Sunday, July 31, 2022

Control Your Inner Conversations – Mind And Speech – April 26, 1971 – Neville Goddard Lecture

Control Your Inner Conversations – Mind And Speech – April 26, 1971 – Neville Goddard Lecture

Neville Goddard 26 April 1971 – CONTROL YOUR INNER CONVERSATIONS

The whole manifested world goes to show us what use we have made of God’s gift. Receiving a gift does not mean that we are going to use it wisely, but we have the gift. Everyone has the gift;
and the world simply reflects the use of that gift.

In “The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare puts these words into the mouth of Portia: “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine who follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.” So you and I have been given a gift. To what use have we put it? In a book written in the First Century, written at the time of our Gospel, — it’s called the Hermetica, and this is a translation by Walter Scott.

It is a wonderful series of four volumes; and in this he says: “There are two gifts that God has given to man alone, and to no other mortal creature, and these two gifts are Mind and Speech. And the gifts of Mind and Speech are essential and identical with Immortality. If they are used rightly, man will not differ in any respect from the immortals; and when he quits the body, these two will be his guides and they will lead him into the troop of the gods and. to the souls that have attained to bliss.”

Now he is not speaking of any outer speech, for you and I have had this experience, — I know I have many times. You have gone to a party, and many people you do not know, you meet them and the usual greetings: “Nice to know you,” “What a joy to know you,” “Pleased to meet you,” and the usual clichés; and then you have drinks and your little hors d’oeuvre, and then the party breaks up and they all separate. And you hear someone say, “What a creep,” “What a bore”; yet they were so pleased to meet them: “What a joy to know you.” The outer words did not conform whatsoever with what they were really thinking on the inside. And God sees, not the outer man; He sees the inner Man.

It’s the inner speech that is frozen in the world round about us. This whole vast world is but “frozen” inner speech. What are we saying on the inside? We may think that someone really understands us. You go along believing that they understand you, and some simple little thing happens and you realize they never really heard you. Not for one moment had they really heard you. Some little disruption, and then the whole thing is over; and then they turn against you as though you were the devil, when they formerly thought you were one who was “sent.” That is all in Scripture.

Read the 7th chapter of the Book of John and the 8th chapter of John: “And some said, he is a good man; and others said, no, he is leading people astray. Others said, why, he is mad, and he has a. devil.” When he fed them with the loaves and the fish, — oh, they loved it, — getting things in the world. As long as they could have things and things and things, it was marvelous; and then he tells them of something entirely different: that they would go through “furnaces”, but the end would justify all the “furnaces” through which they would pass. The end would be God; they would awaken in the end, and they would awaken as God the Father. He didn’t tell them of the nature of the “furnaces.” He told them only of the end and that they would pass through “furnaces”; and passing through, they faltered. They could tell exactly what they were really doing on the inside. As we are told in the 50th Psalms: “If a man orders his conversations aright, I will show him the salvation of God.”

If one could only control these inner conversations morning, noon and night, and carry them right into the dream world, he would know what world he is creating. Stop for one moment and ask yourself, what am I thinking now? You are carrying on a little tiny inner speech at every moment of time. You may be in the presence of someone that the world thinks important, but you don’t, and inwardly you are saying, “But only God hears it.” That’s what you are actually saying. Outwardly you are pleased to meet him, and you are flattered with the contact; but inwardly, what are you saying?

This is what I ask everyone to observe. Observe what you are actually doing on the inside, for that is what God sees; and what you are doing on the inside, you are doing in little tiny speech movements, and they are crystallizing in the manifested world round about you. So, “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,” — well, we all would be kings. We all would be everything we want to be in this world. But we find it more difficult to do it than to know what to do. So I could tell you from now until the ends of time, but only practice will do it — just practice.

When a man looks and sees a building that seems beyond his wildest dream of ever acquiring it, and he has reasons that he does not share with anyone but his mother, — she is the only one he takes into his confidence; and she despairs because she knows that he could never achieve ownership of that building, — it’s too big, too far beyond her dreams, or even ambition; but he loves her and he shares only with her what he is doing, and he sees a sign implying that he does own it, — well, as he looks at it he could not read the sign and not inwardly repeat it.

So inwardly he is saying, “It is my building,” as he reads his own name on that building. And day after day, as he goes by, he “reads” his own name on the building, which implies that he has it. And then, out of the “blue,” two years later they fail, and a stranger comes in and offers to put the money up to buy it. He has no collateral, but that day he was owner of the building.  He then conducted the most fantastically marvelous, successful business in that firm for many, many years; and then an offer came that offered him many, many times more than he paid for it.

He paid $50,000 for it of another person’s money and sold it without any capital gain for $840,000. There was no capital gain. It was all done by inner speech, for you could not read something without using your lips. No one sees it, but I read something, and inwardly I am repeating what I am reading. I saw that here on the bus a few months ago, going to Beverly Hills, and here is a man reading a paper, and every word he read he was forming with his lips. I could watch him. Could I have actually interpreted the motion of his lips, I could have told you exactly what he was reading, for he formed every word. Well everyone is doing that, but not as obviously as he did it.

So you read something, and actually inwardly you are repeating the words. Well now, the whole thing is in your imagination. That is all it was in him, only his imagination. That was God’s gift.  It is translated in the Hermetica as “Mind.” “And God has given to man, and to man alone, two gifts, and to no other mortal creature. The gifts are Mind and Speech; and these are like the gifts of Immortality, and by these gifts he does not differ in any respect from the Immortals. If he uses them wisely,” — the whole world is his. Are we not told that: “The world was created by the Word of God;” and “things that are seen were made out of things that are not seen?”

