustache, let him do all the things in the world as long as he doesn’t interfere with you. As far as you are concerned if you don’t want to grow one, don’t grow one. And no one will disturb you if you in your own wonderful way imagine you are free, free as the wind, and live in that state. And the world will respond to you and treat you with all the respect you do.n1621 ¶22

But if you get entangled in it, trying to work against shadows—for they’re all shadows if they respond to my imaginal act then they’re shadows—how can they be causative in my world? If I give them the power of causation, then I’m transferring what rightly belongs to me to them, and they’re only shadows. The whole vast world bears witness of the activity taking place within us, and so the whole world only mirrors what I am doing within myself. That’s all that it’s doing. If I know that, I am set free! Blake gave instructions on how to manifest.n1621 ¶23

In Alexander Gilchrist’s 1863 biography, (Volume 1, Chapter 35). Gilchrist interviewed many of Blake’s surviving friends and contemporaries. In Chapter 35, Gilchrist discusses how Blake tried to explain to his artist friends that his “visions” were not madness, but rather a deliberate, cultivated use of the human imagination. Gilchrist records Blake’s advice to a struggling young painter: “He said the things imagination saw were as much realities as were gross and tangible facts. He would tell his artist-friends, ‘You have the same faculty as I (the visionary), only you do not trust or cultivate it. You can see what I do, if you choose. In a similar spirit was his advice to a young painter: ‘You have only to work up imagination to the state of vision, and the thing is done. Raise Imagination To The State Of Vision “Just imagine it’s all that you and I have to do…to raise Imagination to the state of vision and the thing is done. Anything, no matter what it is. When Blake used the word vision, he used it as the prophets of old used it in scripture. It’s not confined to the single sense of sight but takes in all the senses, either individually or in combinations. Emanuel Swedenborg was a very smart Swede who figured out that Heaven and Hell aren’t places you go after you die. They are right there inside you. Then came William Blake. Blake was a printmaker who saw angels sitting in the trees in London He read Swedenborg and took it one step further. He realized that the human imagination wasn’t just a neat trick for making up poems. It was God. He looked at the angry, invisible sky-god everyone else was terrified of. He sarcastically called him Nobodaddy. Nobodaddy was just a boogeyman made out of clouds and bad manners. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Blake though wrote in riddles.n1621 ¶24

He made up giant mythological creatures and engraved them on copper plates, which was very hard work. Most people had no idea what he was talking about and most thought he was nuts. And then, a hundred and fifty years later, along comes Neville Goddard. Neville didn’t have time for riddles. Fortunately or unfortunately he translated it into biblical language. But even so, he was a pragmatist. He looked at Blake’s crazy art and words and translated them into a type of instruction manual. Neville realized you don’t need to be a prophet or a poet to make the universe do what you want. As Blake told a young painter, and as Neville told anyone who would listen: you just raise your imagination to the state of vision (if it were only so simple), and the thing is done.n1621 ¶25

If this free archive of Neville Goddard’s lectures has helped you on your journey, consider helping keep it alive for others. Why Did Neville Goddard Mention Blake So Much? If you listen to Neville Goddard’s lectures, you will inevitably hear him quote the 18th-century poet William Blake. But Blake wasn't just an artist to Neville; he was a prophet who had accurately mapped the human psyche.n1621 ¶26

Discover the historical pipeline from Emanuel Swedenborg to Blake to Neville, and how Blake’svisions of the "Human Imagination" were translated into a practical instruction manual for the Law.n1621 ¶27