Genesis 7: Flood of Inner Consciousness

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The ark is the inward decision to live from an imagined inner reality rather than the outer evidence. The flood is the storm of feeling and collective belief that dissolves former forms when imagination is sustained. The periods of seven and forty mark sacred cycles of assumption and incubation inside consciousness. Saving by pairs and by sevens reflects the harmonizing of desire and discipline that preserves possibility into new manifestation.

What is the Main Point of Genesis 7?

Genesis 7 read as a play of consciousness teaches that when one deliberately inhabits an inner conviction and shelters all aspects of oneself within that conviction, the outer world that opposes it will dissolve; imagination, held with feeling and persistence, becomes the instrument by which old forms are overwhelmed and a new order is lifted above the tides of doubt.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Genesis 7?

The command to enter the ark together with family and creatures becomes an instruction to gather every faculty—reason, memory, desire, instinct—into a unified state of attention. This inward coalescence is not merely moral but operational: it is the lining up of faculties behind a single assumption. The closing of the door behind Noah signals the psychological act of shutting out contrary evidence, not by denying it intellectually, but by withholding attention and feeling from it until it has no power to keep alive the forms it once sustained. The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep and the opening of the windows of heaven are images of subterranean feelings rising and imagination pouring down; deep reservoirs of belief stir and release, while the creative faculty descends in torrents to reshape experience. The forty days of rain are the necessary season of inward gestation when the old world is dissolved by feeling until it can no longer maintain physical continuity. During this interval the individual must live in the conviction of the ark; the flood will sweep away the old appearances, and only that which is supported by the interior assumption remains. The destruction of all flesh outside the ark is a stark psychological fact: images, identities, and relationships that are fed by the prevailing consensus will perish when attention is withdrawn and a new belief is sustained. Preservation within the ark means preservation of pattern and seed through imagination. The eventual abating of the waters and the emergence of new ground speak to the disclosure of fresh possibilities once the emotional tides have subsided and the inner work of assumption has borne result. This is not a punitive event but a transformation in which imagination clears away encrusted forms so that a new landscape of being can appear.

Key Symbols Decoded

The ark functions as the sanctuary of assumed identity and chosen reality; it is the interior room of faith in which one rests in the end state as if already accomplished. The animals brought two by two and some by sevens signify the feminine and masculine polarities, impulses paired and multiplied, and the careful planting of qualities that will repopulate the world from within. The specific numbers hint at rhythm: seven suggests fullness and completion of a cycle, while forty denotes a period of maturation in feeling and belief. The rain and rising waters are the emotional currents that accompany any deep change. They are not external punishers but the natural consequence of a shift in imaginative attention: when many minds abandon an old picture, the corresponding outer structures lose cohesion and fall away. The shutting of the door is the decisive application of will—an act of inner sovereignty that declares where life will take its cue. To be shut in is to be committed, and that commitment is what prevents the flood of doubt from reentering and undoing the inward work.

Practical Application

To live this chapter means to practice a deliberate gathering of inner faculties into one coherent assumption. Sit quietly and mentally enter your ark by imagining a scene that implies the fulfilled desire, then include every part of yourself in that scene: speak to your feelings, to your memories, to your reasoning, and let each one take its place within the picture. Close the door by deciding not to engage with contrary evidence—do not argue with it or catalog it, simply withhold the emotional energy that sustains it and continue to live in the inner conviction as if the change has already occurred. During the season of emotional upheaval, cultivate persistence and compassionate steadiness. When fears or old images rise like the fountains of the deep, recognize them as transient currents rather than final realities; respond by redoubling imagination, rehearsing the inner scene with sensory detail and feeling until the outer circumstances realign. This is a discipline of attention more than of action: act from the finished state that imagination has created, and allow the flood to wash away what will no longer fit the new inner world.

The Drama of Unity: A Psychological Reading of Genesis 7

Genesis 7 reads as a concentrated psychological drama of an inner Flood and the preservation of the creative core. Taken as states of consciousness rather than external history, each image becomes a living symbol of what happens when imagination moves from ordinary daydreaming into total creative mobilization. The chapter tells the story of a mind that hears the call to withdraw from agreement with outer appearances, gathers chosen qualities, closes the door upon distraction, and endures a season in which feeling floods every familiar structure until only the creative center remains.