So here, out of the nowhere, we create by inner speech through the use of what? Call it “mind” if you will. I like the word “imagination.” To me, it inflames me. When I imagine a state — any state, if I can only persuade myself of the reality of the state imagined, that’s the important thing; to believe in the reality of the state imagined. But to know what to do is not the same as doing it. So, “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,” — well then, — “chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.” And how many teachers in the world follow their own instruction? And then he goes on to confess: “I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.”

So I tell you, I am telling you exactly what I know from experience, whether it be the Law or the Promise. But I am not telling you that everyone will apply it wisely. I am not telling you that in the end there will not be a shake-down of those who only pretended to believe it. There are many who came out of a traditional background. They will return to it, and they will genuflect before a hand-made cross or a hand-made figure that hangs on the wall, and cross themselves for good luck, and think that the speaker who taught them in the beginning has turned into a devil. They will; but rejoice, because these signs must come. It’s part of Scripture.

And when they come into my world, I rejoice because the end is upon me. Just when they come, — and they will come, — and they get thinner and thinner as they separate moving back, because they cannot go forward into the top — unto the high places of the mountain. And then you know exactly who understood you and who did not understand you. Let me now make it quite clear: You have the gift. You can speak. Even if you were dumb, you still speak — inwardly you speak, and you form these little speech movements within yourself. Make them conform to your wish fulfilled.

Do what Robert Millikan did when he was a poor boy, and had nothing but a brilliant mind; a great, great understanding of literature; but he had no money, and he was tired of his poverty.  And knowing how the mind works, he constructed a sentence that if true would imply he was no longer poor. And his sentence is a beautiful sentence; “I have,” — not “am going to have”; “I have a lavish, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit.”

That was the great Robert Millikan, who was the head of Cal-Tech, who gave us his discovery of cosmic rays, who when he died could leave a fortune behind to these charities. I know that the YMCA was one of them; they got a fortune from him. He already settled on his sons and made them financially independent, but he had enough left over to give to his favorite charities, and lived a full, wonderful, marvelous life, where everyone who met him benefited by the actual meeting with that great man. And he started off from “scratch,” using this simple technique — using the simple technique — using the gift of God that He gave to every person in this world: Mind and Speech.

Whether you be a Frenchman or an American or any other nationality, you have speech and you have a mind. Instead of accepting what you have already done with that gift, you simply ignore it. You brought it into being. All this is solidified speech — the whole vast manifested world. And you turn from it, and then reconstruct the sentence. Change it, as this one of whom I spoke to changed the entire pattern. He was a poor boy, — the whole family poor, behind the 8-ball financially — socially and in every sense of the word, behind that 8-ball; and he constructed a scene.

As he read the so-called letters that implied that the family owned the building, he was repeating within himself as he read it. And it took two years. He persisted, and at the end of two years the family owned it; and from then on, you couldn’t stop them. And they are still growing and expanding and expanding and expanding, because he never forgot how to apply the principle. So, he was among those who didn’t come within it. He found it just as easy to do it as to know what to do. And others can find it easy to know what to do but difficult to do it. I’ve seen it time and time again.

I would say to them, “Do you not know what you are doing to yourself?” “Yes, but just give me one little moment because I am so enjoying the feeling of getting even with them.” You “get even” with no one. There is no one else in the world. As you are told: “I am the Lord, and beside Me there is no god.” Read it in the 45th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “I am the Lord, and beside Me there is no god.” “Now you want the Word?” He said, “The Word is very near unto you.. It is in your mouth and in your heart, that you can do it. See, I set before you this day life and good, blessings and curses, death and evil. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live.”

The whole thing is before you. You can choose death if you want it, because the Word is on your tongue, it is in your mouth, it is in your heart. And you can do it now. You don’t have to ask who will go up to Heaven and bring it down for me, or go into the depths and bring it up for me. It is now nearer than you know; in your mouth and in your heart, that you can do it now. Well what would you do now? What sentence would imply that you are now what you would like to be?

You know what to do. And I say, it’s not knowing what to do; it is the doing it. Someone got the most marvelous revelation. I was there the morning that it happened. “Stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money. Everything in life must be an investment,” And I so loved it, I incorporated that thought in the chapter, “The Coin of Heaven,” in my book, “Awakened Imagination.” She would be the first to confess, although it came through her, and it was her revelation from God to her, — shared with me, and I shared it through the written form with those who read it in the book, — but she is the first to confess she never applied it.

There it is, but she never applied it. She was thrilled beyond measure that she was the medium through which the Voice could come, and I can see her now rushing to the library and taking out the dictionary to get the true definition of the two words: “spending” and “investing.” To “spend” is to put off without hope of return; to waste. To “invest” is expecting a return on your equity. There must be a return on equity when you invest.

Well, we are told: “Stop spending your thought, your time and your money.” Time must produce some return. It is precious. Your thought is speech; it must be actually invested, not wasted. And your money. Everything must be invested, and not wasted. And she’s the first to confess, “I knew I never really applied it. I thought, well, now it came through, and I can go on this normal, normal way”; but it doesn’t work that way. “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,” — what a marvelous sentence. You’ll find it if you have the works of Shakespeare in the first act, and second scene4, put on the lips of Portia. And how difficult for a man who teaches to follow his own instruction. And he himself confessed: “I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching,”

how_to_feel_it_real_negative_conversationSo I ask you to really apply it. Don’t think for one second that knowing what to do is going to do anything for you. It’s the doing it that matters. So, if every moment of time you know what to do, then do it. If you find yourself carrying on any negative conversation, break it, even though it gives you pleasure, as it does many people; they find such fun in being critical. They think they are alone and no one sees them; so it doesn’t matter. No one sees you? The only One that matters sees you every moment of time, and that’s your Father. He sees into the very depths of your Being, and He knows exactly what you are doing. And your world is built out of these inner conversations.

