Neville Goddard Lecture- The Potters House (CLEAR Audio) Full HQ Lecture(1)

The transcript discusses the concept of the potter's house mentioned in the book of Isaiah and Jeremiah. It explains that the potter represents imagination and the ability to shape one's own reality. The speaker emphasizes the importance of imagining oneself and others in a positive light, and using imagination to manifest desires. The transcript also explores the idea that imagination is God, and that everything in the world, including physical objects and experiences, first originated from imagination. It concludes by stating that man is all imagination and that God exists within each individual's imagination. is the potter's house. In the book of Isaiah, we read, O Lord, thou art our father, we are the clay, and thou art our potter, we are all the works of thy hand. Here we see that the Lord, the Father, and the potter are one. Now the word potter as defined in scripture is imagination. Here we are told it is to form a resolution, to determine, such as in the beginning, let us make man in our image after our likeness. That is to form a resolution. Now we are told that that is the potter, and it is the Father, and it is the Lord. Now in Jeremiah, we are told he went down to the potter's house. First of all he said, Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my word. So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel, and the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand. But he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. For he just discovered that the potter, who is our Father, who is the Lord, is our own wonderful human imagination. Now he is working with clay, and we are told that we are the clay. So I stand for a moment, and I wonder, what am I imagining concerning myself? For that is the clay. Imagining is God in action, is the potter in action, it is the Lord himself, the Father, in action. Is my concept of myself what I would like it to be, or is it spoiled? I don't discard it, I simply rework it into another vessel, as it seemed good to me the potter to do. Am I living as I would like to live? Do I have an income equal to my needs? Do I have an income equal to the things I would like to do? Or am I limiting myself based upon what I think that I could do? There is no limit placed upon the potter's ability to reshape that image. So will I now actually take the challenge and reshape the vessel? For the vessel is made of clay, and we are the clay. Will I now this very moment change my concept of myself, my concept of those that are in my will, and see them as I would like to see them in my will? Will it work? Well now let us take a look now at the definition of imagination as given to us by man. Scripture defines it as God. Scripture defines it as God the Father, the potter who fashions everything in the world. But now we use it so loosely in this world. We are told that the simple apprehension of corporeal objects is present, is sense, that is sense perceived. This is now sense perceived. I can see you, and if you speak, and I hear you, that is sense perceived, and you are present. Therefore, that is real, they say. If absent, it is imagination. In other words, it isn't real. It isn't sense perceived. Now we will take one of the senses. We'll take the sense of smell. Since smell is a chemical sense, a contact is necessary for perception. You have to actually have a chemical contact to smell in this world. Now I ask you to join with me. Maybe you do not like flowers as I do. Can you smell a rose and it's not present? There aren't any roses there or in your presence, but can you now imagine a rose and smell it? I can. It's so distinct. Well, if the rose is not here when I smell it, why is its fragrance in the air? When it depends upon a chemical contact. You cannot smell anything in this world without a chemical contact. I go into the kitchen, I smell gas, and it's not lit, but I notice I smell gas. It's a chemical contact. Then I notice that the wind, leaving the window open, blew out the little pilot light. I turn it on and nothing happens. Therefore, I know the pilot is gone, and I like it. But I could smell, that was a chemical contact. If I could not detect it, I could just simply become asphyxiated. If I lost that olfactory nerve and could not reach that chemical contact. But now here is the rose, and I can actually smell a rose. Now, you say, well, what does that mean? It means so much to me. You can smell money. Money has an odor unlike anything in this world. Entirely different. You can actually take it and smell it. A money bag is more fragrant to the miser than all the flowers of the world. It's a pleasant odor to him. Not to me. I need money. I have to have money to pay all the normal expenses in this world. But it's not to me a fragrant odor. But I use this principle towards getting money, towards meeting all the obligations of life. For I am obligated as you are. So I go down to the potter's house. Well, I can sit in a chair. I can stand at a bar. I can do it wherever I am. I am right there in the potter's house. For I am from the potter. The potter is my imagination. And the potter is the Father, the Lord God Almighty. And I have found him. So I don't have to go any place outside of where I stand to be in the potter's house. And now I will see what he's doing. So I see what I'm doing. What am I imagining? For that's what he's working on. So I went down to the potter's house and I simply saw what he was doing. What am I imagining? Is it a good image that I am forming of myself and my friends and things that I love in this world? Or am I critical? Am I simply making a mess of the talent? I find quite often I am not using it wisely. I tell you that the worship of God is to use his gifts. That's the only way you really worship God. He gave you a talent. Well, the talent is himself. It comes