Bernardo Kastrup - Affinity p.2

In the previous post, part 1, we saw that Neville Goddard and Bernardo Kastrup each arrived at the same foundational idea: What we take to be the physical world must actually be mental in nature. It cannot have a stand-alone physical existence, nor be independent of the human mind.

I believe that Bernardo’s philosophy, Analytic Idealism, gives confidence to the students of Neville Goddard – at least those who take to heart the idea of the world as psyche. It shows that their conviction is not irrational, but confirmed by physics experiments whose results spelled the end of the materialist worldview.

In this post we’ll examine how Bernardo’s system lends credence to yet another principle, really, the essential one in Neville’s thought; namely, that we are one with the universal source.

God and Man are one

Let’s first try to understand this central tenet from Neville’s viewpoint.

While it is scarcely possible to summarize Neville’s contention, because it is experiential and involves, after all, the Christian mystery, we can at least start in the realm of ideas. Here is a selection of quotes and commentary to outline the thesis using 4 points:

1. Realization of awareness of being

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM... I AM hath sent me unto you. (~ Exodus 3:14)

Regarding this quote, Neville makes the intuitive leap few will allow; i.e., a psychological interpretation of the self-definition of God. The declaration “I am” leads the alert reader straight back to his or her own awareness of self.

2. Identity of God and Man

It is clear that Neville did not equate merely the “surface level of our being” – the narrow ego – with the totality of the mind of God. Even so, a more nuanced story about the relationship between Man and God does start by locating divinity within the psyche of Man:

Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you? (2 Cor. 13:5, NIV)

The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:2, KJV)

3. Many in One

The word translated as God is Elohim; it is plural, yet the supreme commandment states that consciousness is one. Neville’s instruction that Man and God are identical reasserts this seeming paradox.

‘Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord’ (Mark 12:29)

Hear, O Man made of the very substance of God: You and God are one and undivided.

(Neville, Freedom For All, Ch.1)

The divinity is one, yet identical with fragmented humanity. It must then be a compound unity.

4. Separation of Many from One

‘God became man so that man might become god.’ [St. Athanasius, quoted often by Neville]

This, in turn, would makes sense of the 82nd Psalm (which Neville says is a puzzle for Biblical scholars). He points out that if we, human beings, are indeed the ones addressed in this passage, and we will die like men, it follows that, at the time of being addressed, we were something other than men. Here is an excerpt from Neville’s discussion:

In the 82nd Psalm we are the speaker, speaking to ourselves, saying: ‘I say, You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.' We are the sons of the Most High, and we and our creator are one...

You and I actually became human, that humanity may become spirit... Dying in order to become man, we have assumed man’s entire nature in order to raise man to the level of love [i.e., the level of God].

(Neville, “God Became Man”, lecture 2/24/69)

In another lecture, Neville points out that the fall of the Sons of God (i.e., separation from source) induced amnesia in a lower, contracted state we call human. Divinity became conditioned as Man (generic Man = man and woman) and does not remember his origin. He must go through life experience (a series of states) and struggle to awaken:

You are the gods in the state that is fallen. Not because you did anything that was wrong. It is for a purpose, a creative purpose. To expand beyond what we were prior to the fall. Here we fell into the limit of opacity and contraction called man, of flesh and blood... You can’t conceive of what you have shut out in coming here. We are all suffering from total amnesia.

These are only states, states into which we have fallen in our sleep. For we actually fell into this world made up of infinite states.

(“The Way” , recorded lecture [date missing] )

Notice how in the foregoing allegory and exposition, everything is psychological in nature, and all various roles (Father, Men, Sons, God, etc.) are simultaneously one or another aspect of the same being.

How then does Bernardo Kastrup’s system of thought substantiate Neville’s contention? Please go to S02 E04 of Neville On Fire. You can either read the full transcript, or listen to the audio. Check the show notes, too, for links to the cited works by Neville and Bernardo’s course on Analytic Idealism.