So, today if you are not satisfied with the world in which you live, blame no one, but turn within to these two gifts and use them wisely, for here we are told to order our life according to our conversations. Then in Ephesians we are told, — it’s the 4th chapter: “Put off the old nature which belongs to the former conversations, and put on the new nature.” The “new nature” is sometimes translated “the new man,” and the “old nature” the “old man.” Well, if I equate the “old nature” with the “former conversations,” I must equate the “new man” with the “new conversations.” So, He identifies the inner speech with man’s nature. So now, what am I actually doing on the inside of myself? And I am doing it morning, noon and night; I can’t stop it. If I stop for one moment, it isn’t. You can’t stop it. You take it into your dreams, and you are still talking. You are really talking at all moments of time.

So what are you saying at every moment of time? Watch it; be careful what you are saying, because your whole vast world is this inner conversation “pushed out.” And you can change it only by changing the conversation, because the conversation is equated with your nature.

neville_goddard_feel_it_real_inner_conversationsSo if you walk the street or you ride the bus, or you sit alone, you are still talking; at every moment of time you are talking. And all you need to do to find out what you have been saying is to look at your world. Your world reflects this inner speech. I have seen it every moment of time.  I am not going to tell you I have not faltered. I would not for one moment tell you that I am always in control of the inner conversations.

The phone rings. This happens, and you’ve told them over and over, and your reaction may not be quite the right one, but you reacted anyway. No one heard it, but you heard it, and your Father heard it; and you are going to build your world based on exactly what you’ve done, So you watch it morning, noon and night, because you are going to “play” this part, The end of everyone’s world is Christ. Everyone is  moving towards the fulfillment of being God Himself — every one. And therefore the story of Christ as told in the Gospels, you are going to play it, And when He awakes within you and unfolds within you and you are Christ, and you know you are, you are going to find those who will eagerly take all that you have to say when you give them the loaves and the fish; and then this is going to happen in your life: “Do not think for one moment I came to bring peace upon earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword to set a man against his father and the daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

This will happen. And then comes the conflict in the world, and he is accused of being the devil. They say, “He has a devil. Why do you listen to him? He is mad.” But then when you who have awakened from the dream of life hear these things, you rejoice, because you know your end is near. Oh it has to take place to “separate the sheep from the goats,” and let them go back into their world and genuflect and cross themselves for luck. And then, those who can actually follow, they will follow, for “My own must come to me.”

So I hope that everyone here, not only listens, but believes what I have said, for I’ve told you what I know from experience. God Himself came, and comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ — in you, in me, in everyone. But when He comes in you, He awakens as you. Read the story then. All that is told in that story concerning Jesus Christ, you are going to experience.  So when you tell the story to those who will readily believe it when you “feed” them with the loaves and the fish, based upon the Law, — how to get the building, how to get money, how to become famous: and all that, — they love it. Then you turn and you emphasize the end, the Promise and the Promise is: “Ye will be as God.” You don’t need buildings, because the whole world is yours and all within it. But they can’t see that. They want more loaves and more fish; and then something will happen because you didn’t come to bring peace upon earth, — you came to bring a sword to separate the old from the new, and the conflict is on.

And then suddenly eruptions will take place within families, and they will turn — completely turn against you; but you, knowing that you are the central figure of the Gospel, you rejoice. You have nothing but pity for those who couldn’t follow beyond a certain point. That’s all that you have. No criticism. No condemnation. Only pity that they couldn’t go a little bit further. But it’s all part of the “play.”

So I tell you, you watch carefully what you are saying morning, noon and night. When you go to bed at night, just watch your inner conversations, and see that the sun is not descending upon your anger. Resolve it at that very moment, and make it conform to your wish fulfilled, and make that “wish fulfilled” a. thing of love. What would it be like if it were true? Just what would it be like? Then carry on a conversation from the premise of the wish fulfilled, all clothed in love, for anyone that you think of; and watch how things happen in your world. Your night, — may I tell you — if that is your last thought, it will dominate the dream of the night, You are completely dominated, and your Father is speaking to you constantly through the medium of dreams and through the medium of vision, and you will see the whole thing unfolding within you; and you will know that you are the Lord Jesus Christ.

You don’t go out and scream it from the housetops. You know it, and you walk in the comfort of being the Awakened Man, who is God. Let everyone say exactly what he wants to say about you, and pay no attention to it, because they have to do it. When you come down to the end, they have to do it. The separation must take place. And you don’t justify it. Self-justification is the voice of hell. So you don’t justify anything, and you don’t try to always be right. Another almost incurable disease of man is the necessity of always being right. So you don’t make any effort to prove that you are right. You know what you have experienced, and you can’t deny the experience; so you go your way, telling it just as it comes to you. And it comes to you in the most glorious manner. It’s all in Scripture; so when you come to the end, you aren’t disappointed and you aren’t surprised that those that you sent off alive and free will now take up arms against you and call you insane, call you a devil, and would disrupt their family life. You know exactly what you’ve done. You have only told the truth. And when the Truth comes into the world, it comes not to bring peace but a sword. He is going to separate you from that traditional background that enslaved you in the past, because real progress in this world, — religious progress, — is a gradual transition from a god of tradition to a. God of experience. You experience God: and the whole thing reflects it.

