The Potter House Neville Goddard Lecture

The Potter’s House

Neville Goddard

Tonight’s title is “The Potter’s House.” This story is told in the 18th chapter of the book of Jeremiah. “The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, ‘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, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.” (Jeremiah 18:1-4)

Now, as we told you last week, these stories are parables. You have to extract the meaning from the story. In the 64th chapter of the book of Isaiah you read, “O Lord, thou art our Father, we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the work of thy hand.” (Isaiah 64:8) Here he equates the Lord our Father with the potter, and it is stated quite clearly that we are the clay.

If I am to go down to the potter’s house, I need not move from where I am. For am I not told, “We are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in us”? (I Corinthians 3:16) So, where could I go, other than just where I am? So, this [indicating the body] is the “potter’s house.”

The word potter means by definition in the Bible – if you take James Strong’s Concordance – it means imagination. It means “to determine; to form a resolution.” Well, now, I determine to be a certain man, which, at the moment, reason tells me that I am not. My senses tell me that I am not. Nonetheless, I would like to be that.

If I am not the man that I would like to be, then the clay that I am using – which is the being that I am, for I’m told we are clay – then that vessel is spoiled in my own sight, but instead of discarding it, I should rework it into another vessel, as it seems good to me to do. Well, how will I go about reworking this clay?

First of all, I must know what I would like to be, for it means, “to determine.” I must make that decision. What would I like to be? I do not modify it. I know the Lord is going to do it. Well, I know exactly what I would like to be.

Let me ask a very simple question: Suppose it were true? How would I see the world? What would I feel like? What would I hear if it were true? Then let me assume that it is true, that I am the man that I would like to be. Then let me look for confirmation in my imagination and see my friends as I would have to see them, were it true. Let them see me as they would have to see me if it were true. Now I am reworking the vessel in my own imagination, for that is the potter.

Will it work? I know from experience it does work. All I ask others to do is to try it. Don’t judge it; try it. And you will see that we are living in a world of imagination, that the human imagination is God.

When Blake said, “I know of no other Christianity and no other Gospel, other than the liberty of both body and mind to exercise the divine arts of imagination,” then he adds, “The Apostles knew of no other Gospel.” (Wm. Blake, “Jerusalem – ‘To the Christians’”)

This mystery has been told in the form of a tale because:

“Truth embodied in a tale

Shall enter in at lowly doors.”

Man finds it difficult to think abstractly, so he takes the great truth and he tells it in the form of a story. You and I were told the story, but we haven’t gotten beyond the story to discover exactly what they are trying to tell us. What they are trying to tell us is: Our own wonderful human imagination is God. Why stand we here trembling around, calling on God for help and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?