through, naturally, the five senses. I may be denied four of them, as many are born minus one, two, three, or maybe four. Most would have the sense of touch, but some are born blind, or they go blind. Some go deaf. Some lost the sense of sound, I mean, speech. All these things, but nevertheless, I can use in my imagination all these talents. Physically, they may be denying me, but I still have an open door from within, and I can use it from within. I need not actually have them all open on the outside if I'm born unrestricted. I can still call upon them from within, as I do now, to smell the rose. A friend of mine, she's gone from this world now, in New York City, many, many years ago. I told a story similar to this tonight, and sitting in my audience, she said, well, now, I'm going to test this. And in the silence, she embraced a huge bouquet of roses. She lived in the towers, the Waldorf Astoria. So when she went home that night, as she went down the hallway towards her room, she detected a strong odor of roses, and she stopped at one door, thinking it might be fear. It was permeating the entire hallway. She kept on going, and it got stronger and stronger, and when she opened her door, there were three dozen long beauties on her bureau. The window was opened just a little bit, and it came bringing the odor through into the hallway. There was no note on it, but here were these lovely roses. The next day, she was informed how it happened, that that night, the English-speaking union gave a party, for the present Queen's mother, who was Queen Elizabeth, but not Queen in the true sense of the word. She was George's wife, but she was Queen while he reigned. And they had these enormous flowers, raised for the occasion, and at the end of the banquet, and a thousand of them sat at this dinner, they wondered what to do with the roses. And the head waiter said, well, Mrs. Niemeyer loves flowers, especially roses. Send three dozen up to her room. You either throw them away, or find some way to use them wisely. And so Mrs. Niemeyer was given three dozen of these beauties, which she certainly did not expect, but she thought she would try it. And she embraced it in her mind's eye, and she could smell the roses. And then came three dozen beauties into her room. I have known people who would take money in their mind's eye, and actually feel it, and it's not present, and smell it, and count it all. And then it happened just like that. Man is not completely confined to the little garment and the five senses through which contact is made with the world. He has imagination. Imagination is God. That's the potter. That is the Lord. That is our Father, and he gave us himself. And the only way to truly worship God is to use his gifts. And he actually gave me himself, because I can say I am, and that's his name. Now I discover he is my imagination. So Blake says, I know of no other Christianity, and no other gospel, than the liberty, both of body and mind, to exercise the divine arts of imagination. And then he adds, the apostles knew of no other gospel. We are living in a world of imagination. If I say to the average person who believes in God, the whole vast world was created by God. We are living in a world of God. They would bow and admit to that. But let me say, the world in which we live is the world of imagination. And they hold their hand up. Wait a minute. This is real. What you imagine is unreal. And yet everything they tell me is real, was once only imagined. The clothes you wear had to be first imagined. The chairs in which you are seated. The building in which we are now housed. Everything first had to be imagined, before it was objectified and executed in this world. So what is now real to us, and seemingly an objective fact, was once only imagined. We had to imagine going to the moon before we did it. And everything here was in the potter's hand. And that potter is your own wonderful human imagination. Everything in this world that we call natural has an imaginal cause, and not a natural cause. A natural cause only seems. It is a delusion of the perishing memory. That's the one thing that suffers when God became man. He had to completely forget that he was God when he became man. And so memory faded completely. But the reality remained, for he is man's own wonderful human imagination. Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself. We speak of it in the New Testament as Jesus. That is the divine body of the Lord Jesus, your own wonderful human imagination. He is not on the outside. He is within your own wonderful human imagination. So if I should use the word God, the word Lord, the word Jesus, and in any sense whatsoever it causes you to think of some external existing presence, you have not found the true God, the true Lord, the true Jesus. If for one moment you hear the word, and out flies the mind towards some external object, either in time or space or both, you haven't found the right Jesus, the right Lord. So you are told, do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Then comes the challenge. Test yourselves and see whether you are holding to the faith. Well now the minute you hear the word Jesus, and you think of something other than your own wonderful human imagination, you fail the test. You fail it at that very moment when you hear the word and something on the outside. I turned on the TV the other day just out of curiosity. I was feeling around for the ball game, the football, and I spot one of these stations. And here is this man talking to undoubtedly enormous crowds, and he is praying to the outside Lord Jesus. Takes huge ads in the paper, and he is calling on something on the outside, and all this nonsense. There is no outside Lord Jesus. When he rises in you, he rises as you. When he awakes in you, he awakes as you. And when he awakes in you, he is the Father. And you will know he is the Father, for you are the Father, and confirmation of that comes before you in the form of David. And David stands before you, and you know exactly who he is, and who you are. There is your son, bearing witness to the fact that you are the Lord Jesus, that you are the Father. This is the story of Scripture. Now I ask you to use your imagination wisely and lovingly on behalf first of yourself, and then everyone you contact in this world. I don't care who he is, just don't discard him. He can be refashioned. Read the story carefully in the 18th chapter of Jeremiah. And the word Jeremiah means Jehovah will rise. He is buried in man. He is man's imagination. And these are the first four verses. Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words. So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel, and the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand. But he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to do. He didn't discard it. So someone seems beyond repair. Don't discard it. Test this power, this creative power. There is nothing more wonderful in this world, nothing more creative in man, than to believe a thing into existence. I can conceive of anything more wonderful than that. To believe a thing into existence. The late Robert Frost, the great poet, he said our founding fathers did not believe in the future. They believed it in. They didn't think that time would bring about democracy, that time would bring about the country that you and I love and enjoy this world. They believed it in. They had an idea, and it was not anything that Europe had. Europe did not conceive this thing. It died with ancient Greece, the most difficult form of government in the world we have here. Because we have freedom. We have all the freedom in the world. And we indulge ourselves beyond, well, we disuse it really. But here our founding fathers did not believe in the future. They believed it in, said he. And there is nothing more creative in man than to believe something into existence. So do you know what you want? Well then, begin to believe it in as you believe now that you can smell roses. Believe it in. What would you see if it were true? What would you hear if it were true? Go to the end and dwell in the end as if it were true. And that's what you're doing. When you do it that way, then actually believe in the power of the potter to make it so. All you and I are called upon here is to believe it. To believe in the power of the imaginal act. But to try to change circumstances before we change our imaginal activity is to struggle against the very nature of things. Can't do it. Because the imaginal activity is producing things. And it will continue to produce the things that is related to that activity. Unless I change the imaginal activity, I can't change the things. For they only bear witness of my imaginal activity. And you do it regardless of your present circumstances. While you sleep, it is working. While you walk the street thinking of other things, it is working. You set it in motion. Believe in the imaginal act. Believe it to be a fact. And in a way that no one knows, it will objectify itself in this world. It will become a reality. I am telling you from my own personal experience. We have just celebrated our, as a family, our 50th anniversary as a family in business. We started behind the eight ball. Away behind the eight ball. On borrowed money. But, as we are told in the 133rd Psalm, behold how blessed it is when brothers dwell in unity. And I am one of nine brothers and a sister. And we dwelt in unity. I left home at the age of 17 to come to America. And returned only for contacts with the family. But it has been now 49 years since I left my home. Those who left came only for educational purposes. And after they were educated, they returned to Barbados. And the close-knit family of brothers just celebrated the 50th anniversary. And it really is the most fantastic successful story in the little tiny place like the West Indies. I will not mention money, I mean the quantities of it. But, when you have a business and you double your stock and then double your stock and double your stock and still pay on all the doubling of stock 20% at the end of the year. To the stockholders, you are in business. We are satisfied here if we get 6%. Any company here who is offering 8% will find it gobbled up tomorrow morning. And it is all owned by our family. We have not gone public. And we pay our individual members, and I happen to be one of them, join the same amount as those who are actually there. But I am one with them and they know it. I am one in spirit, that is the only reality. So I get my 20% too of the stock my father gave me. And he gave me every share that he gave them. We all shared equally when he departed as well. In fact he gave it in 1939 and lived until 1959. He was so confident that if he ever needed it he would give it all back to him. But he gave it because by law in the Indies a man must outlive his gift by 5 years to avoid taxation. And so in 1939 when the war broke in Europe, not knowing the outcome, he gave to his 9 sons and his 1 daughter equal shares of everything he had. And then outlived it by 20 years. But he knew he would never want, because every one of us would put the whole thing right back into his hands if he wanted it. But he didn't need it and he didn't want it. And it's been split and split and split. I'm still paying it's 20%. Because we think alike and my brother Victor at the age when he was only 19, when he had this vision that imagining creates reality. And he saw a building on the main street and the building actually had over its marquee F.N. Roach and Company. Our name is Goddard and my father's initials are J.N. Joseph Nathaniel Goddard. And he saw J.N. Goddard and Sons. And he never moved on the morning when he went to work until he re-read that sign and made it read J.N. Goddard