His Son calls you Father; and there is no uncertainty as to who he is and Who-You-Are. And your whole memory returns. And here you stand before your everlasting Son, and he knows it and you know it: and no person in the world could in any way dissuade you from knowing this. You have experienced it. You can’t deny it. So I am telling you what is in store for you. Use the gift wisely. Start now to use it. For if you use it, you are told: “I will show you the salvation of God.” Read it in the very last verse of the 50th Psalm. They translate the word “conversations” as “manner of life,” and some the “way of life”; but in the King James version it’s always translated “conversations.” Thirteen times that phrase is used, and it is always “conversations.”

“Put off the former conversation, and then be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” If you put it off — it’s equated with the “old man.” Now, as I put it off, I have to replace it with something — a “new conversation”; so you are told in the Book of Joel: “Let the weak say, I am strong.” You read that in the 3rd chapter, the 10th verse. “Let the weak say, I am strong,” for there is no other God. “I am the Lord, and beside Me there is no god.” So, “I set before you,” — and you make the choice. You can choose life or you can choose death. You can choose the good or choose the evil, a blessing or a curse. It’s entirely up to man to choose anything. And look into this manifested world, and you’ll see what we have chosen.

But every morning you see headlines — nothing but disaster, you see what man has chosen. He seems either to want it or he is “fed” it, — one or the other. Look at the editorials. “We need that in order to sell papers,” Or else, we ourselves are demanding it from Him, but you “feed” upon it. Morning, noon and night we feast upon all this unloveliness and carry on these little internal mental conversations with ourselves; but they don’t remain there. They balloon and objectify themselves and become solidified as our manifested world.

So this whole manifested world goes to show us what use or misuse we have made of God’s gift. And God’s gift is your Mind and your Speech; and it’s not your outer speech, for we know how deceptive that is. You see it morning, noon and night. A salesman goes in, and he is trained to deceive the buyer. The advertiser is trained to deceive the buyer. And everything is on the outside. God sees only the inside. Man sees the outer appearance and God sees the Inner Man. So when you watch your inner conversation, you are actually watching the new nature. That is your nature. And if you don’t like it, change it. You “put off the old man,” and then “put on the new man”; and “He will show you the salvation of Gad.” Then the whole thing will unfold within you.

I tell you from my own experience, before the Promise was realized in me, seemingly I had this conversation with my brother. Formerly I would argue mentally, — we were five thousand miles apart, — and I needed money at that time; and when I found myself arguing with him, I broke it — tore that entire record up. And whether he sent me a nickel or not, I loved him and praised him and thanked him, and went about my business, not knowing where the next was coming from, for I had spent a fortune by taking off one solid year and living at the same level that I had lived in previous years, and spent money like water. Then came that moment I needed money. And inwardly I carried on a conversation with him, and I thought that’s a stupid thing to do; so I broke that record, and then I carried on the most glorious conversation with him, like two lovers, because I do love him and he loves me, And. I changed that “old man” into the “new man,” by changing my conversation with him, Do you know, in no time flat, — unasked, a very large wonderful check came to me? And no request; I didn’t appeal at all.

I was “taking it out” on the one I loved because I myself had spent the money like a drunken sailor. And then here inwardly I am arguing with my brother; and when I broke it and actually carried on the most loving conversation with him — all about the family life and all these marvelous things, suddenly out of the nowhere came a very large, wonderful check. And I didn’t appeal for it, So I am telling you from experience, I know it works this way. Yet, if you are in the mood to argue, you so love the argument, — it costs you nothing; so you are having the time of your life.

But it doesn’t stop there; it’s going to balloon and crystallize and manifest itself in your world. So, watch it. And do you know, it becomes a pleasant thing after a while to actually carry on lovely conversations? It becomes very pleasant. But if you are honest with yourself, you would say just what this darling of mine said to me, “I never practice it. It came through, and I recorded it, and you used it, but I personally never practiced it. Still inwardly I carried on the same old conversations that I always did.”

So I say to you now, as we are going up towards the end, believe me, I would not deceive you. I have told you exactly what happened to me as to the Promise. I have told you exactly what I have proven as to the Law; it will not fail you. You can take the Law and put it into practice now. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Do it now, and know that if you carry on these conversations, the promise of the 50th Psalm will take form. “He will show you the salvation of God.” And the “salvation of God” is simply: You awaken as God. That’s how He shows it to you.

He came, and He comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ; and there is only one Jesus Christ. So when it happens, you are Jesus Christ. You don’t change your name. You are still Mary. You are still Stan. You are .still John. But when it happens, you know Who-You-Are. You don’t go and ask the judge to change your name to Jesus. You walk the streets still as Stanley, still as Mary, still as Neville; but you know Who-You-Are. And then when things do happen, because you know Who-You-Are, these things have to happen.

They must accuse you of being insane. They must accuse you of being deceitful and leading people astray. It’s all part of Scripture. But you are not amazed; you only have pity and mercy for those who could not go further than they are, and then they fall by the wayside. These are the four on which the seed falls; the highway, among the thorns, among the rocks, and then on good soil. And you can’t help it.

You can only scatter the seed and let it fall where it will. And it will fall on those four kinds of soil. It always falls on four; and as it falls on the good, it will simply rise within them, and. they will have the identical experience that you have had. When it falls on the highway, quickly other ideas devour it. When it falls among the thorns, the cares of the world encroach upon it and choke it. If it falls on the rock and the rock is not prepared to let the root go too deep, the sun scorches it, and suddenly something comes up and it’s all gone. But when the soil has been prepared, it goes deep, and it bears a hundredfold.

So, I tell you, the whole story is all about you. And one day you will know — actually know — you are the Lord Jesus Christ. And you cannot avoid the story. It will happen to you too. Don’t think for one moment that you are going to awaken knowing you are the Lord Jesus Christ and not have those to whom you poured out your soul, who took the loaves and the fish, turn upon you and accuse you of being mad, and therefore an evil one, and not anything should be done with you, — turn from you completely. You’ll find it.