The command to Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark, is the summons of awareness to enter an inner refuge. Noah represents the conscious attention that recognizes its own authority. The ark is not a physical vessel but a constructed state of imagination, a cultivated field of directed attention where selected seeds are kept alive. To bring all of his house into the ark suggests that the conscious self must assemble the allied faculties: memory, desire, will, and understanding—his household—into a single, disciplined imaginative act. This is an act of inner alignment: the sovereign chooser gathers what will be preserved through the crisis.

Of every clean beast by sevens and of beasts that are not clean by two describe the selective preservation and doubling that imagination performs. 'Clean' thoughts are those constructive, life-affirming ideas—faith, gratitude, loving images—repeated and multiplied within the inner ark until they become dominant. The number seven signals fullness of a chosen quality; the repetition by sevens is the habit patterning that secures those images in the subconscious. 'Unclean' thoughts represent reactive, fearful, or limiting images that must be contained rather than propagated; by two they are paired off and acknowledged, but not allowed to multiply. This is the psychology of discrimination: imagination does not indiscriminately preserve every impulse but shelters that which will reconstruct reality in harmony.

Seven days' delay before the rain begins is the preparatory period in consciousness. It is a temporal symbol for the interval between decision and the outer manifestation of inner change. The mind has said Yes to a new vision; seven days is the incubation in which the habitual self is girded and the unconscious begins to rearrange. Then the waters fall forty days and forty nights: forty is the symbolic period of intensive cleansing and testing. Emotion, the sea of feeling, is what floods. When the inner fountains break up and the windows of heaven open, the deep subconscious contents rise. Old sorrow, buried fears, and inherited narratives pour forth. They are not punitive but purgative. This breaking up is the necessary release of the sediments that have been holding shape around identity.

Noah's age of six hundred when the flood is upon the earth can be read as a psychological maturity—an inner readiness so complete that the ego can entrust itself to imagination. The great age implies that the act of entering the ark is not frantic escape but a mature, deliberate repositioning of attention. The precise chronology indicates inner timing: the choice is made when the self has accumulated enough awareness to hold the creative purpose steady through trial.

Two and two, male and female, entering the ark embodies polarity balanced in the imagination. Every archetype and element has its complement; every seed contains both active and receptive aspects. Bringing them in male and female indicates the reconciliation of opposites within the creative field. When imagination shelters the wholeness of an idea—its force and its form—what is preserved has the capacity to reproduce and renovate the world outside.

The Lord shutting Noah in the ark expresses how a committed act of attention excludes the attentions of the world. Closing the door is the psychological boundary that protects the formative imagination from suggestion, doubt, and the contagious moods of others. It is not an avoidance of life but a disciplined withdrawal so that the image held within may gestate unhindered. The shutting emphasizes decision: once the mind is resolved to imagine a state, it creates a barrier against contrary impressions.

As the waters increase and the ark is lifted above the earth, the drama portrays elevation of consciousness above the turbulent emotions. The ark riding on the surface of the flood means the imagination is buoyant upon feeling. Emotional intensity need not drown the soul; when attention is steady within creative images, the imagination floats and even navigates the flood. The covering of the high hills and the submerging of the old landmarks symbolically show that the old psychologies, the habitual identifications, and the supposedly permanent obstacles are temporary formations of surface mind. When the flood prevails, all that depended on external stability dissolves.

Then comes the stark statement that all flesh died that moved upon the earth. Psychologically, this is the death of false selves and reactive patterns. Every identification that depended on circumstance, reputation, or sensory proof dissolves when the imagination insists on a new state. The death is not annihilation of consciousness; it is the necessary end of forms that can no longer hold the new inward design. In the wake of that death, only what is conceived within the ark—the preserved seeds and the living breath of God—remains. The breath of life that entered two by two signifies that the creative power itself was present in every preserved quality; it is the life principle of imagination which alone brings forth a renewed world once the waters recede.

The chapter closes with the waters prevailing for a specified season, a hundred and fifty days of sustained inward work. This emphasizes that transformation is not a single moment but a lengthy process. During this time the creative imagination maintains itself against waves of suggestion, doubt, and inherited sorrow. The long duration teaches patience; the creative power in consciousness operates through nesting cycles of release and reformation until the new order is established.