and Sons. And on the way back home at night, J.N. Goddard and Sons. And 2 years later that building was for sale. And a stranger, he had no money, a stranger came in the day of the sale and asked him if he wanted to bid for it. I have no money and no collateral. He said I will bid for it. I'll get my lawyers to bid for it. If they know I am bidding for it, they'll push it up. But I will have my lawyer and he represents many people so they will not know who is bidding for it. And that day we owned the building. We had no collateral. Paid him back his money in 10 years at 6%. And then turned around 8 years ago, 9 years ago and sold that piece of property which we bought then back in 1921. Bought it for $50,000. And sold it to the Bank of Nova Scotia 9 years ago for $840,000. And there is no capital gain in Barbados. So that's what he did. That's how he thinks. He never waits for one moment. He knows what he wants so he has the vessel in his hand. The hand is his own mind. And here he simply works on it. He knows exactly what he wants. And so he doesn't care about rumours. What rumour? It doesn't interest him. What so and so is doing, it doesn't interest him. He knows exactly what he wants. And he goes blindly on. I'll give you one little story. He could sense that war was coming in the Second World War. He sensed it coming. We were a little island. And we needed all the help we could get because only ships were coming in and no planes flying. In those days there was no commercial flights. Only ships. And the Germans he knew would do exactly what they did on a bigger scale in the second attempt to conquer. And that is take all the ships that they could find. And so what would we do for merchandise? So he went out and he bought enormous sums of money from the bank. And filled to overflowing all of our warehouses. He rented warehouses and filled it. But he brought it in not for human consumption on the surface. He brought it in as merchandise for ships because if you do not understand the law of the sea you can bring in all kinds of things and put it in storage. And when ships need those supplies you simply empty your storehouses and you pay no duty on it. It's duty free merchandise if it goes from the warehouse to the ship. If you bring it in for local consumption then you pay the usual 30 or 33 percent on merchandise of that nature. But he knew the island needed it. He knew ships would not be coming and the island would need it. So after the war broke and he had the merchandise there and no ships were coming in and there being some. And he was filled to overflowing. Well you can't carry that enormous stock far in excess of a million dollars in stock and paying the bank maybe 7 or 8 percent unless you move the merchandise. So he went to the governor and asked the governor for permission to sell the merchandise to the local people. Because they needed it badly. And he said now I must first of all call a conference. So he called all the great leaders in business and said that Goddard wants to unload the merchandise to you fellows. And they said no we've got it exactly where we want it. He brought it in to be sold only to ships and he would sell it only to ships and to no one else. We've got it exactly where we want it. So you'll be paying on a say maybe 2 million dollars you'll be paying 8 percent a year on merchandise that you can't move. So he reminded the governor that his salary was paid by the local merchants and that he was one of the biggest payers of taxes in the island. That is the family of the Goddard. And then the governor didn't like to be reminded of these normal things. So he said Goddard you're speaking to the governor. He said I know I am. And then he said to the governor have I heard your last word. He said yes Goddard good day. And so my brother went out and he called in his lawyers. He said give me the legal legal definition of a ship. What is a ship and I want the legal definition of it. So the lawyers said well a ship is that which is seaworthy that can take off to sea. And what you want is can it take off to an island a hundred miles away. Well if the captain has courage it could go. It's a ship it's seaworthy and it can carry merchandise. So that's the legal definition of a ship. That's all I want to know said my brother. So he took an ad huge big ad the following day and he itemized all the merchandise to anyone who has a thing that floats and he is confident he can make an island. And come and buy this merchandise tax free. Bring it only in cash. No checks. Bring your cash. We emptied all the warehouses in 24 hours. They came with their little boats. They couldn't go 100. Well they couldn't go 300 yards to sea. But the legal name was can it go. Have you the courage to make St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Trinidad. If you have the courage you have a ship. Come you can buy it. They simply bought the merchandise went out to sea. Went back into the island and sold it to the merchants. And the government was robbed of their 33% in taxes. And they all made all these little fellas. They brought their cash out of their shoes out of their trunks out of all kinds of things. And he unloaded everything he had in 24 hours. And the merchants went wild. They called the governor. The governor tried to get my brother Victor. He said to his secretaries I am busy and you cannot contact me. I am not to be contacted. No matter where I am you do not know where I am. So the governor could not find the one who could give any explanation. While they unloaded all these things based upon that. From that day on they never tried to do anything with my brother Victor. He uses only the potter's mind. He knows who the potter is. He knows who the lord is. He knows who God the father is. And he knows he has his own wonderful human imagination. That's God. There is no other God. God actually became what we