But then, being conscious of the fact that you have experienced the entire story, you can only go back to the written Word of God and know it had to happen. It just had to happen. And when these signs come, the end is not far. Now let us go into the silence.

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Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Three Propositions – 1954 – Neville Goddard

Three Propositions – 1954 – Neville Goddard

Neville Goddard 1954

THREE PROPOSITIONS
Courtesy of FreeNeville.com

Well, my first proposition is this one. The individual state of consciousness determines the conditions and the circumstances of his life. The second proposition is that man can select the state of consciousness with which he desires to be identified; and the third follows naturally–therefore, man can be what he wants to be.

If the first proposition is true that the individual’s state of consciousness is the sole cause of the phenomena of his life, then the normal, natural question that is asked “Why doesn’t he change it to a more desirable state if he could change it?” Well, that is not as easy as it appears.

Today we hope to give you a technique to make it easier but man finds it very hard to leave the things to which he has grown accustomed. We are all grown stuck in the habitual. It may seem strange but a very sordid cartoon appeared years ago, that is during the last war; you might have seen it, it came out in the “New Yorker” and it was one by George Price. In it is one single little room, a sink piled high with unwashed dishes, plaster falling from the walls, and these two middle-aged people, she sitting on a chair reading a letter, disheveled, matted hair, and he with torn clothes and feet stuck upon the table and socks exposing holes, and the caption of the picture is this. She is reading a letter from her soldier son abroad: “He says he’s homesick.” Now you should see the interior of this house–one room, completely disheveled-but the lad was homesick!

Now man finds it difficult to detach himself from the habitual; so this morning we have brought you these three propositions, and I hope I can make it clear that you can with this knowledge apply it so that you can realize your every objective. It is the height of folly to expect changes to come about by the mere passage of time, for that which requires a state of consciousness to produce its effect could not be effective without such a state of consciousness. So if I must be in the consciousness of the thing that I am seeking before I find it, then the only thing to do is to acquire that state of consciousness. Most of us do not even know what we mean by state of consciousness. To those who are here for the first time it is simply meant by state of consciousness the sum total of all that a man believes and accepts and consents to as true.

Now it need not be true; it may be, but it need not be true, it could be false, it could be a half truth, it could be a lie, it could be a superstition, it could be a prejudice, but the sum total of all that a man believes constitutes his state of consciousness. It is the house in which he abides, and as long as he remains in that house similar problems will confront him, the circumstances of life will remain the same. He may move physically across the ends of the earth but he will encounter similar conditions; he can’t get away from the house in which he abides. The Bible speaks of these houses as mansions of the Lord, it speaks of them as cities, it speaks of them as rooms, as upper rooms, all kinds of words are used to describe individual states of awareness. And the appeal in the Bible is always to move out and occupy the upper story, meaning to move up to a higher level within one’s self.

Now, if you do not know the state in which you abide, it’s a very simple technique you may employ todiscover that state: for the man dwelling in a state, and we all dwell in states, could easily discover the state by listening within himself and observing his own internal mental conversations, for the state is singing its own song and it reveals itself in man’s inner speech. If you will listen attentively and uncritically to what inwardly you are saying, you will discover the state.

And it will not surprise you that things are as they are for you will hear within yourself the cause of the phenomena of life. So that what you are inwardly saying and doing is far more important than what you outwardly know or seemingly outwardly express; so when a man knows what inwardly he is doing then he can change it. If you have never uncritically observed your reactions to life; if you are totally unaware of your subjective behavior, then you are unaware of the cause of the things in your world. But if you become aware of the state, then you simply go about changing it.

Now here is a technique I have found most helpful and I find that it works like a miracle; anyone can do it. I know that some of you here possibly come from extreme orthodox walks of life and it may seem strange to you even to be here, but I assure you you are not alone, many of your leaders in the orthodox field seek an audience with the speaker; many a rabbi has been in my home, many a priest, and many a Protestant leader. Many of them. They come to my home for interpretations of the book that publicly they wouldn’t dare give any interpretation other than the most extreme literal interpretation. So don’t be surprised if you hear things here that might startle you; your leaders are startled; but this is a technique I have found most helpful.

First of all, man stands forever in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy, from which energy all things proceed but it follows definite patterns: it just doesn’t move out of man and crystallize in things in some strange haphazard manner. It follows a definite track and the track it follows is laid down by the man himself in his own internal conversations.

So though man is called upon to change his thinking that he may change his world, for we are told “Be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind”, man can’t change his thinking unless he changes his ideas for he thinks from his ideas. So if I would change and become transformed, I must lay new tracks and the tracks I lay are always laid down in my own internal conversation.

So what am I saying now when seemingly I am alone? I can sit in that chair, or stand here, or walk the streets and I can’t stop talking. Man does not realize that he is talking, because he is never still enough to listen to the voice speaking within himself, but inwardly he is whispering what outwardly is taking place as conditions and circumstances.

Most of the things he whispers are negative in justifying his behavior. There is no need to justify. He is excusing delay or excusing failure, or he is arguing, or he is judging harshly or he is condemning. Many of us have secret affection for hurts: we don’t want to be liked by certain people; we just wouldn’t like it if they liked us. We just don’t want certain things to take place in our world even though they may bring a greater comfort and a greater satisfaction.

