Genesis 2:24 — Love as the Union of Imagination and Fulfilment

Neville Goddard taught that the Bible is not a historical account, but a psychological drama — a symbolic unfolding of the inner world and its divine imagination. Its verses speak in symbols, tracing the movement of consciousness through longing, identity, union, and transformation.

One of the most quietly pivotal verses in the entire narrative is Genesis 2:24:

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

This is not a description of physical marriage. It is the emotional structure behind every transformation in the Bible. It is a symbolic instruction: to leave inherited belief (the “father and mother”) and to unite with the state of being one longs to become (the “wife”) until it is embodied.

To “cleave” in this way is an act of love in its truest biblical sense. In Neville’s framework, love is not passive affection — it is the powerful emotional fusion of consciousness with a desired state. Love is the bond that makes transformation possible. You do not simply think about your desired identity — you cleave to it, dwell in it, until you and it are one.

This pattern — from leaving, to cleaving, to becoming — pulses through the entire biblical narrative. And most powerfully, it is saturated with love and desire — not as sin, but as divine longing.

The Garden, the Bride, and the Song of Desire

In the Song of Solomon, this same pattern is no longer hidden — it becomes luminous.

The bride is both a woman and a garden. Her presence evokes Eden, not as a memory but as a living desire:

“A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.”
(Song of Solomon 4:12)

She is sealed yet overflowing, a place of beauty and delight, guarded and sacred. This “garden” imagery reconnects us to the beginning, to the Garden of Eden — not as a place lost through sin, but as a union lost through separation from imagination.

The longing between the bride and the beloved is not romance - it is the inner ache for fulfilment, the yearning for union with what one deeply desires:

“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.”
(Song of Solomon 7:10)

This is the language of the fulfilled state. The bride has been cleaved to. The two have become one. This echoes the Edenic state — before shame, before separation, before exile — where imagination and fulfilment were not torn apart.

In Neville’s terms, this is the union of “I AM” with what it loves. Love is not yearning for what is absent — it is the imaginative act of already being one with it. This is what it means when the Bible says, “God is love” — because love is the motion of God (I AM) toward union with that which it chooses to become.

The Emotional Thread That Winds Through the Bible

The Bible is often misread as a text of suffering, rules, or punishment. But symbolically, it is a book about longing — the desire to return to inner Eden. This desire runs beneath every story, every character, every transformation. It is the emotional force that drives the movement of the soul.

It is the beloved’s search for the bride. The ache to become one with the thing we love. The whisper that what we are seeking is already within.

The language of the Song of Solomon is so emotionally rich because it mirrors this inner pursuit of union. Fulfilment is never won by force, but by loving persistence, by the tender willingness to cleave to the state as if already one with it.

“I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go.”
(Song of Solomon 3:4)

This is the cleaving that Genesis 2:24 whispers about — the moment when desire becomes indistinguishable from self, and the bride is no longer outside but within.

In this act of inner embrace, love is no longer an emotion. It becomes creative power. You become what you love by assuming it inwardly. This is what Neville meant when he said there is “no greater love than to lay down one’s life” — meaning, to let go of your former self to enter the new state. In doing so, you fulfil the law of assumption.

The Patriarchs and the Pattern of Cleaving

The patriarchal stories repeat this pattern. They are not biographies — they are movements of consciousness. Each flickers between clinging to inherited assumptions (the “father and mother”) and learning, through often painful transition, to cleave to the desired state (the “wife”).

Abraham leaves his father’s house, but not without flickering. He calls Sarah his sister — slipping between symbolic roles. She is his wife, but in moments of fear, he collapses back into old frames.

Isaac repeats this exact act, naming Rebekah his sister. Again, the hesitation to claim the union reflects an inner reluctance to fully inhabit the new state.

Judah and Tamar represent an even sharper moment of transformation. Judah, playing with the idea of Law of Assumption, resists Tamar — but assumes eventually. In response, imagination expresses herself and brings forth Perez (meaning breakthrough) — an image of the decisive breach with old structures.

These flickers between roles are not mistakes — they are part of the unfolding. They show how difficult it can be to leave one identity behind and cleave to another.

In every case, the act of loving the new state — truly loving it enough to commit to it — is what brings about its fulfilment. Love is not simply attraction. It is imaginative union.

The Nail of Love — The Hidden Symbolism of Six

In Hebrew thought, letters and numbers are one. The number six corresponds to the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet: Vav (ו) — a character that means nail, peg, or hook. It is a symbol of connection and union.

This is profoundly fitting for Genesis 2:24, where two become “one flesh.” The act of “cleaving” is mirrored in the very shape and function of the Hebrew Vav — a nail that binds two things together. It also functions grammatically as the word and — the conjunction that links what was with what is becoming.

Neville taught that imaginative union is the true creative act. To love a state so deeply that you are willing to be “nailed”, or rather crucified to it — to be joined with it in identity and consciousness — is to fulfil the Law of Assumption. It is what the crucifixion symbolises: not death, but the power of the I AM to fix itself deliberately to what it chooses to become.

Thus, the number six is not just a numerical detail — it carries within it the entire message of love in the Bible. Love is the nail that binds consciousness to its chosen state, so that the two may live as one.

Genesis 2:24 — The Pulse of Inner Becoming

Genesis 2:24 is not simply a moral instruction — it is the structure of imaginative creation:

Leave behind the externalised identity and inherited beliefs.
Cleave to the state desired — emotionally, faithfully, intimately.
Become one with it — let it bear fruit as lived experience.

Neville taught that the “wife” is the state you love enough to commit to inwardly. And when you dwell in that state — not as hope, but as felt reality — then the two become one flesh.

This is the essence of biblical love: not emotion, but transformation. It is the power that unites “I AM” with “I shall be.” The Bible teaches this not through abstractions, but through symbols — marriage, gardens, desire, sacrifice — all pointing to the same inner mystery: what you love, you become.

This same rhythm is the heartbeat of the Song of Solomon, the dream of Eden, and the transformation of every patriarch. The Bible isn’t about exile as punishment. It’s about longing as invitation — the longing to return to that original union within, where imagination and embodiment are no longer split.

Eden is not lost — it is always waiting within.

“Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.”
(Song of Solomon 4:16)

The garden, the bride, the desire, and the union — this is the pattern, the promise, and the power.

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