Neville Goddard Audio Lecture: In Praise Of Wisdom (1965)

About This Lecture

Neville opens by setting two kinds of wisdom against each other, following Paul's striking claim that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God, while the apparent foolishness of God is the true wisdom. Worldly wisdom, as Neville characterizes it, calculates, competes, schemes, and leans on outer means: connections, leverage, cleverness, and the manipulation of circumstances. It is the intelligence of the marketplace, and it can accomplish a great deal in its own sphere. But the wisdom Neville praises operates on an entirely different principle. It does not push against the outer world at all. It works by the inner assumption that quietly reshapes reality from within, treating consciousness rather than circumstance as the true causal ground.

A central thread running through the talk is the marriage of power and love. Neville argues that the creative power of imagination is real and effective regardless of how it happens to be used. The law works for the cruel imaginer as faithfully as for the kind one, just as fire warms or burns without regard to intention. This neutrality of the power is precisely what makes the manner of its use the decisive moral question. To exercise power without love is to wield genuine wisdom destructively, turning a divine faculty into an instrument of harm. To join power with love is, for Neville, the authentic wisdom of God. He therefore urges listeners to imagine for others only what they would lovingly wish for themselves, so that every inner act becomes a blessing rather than an injury.

Throughout, Neville keeps returning to the practical implication of this teaching. The wise person stops leaning on the strategies of the world and instead turns inward, assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled and persisting in it with steady goodwill. This, in his reading, is what scripture actually means by wisdom. It is not cleverness, not accumulated information, not the shrewdness that the world admires, but the disciplined, loving use of the creative imagination. Knowledge that remains theoretical, however vast, does not qualify; wisdom in this sense is something enacted.

That emphasis on enactment is what gives the lecture its weight. Neville treats true wisdom as something lived rather than merely known, a daily practice of choosing inner states that one would be glad to see externalized in one's own life and in the lives of others. The test of whether an assumption is wise is simple and searching: would you be content for this inner scene to become fact for everyone involved? If the imagined state would bless, it is wise; if it would wound, it is the foolishness Paul condemns dressed up as power.

So the lecture's praise of wisdom turns out to be, at its core, praise of the wise and loving handling of the godlike power every person already possesses. Neville is not asking his listeners to acquire something they lack. He is asking them to govern, with love, a creative faculty they have been using carelessly all along. To do so consistently, choosing each assumption as one would choose a gift for a friend, is to live the wisdom of God rather than merely admire it.

Key Scripture

Neville grounds this lecture in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, 1 Corinthians 3:19.