Man has a peculiar, strange feeling, a little affection for the feeling of being unwanted or the feeling of being hurt, and he likes to talk about it. Well, try to pull that man out of that habitual state: it would be just as difficult as to keep that soldier boy away from that sordid room; he goes back into the sordid rooms within himself. You don’t see dishes unwashed within your self, but if you could only see the internal psychological state in which most of us abide, we would see a room far dirtier than the one that George Price illustrated in the “New Yorker” magazine. They are all unwashed plates within us: on the outside we wash them but we are told in the Bible, we leave the inside unwashed and we become whited sepulchers.

Now, if I sincerely desire to change my world there is no one in my world I need change but myself, so that I don’t need to change you as an individual but I do need to change my attitude towards you. If you dislike me or if I think you dislike me, or if your behavior offends me, the cause of my offense is not in you and yourbehavior but I must look for that cause within myself.

Now if I seriously and I am honest about my search, I will find it and I will find that inwardly when I think of you it is never a pleasant conversation that I carry on with you. So let me sit down now and bring you before my mind’s eye, and as I bring you before the mind’s eye let me imagine a conversation which would imply a radical change in my world; let me bring you up and change my attitude toward you by laying new tracks relative to you.

These tracks will then become the tracks across which this eternal energy will pour, an energy which is only thinking; moving across the tracks laid down in my own inner conversations will result in changes in my outer world. Now, if I repeat the conversations and do it more often, then it becomes a habit and I will find that when I am about my Father’s business in the outer world I am inwardly through habit carrying on these changed and lovelier conversations. Now, a transformation of consciousness will definitely result in a change of environment and conditions. But I mean transformation of consciousness, I do not mean a slight alteration of consciousness like a change of mood.

It is nice to change a mood from some unlovely to a lovely, but I want a transformation and by transformation I mean that when one state into which I have moved and move so often that it becomes a habit and that state grows stable, so that it expels from my consciousness all of its rivals, then that central habitual state defines my character and really constitutes my new world.

It spells out a transformation, but if I only do it a little bit and return to my former state, then I might have had a temporary lift but I will not notice radical changes in my outer world. I will notice these changes in my outer world if inwardly I have truly changed. Then without effort on my part I will find the outer world changing to correspond to the changes that took place within me.

So you bear it in mind, I can’t stress it too often, I can’t give it too great importance, this wonderful thing called man’s ability to talk within himself and without the aid of anyone in the world, sitting alone at home you can construct a sentence which would imply the fulfillment of the ideal; you can construct a sentence which would imply that a friend I blessed that she has realized her objective, that the thing you know she wants she has. So what would she say to you had she realized it? Well, you listen attentively as though you heard and you will really hear if you are still enough you will hear as coming from without what really you are whispering from within yourself.

Man is this wonderful temple in which all the work takes place and the outer world is only a projection of the work done within himself. This, called present man, unfortunately is asleep. It is told us so beautifully in the Bible that Adam slept, in the second chapter of Genesis. He was placed into a profound sleep from which he has not been awakened. There is no reference in the Bible where Adam was ever awakened from his sleep but there is a reference where he awoke but not as Adam; he awoke as a second man called Christ Jesus.

So in Christ they awake: in Adam all sleep, but a man who is totally unaware of the mental activity that goes on within him is the one who sleeps as Adam: he doesn’t know it. He walks with his eyes wide open, he may be a very important person in the world, he may be wealthy, he may be famous, he may have all the things that you admire, but if he is totally unaware of that mental activity which is the cause of the phenomena of his life, that man is sound asleep and he is personified as Adam.

And he will read his Bible and think it is a literal story; he will read where Adam was put to sleep and from Adam a rib was taken and a woman was formed called Eve, but when a man begins to awake he realizes that this symbolical Eve of the Bible is only his own emanation now called by the name of nature. And nature is his slave, and must fashion life about him as he fashions it within himself.

But if he is asleep, he fashions it in confusion, but he fashions it anyway, for he uses the very technique that his Father used to build a world. He uses speech, he uses inner talking, and that’s how this whole vast world was brought into being; so he uses the same technique, he has speech and he has mind, but in the state of sleep he brings about strange conditions, and he doesn’t know he’s the cause of the strange things round about him. As he begins to awake, then he awakes only as one being, he awakes as Christ Jesus and the being called Christ Jesus personified in our Gospels is simply the awakened, loving imagination.

Imaginative love where only love guides it is incapable of hearing anything but the lovely. When that being begins to awake he doesn’t see things in pure objectivity, he sees everything subjectively related to himself. He is incapable of meeting a stranger; he may meet one for the first time but he knows it is not really a stranger, that the man had no power to come into his world save he from within himself drew him. “No man comes unto me save I call him;” “No man takes away my life, I lay it down myself”: “You didn’t choose me, I have chosen you”.

Though you seemingly come now for the first moment in my life, you still didn’t choose me, I have chosen you. I see then every being subjectively related to myself. So in that state you become incapable of hurt, you’ve overcome all the violence that formerly you’ve expressed in the world when you were asleep. There is no condemnation to the sleeping man, he is dreaming confusion because he doesn’t know who he is: but he begins to awake by such techniques as given you this morning.

If you take this technique and you try it consciously, for here I am appealing not to the passive mind that passively surrenders to appearances, I am appealing to the Christ in you which is the active conscious use of your lovely imagination. So when you sit down and you predetermine what you want to hear and you listen until you hear it, and you refuse to hear anything other than that, then you are using the one power in the world that awakens a man and you are using your lovely imagination, which is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Here is a lady this past week; she has heard the story of revision; her husband calls her and it’s a big deal, it runs into a fortune, he had sent off 600 feet of film to Acme and they’ve returned the film, only the first 300 were good. The second three were duds, as they call it, not a thing was on it, a complete blank. Yet they were up against time, that 600 feet of film had to be on a plane headed for Chicago in the immediate present, less than twelve hours away, it had to be there, that was the contract, and 300 feet of film taken, no sound appeared, with the whole thing a blank.