A key psychological lesson in this narrative is that catastrophe and preservation are both acts of imagination. The flood is not an external punishment but the inner consequence of a mind changing its orientation. When imagination pivots from acceptance of the world's appearances to a committed vision of a different state, a corresponding inner 'storm' must be navigated. This storm strips away illusions and compels the individual to inhabit the image that will become the new reality. Those who resist the inner call remain identified with the world that is to be dissolved. Those who enter the ark become the birthing ground of a new creation.

Another crucial point is the sovereignty of deliberate imagination. The passage opens with a divine command and closes with survival dependent upon obedience. This sovereignty is not a foreign deity imposing laws but the internal law of attention. Imagination, once directed, governs experience. It chooses what to protect and what to release, what to multiply and what to pair off. The survival of the seed alive upon the face of the earth means that the creative principle is never destroyed even in the midst of dissolution; it is simply hidden until the appropriate inner environment nurtures its growth.

Finally, Genesis 7 teaches that real rescue is not in avoiding feeling but in learning to imagine from within the heart of feeling. The ark does not stop the waters from coming; it creates an inner domain where the waters become the medium for lifting consciousness. The flood is converted from threat to transformer. The creative power operating within human consciousness uses even the most violent emotions as instruments, dissolving the old in order that a new world, born of deliberate imagination and disciplined attention, may appear.

Common Questions About Genesis 7

Are there Neville Goddard lectures or meditations that focus on Noah and Genesis 7?

Yes, Neville devoted several lectures and meditations to the themes embodied in Noah and the flood, often discussing the ark as the assumed state and the waters as feeling and imagination; searching his recorded talks or transcripts for the keywords Noah, ark, and flood will reveal his practical expositions. He frequently ties these images to the laws of assumption and sleep-imagination, recommending short, sensory scenes taken into sleep and rehearsed during the day. Listen or read with the intent to practice, then perform the simple ark-imagination exercise he outlines so the symbolic event becomes lived reality rather than mere doctrine (Genesis 7).

What I AM statements relate to Genesis 7 and the story of Noah according to Neville?

In the inner reading of Genesis 7, I AM statements function as the declarative assumption that secures the ark of your consciousness; phrases such as I am preserved, I am safe, I am within the ark, I am the immovable consciousness, I am renewed, and I am the one who remains are appropriate because they announce and inhabit the new state. Neville teaches that to say I AM with feeling is to identify with the chosen inner reality that must manifest outwardly, so repeat and feel these present-tense I AMs until they become your identity and the flood of former appearances yields to the assumed state (Genesis 7).

How does Neville Goddard interpret the flood in Genesis 7 as a symbol of consciousness?

Neville Goddard sees the flood of Genesis 7 as the cleansing of outward circumstances by an inward change of state: the waters are the ceaseless activity of feeling and imagination, and the ark represents the assumed state of consciousness you enter and remain in. When Noah and his household go into the ark and the LORD shuts them in, it symbolizes fixing the imagination and accepting the new inner reality so the outer world must change to match it (Genesis 7). The deluge destroys the old world of contradictory beliefs, leaving only that which has been preserved by conscious assumption; thus salvation is psychological and rooted in persistent imagining.

How can I use Neville-style imagination exercises based on Genesis 7 to manifest change?

Begin by settling into a quiet state and construct a short, specific scene that implies your desire is already fulfilled, imagining yourself entering and closing the door of an ark that represents your new identity; feel the safety, peace, and certainty as if the world outside has changed. Persist in this vivid feeling-filled assumption until it becomes habitual, especially at the hour of sleep when impressions sink deep, and when doubt arises return to the scene without argument. Repeat nightly and throughout the day with uncompromising faith; the flood of outer events will then rearrange to reflect the inner ark you have entered (Genesis 7).

What practical steps does Neville suggest for 'passing through the waters' in inner work?

Passing through the waters is accomplished by a disciplined change of state: first quiet the body and attention, then imagine a single clear scene that implies your wish fulfilled, enter that scene and assume the feeling of already being saved and settled, as though you have stepped into the ark and the door is closed. Repeat this scene nightly at sleep and hold it at least a few minutes during waking hours, refuse to argue with contrary appearances, and persist until the new assumption dominates your imagination and feeling life. By remaining in that assumed consciousness, the turbulent waters of circumstance must recede and reshape to your inner state (Genesis 7).