are. That we may be as he is. So God is your own wonderful human imagination. Let no one rob you of that and give you a false God. They are always trying to give you a false God. And so when you see anyone praying to something on the outside he has a false God. When he has to go to a certain church to pray he has a false place. That's not the temple. You are the temple of the living God. And the spirit of God dwells in you. And that spirit is your own wonderful human imagination. Now use it wisely. And to use it wisely you use it lovingly. Any time you use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another you are actually mediating God to that other. Always use it lovingly. Can't go wrong. And things will simply flow and flow in your direction all in the good. So while I sleep there, thousands of miles away, my brothers living in unity are expending my holding and falling. And so behold what a blessed thing it is when brothers dwell in unity. That's the one thing that my father instilled in all of us. He had no money and so we were nine boys. He gave us a football. He played soccer in Barbados. And so he couldn't afford to give us each a Christmas present. He gave us something we could share together. A cricket set, two bats and a wicket and a ball. Or a football, a soccer ball. And so it was always ours not mine. And he could not bear anyone to say he is wearing my tie. My father would remind you it's not your tie or his tie it's all mine. I bought it all, it's all mine. So in our home he always used to say the first one dressed is the best dressed. Always, because pick out the first one because you could never complain to your father that he is wearing your tie. No, it was never your tie or his tie it was always our tie. And so that was the way we were raised. So we were raised that way in unity and that unity still prevails today. So if you have a family try to instill that in them. To be unified in that 133rd Psalm. It begins that way. Behold what pleasant a thing it is when brothers dwell in unity. So here scripture teaches who the Lord really is, but man doesn't read carefully. O Father, thou art, O Lord, thou art our Father. We are the clay. And thou art our potter. We are all the works of thy hand. And then I'll rise and go down to the potter's house and there I'll let you hear my words. And then it's exactly how it's done. It didn't say because he was the Lord that he wouldn't have a vessel that was spoiled. Your concept of a man may not be perfect, but that being conceiving is the Lord. So your concept of yourself is not the most perfect concept that it could be, but that being conceiving which is yourself is the Lord. That is God. That is the Father. If your concept of yourself is not what you would like it to be, don't discard it. Change it. Actually change it and actually feel yourself to be the man you would like to be. What would it be like if it were true? Just what would it be like? I speak here so often about states of consciousness. You know what a state of consciousness is? It's a mood. Just a mood. What would the feeling, what would the mood be like if it were true? If I were the man that I would like to be, what would the feeling be like? And were it true, how would I see the world? And how would the world see me? Well that's a mood. That's a state. You enter that state and abide in it. Dwell in it and live in it. It may not come tonight or tomorrow morning, but if you remain faithful to that state, to that mood, it will actually externalize itself in your world. And you will move from wherever you are, if you don't like what you are, to where you want to be. It works that way. Because you know who the potter is. And you know where the house is. And wherever you are in this world, that is the potter's house. For you are the temple of the living God. And the living God is the potter. And the potter is your own wonderful human imagination. So now you know who he is. So let no one lead you astray to a false God, to some other being that doesn't really exist. So when you hear the word God, the word Jesus, which is a marvelous word, don't let your mind jump outside to something other than your own wonderful human imagination. And see what you are doing through Jesus by imagining, or simply for one moment stop, to observe what you are imagining. And so you can see Jesus. No one has ever seen him. There is no physical description of him in scripture. Why? We do not observe imagination as we do objects in space. We are the reality which is called imagination. So you can't observe it. You observe the fruits of its activity. You see what is happening in your world. And when you see what is happening in your world, then you observe the fruit of the imagined activity. But the activity itself you don't. So God the Father, who is the Lord, who is the potter, is like pure imagining in myself. He actually dwells and works in the very depths of my own being, underlying all of my faculties, including perception. But he streams into my surface life, least disguised, in the form of productive fencing. I catch him in the act when I am daydreaming. I sit there and I think of a friend and I wonder, what is he or she doing? And then I catch him in the act. That's how you catch him. But you can't see him and you will never see him and know him, really know him, until his son reveals you. And when his son stands before you, and his son is David, and when David stands before you and there is no uncertainty as to the relationship, then you know who you are. And it's all your own wonderful human imagination. Now I hope you know tonight who the potter is, and where his house is, and what the vessel is, and what the clay is. And I hope you will take it seriously and try to become the perfect potter, who will not discard vessels that are spoiled, but revert them into the more perfect vessel. Now let us go into the silence.