She sat down when her husband called her, desperately called her: she sat on the bed just where she had received the call, put the receiver up, and sat in the silence until she heard within herself that phone ringing and across that wire the same voice, but now not an anxious voice but a tender loving voice, which was her husband, explaining that the whole thing had been resolved, they had found what seemingly they had lost forever. She sat in the silence for one hour and ten minutes, and there she listened and she listened until her whole body became still in hearing only what she wanted to hear. And an hour and ten minutes later while still in the silence the phone rang; it’s her husband calling to say that Acme just called him to explain and excuse themselves, it was their mistake, they had found the missing 300 feet of film. And there was not a dud, it wasn’t a blank, the whole thing was perfect.

Now the average person, not ,knowing this law of revision or even those knowing it, would have accepted as final the evidence of sense and receiving news that seemed so factual they would have gone into a stew, bawled out Acme and pulled all kinds of wires to correct it. But she heard and she acted upon it, and that’s what I mean when I tell you that a little knowledge if you carry it out in action will be far more profitable than much knowledge which you neglect to carry out in action; now many of you present and this is no judgment, you have the same knowledge that this lady has; she’s been coming here recently but she heard, she attended all the meetings at the Ebell, and she’s been here; undoubtedly she’s here this morning, but at least she came the first two Sundays and she hasn’t missed one at the Ebell, and having heard the art of revision, she acted upon it.

Others heard the art of revision: have you acted upon it? Did you last night allow the sun to descend upon your wrath? Did you sleep last night with any trouble, any vexation unresolved? Or did you last night truly go to bed having resolved every vexation and trouble of the day? All the little problems, each one must be resolved, you rewrite the play. If you didn’t rewrite yesterday’s events and make them conform to the ideal you wish you had experienced, then you heard but you aren’t a doer.

And so you are told in the Bible, “Would that ye be doers of the word and not mere hearers only.” For if you are a hearer and not a doer, then you are like a man who sees his face in the glass and turns and straightway forgets what manner of man he is. But if you are a doer and not a forgetful hearer, then you shall be blessed with the deed, for you will look into the law of liberty and you will liberate yourself and liberating yourself you shall be blessed with the deed.

For those of you who are Bible students and want to check it, read the Book of James. You will find that story in the first chapter of the Epistle of James, where he looks in and liberates himself–well she liberated herself by listening until she heard exactly what she wanted to hear, and she heard it one hour and ten minutes later. Now the majority of people I say they would not have acted upon it: through habit they would have gone into a stew; they would have fumed and fretted, and that very day had he brought home the negative news that undoubtedly he would have, they both would have slept allowing the sun to descend upon their wrath.

But now you know that there’s not a thing on the outside to change, that first proposition is true, that the man’s state of consciousness, which simply means all that he accepts, all that he believes, all that he consents to, that and that alone is the cause of the phenomena of his life. Man can change his state of consciousness and therefore man can determine the conditions of his life.

But the passage of time will not in itself do anything; time is only a facility for changes in experience but it cannot produce the change. It is simply that which allows changes to take place, but it can’t produce them. Space gives us the facility for experience and time for changes in experience, but of themselves they do nothing. We must operate the power, and so the individual if he doesn’t become the operator then he will wait in vain.

So no one here this morning, in fact no one coming here through the year should ever allow himself to blame another, ever allow himself to justify failure, for he is only betraying his own lack of the use of this law. Anyone that you listen to who is complaining of a third party, he has no idea how he is betraying himself, he is telling you of his own unwashed dishes within himself, but he doesn’t know it. He thinks it is in the one that he is now judging, but as he talks to you listen attentively and see what must be washed within him and you aid him.

In your own mind’s eye rewrite that script that you heard and when you leave him just imagine you heard a more lovely conversation than the one you did hear. Just rewrite it for him and in some strange way lift him up within you, for that’s your task; it’s my task.

We aren’t here to condemn, we are here to redeem; having awakened we have found Christ in us as our ownimagination and so our duty, as it is said Christ’s duty is to do the will of him that sent me and the will of him that sent me is that “Of all that he has given me I should lose nothing”, but I shall raise it up again and I raise it up by encountering someone and then finding him down I raise him up ‘within myself ‘. I simply hear what I want to hear from him.

Now my voice you are hearing this morning, you could take the tone, listen attentively and you will hear this tone within you; when you hear the tone within you, then put upon that tone the word that you want to hear and having put it upon it, listen and do not move until you hear this tone conveying these words. But make them noble; don’t take that tone and put upon it any word outside of the word which would imply a dignified, noble state, because you are not hurting anyone but self. If you take someone and you put words upon that tone or that voice, and the words do not imply a noble spirit, then you are only allowing that being to be down within you, you are not really performing your duty.

So here this morning, believe these propositions and then having believed them, do something about it. Go out and take what we have told you concerning inner speech: it is truly the greatest of the arts. You listen and only hear what you want to hear. You take your imaginary hand and put it into the hand of a friend, the imaginary hand of a friend, and there you congratulate him on his good fortune. If you want one to congratulate you, you allow yourself to be congratulated. You don’t bend the head, you hold it high and accept the congratulation, and when you congratulate him imagine that he is fully conscious of the good that is already his and he accepts that congratulation and make the contact real.

That is truly entering the kingdom of heaven, for you enter the kingdom and the kingdom is within you, it’s not without, and you always enter the kingdom by a loving, knowing communion. You can enter the kingdom at every moment of time, ride the street car, ride the busses, and with all the talking and gossiping, you can enter the kingdom and bless a friend by just imagining the friend is with you and you are putting your hand into his and congratulating him on the good news you’ve heard concerning him, and listen as though he answered in kind, and in that moment you have actually blessed him. He may be a thousand miles away but from that moment on things begin to stir within his world for you have brought about a change within the structure of his mind and every modification of the structure of a man’s mind must result in corresponding outer changes.

So you bring about these lovely changes within you. Look at the testimonial–one you heard this morning; here is a pile of letters and this is really a tight, tight pile. It is one of the biggest piles I think that you have received here and this week’s mail I can’t begin to tell you what a thrill it is to receive, one after the other not begging for help any more but giving praise and thanks for the principle that brought the help into their world. I can’t tell you how many in the last two weeks have received an increase in income, increase of position, a better state of health; things happened because they did something about it. They were not just warming a seat here on Sunday morning and waiting for things to happen by association: they produced the thing by producing it first within themselves.

So here this appeals to men who are big enough to stand on their own feet: men who want spiritual meat and who have outgrown the milk given to sleeping man. So if you want the literal concept, you are still asleep and this really would not be the place to get it, for from this platform you are going to be given meat, spiritual meat, for you must go out and do something about it. If you have the greatest knowledge in the world concerning foods and you didn’t eat, you would die of starvation, and so it’s not the knowledge of it, it’s the application of it that counts.

Now this coming week, we start tomorrow, and it’s an interesting one for those who like their Bible, those who would like to put their mental teeth into it tonight and come tomorrow night with some intuitive knowledge of it, it’s the 49th chapter of Genesis; you’ll find many of them I’ll quote tomorrow, but in the 49th of Genesis here is what it says. First of all he calls his sons together to tell them their future and there are twelve of them. It’s Jacob calling his sons, but the fifth one, when he calls the fifth one, he tells him the scepter shall never drop, shall never depart from your hand, never, not in eternity. His name is Judah, the one that fathered the line that flowered in Christ Jesus, when you read the genealogy as given to us in Matthew and Luke.

Then it said of Judah that he took his foal and he tied it to a vine and he took the colt of an ass and tied it to a good vine, and then he washed his garments in wine and he washed his clothes in the blood of grapes. And his eye was red with wine and his teeth white with milk. Well now, those of you who still would like to read that literally, you may get some satisfaction out of washing your clothes in wine–I don’t, I’d rather drink it, but some wash theirs in the blood of grapes and then the teeth white with milk and the eye bloodshot with wine. Well now, that was the one who fathered out of Thamar the twins that brought forth the line that flowered in Christ Jesus. So go back and read the genealogy of Judah and then see what Judah did and how he took two animals, one was a foal and one was a colt.

Now I won’t tell you the interpretation: you exercise your intuitive faculty and you come tomorrow night and you hear what we have to say about the amethyst, or the wine stone: how a man must make the amethyst, how a man must take his garments, a thing that clothes the mind of man and wash them in the blood of grapes, how a man not only must do it but his eye must become equally bloodshot with wine and his teeth white with milk. And we will show you tomorrow night why they placed upon him the scarlet robe and then placed upon him the most mystical of all–the purple robe; so as they placed them up to the very final act was the placing of the purple robe upon the man who had awakened, who is now ready to ascend on high, to higher levels within himself.

But you can’t ascend until you first make the purple robe and although we have orders in this world who have scarlet robes and purple robes, no man can make it for you. And so it cannot be woven in any factory, it has to be woven from the factory within yourself. So tomorrow night for those who are vitally interested in going deeper into the mysteries our subject is “The Twelfth, an Amethyst”. The very last act of a man, the twelfth, for there are only twelve, then comes the most, I would say, the least precious of all stones in the eyes of man, but in the eye of God it’s the most precious and it’s not the little thing you find among the stones, it’s the one you find within yourself. So that is tomorrow’s subject.

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Monday, July 25, 2022

Neville Goddard – The Art Of Dying

Neville Goddard – The Art Of Dying

THE ART OF DYING
March 23, 1959
Courtesy of FreeNeville.com

If you are with us for the first time, this is what we believe and teach here. We firmly believe that you, the individual, can realize your every dream, and the reason is that God and man are one. We believe that the difference is not in the mentality with which we operate, but only in the degrees of intensity of the operant power itself, and that we call human Imagination.

Keats said: “You can take any one great and spiritual passage and it will serve as a starting point to lead you to the two-and-thirty palaces.” Take this simple one in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians: “I die daily,” or Blake’s statement in his letter to Crab Robinson: “Death is the best thing in life. There is nothing in life like death, but people take such a long time in dying. At least, their neighbors never see them rise from the grave.”

If you understood Blake you would not think of death as the world thinks of death, but you would see that no one can grow without outgrowing. But man is not willing to outgrow, [and] yet he wants other things than those he has. But if you remain in one state, you will forever have to suffer the consequences of not being in another state. (From the “Hermetica”)

If I remain in the state of poverty, I must suffer the consequences of not being in the state of wealth. So I must learn the art of dying. Paul says: “I die daily.” Blake says: “People take such a long time in dying.” Man does not outgrow his state of ill health or his old job or his environment. We must learn the art of dying, and this week is the great death and we are told that God dies that man may live.

We say that the Imagination of God and man are one, no matter how far it goes. Universes are created and sustained by “the same power that sustains our environment.” We say the power is the same, but we recognize a vast difference between the power that sustains the universe and that which sustains an environment.

The difference is only in the degree of intensity of the center of imagining. So, if we increase the intensity [in] the center of imagining, we will create greater and greater things. So I see my dream, and I must learn to die to what I AM in order to live to what I want to be.

Now this is the mystical meaning of a death in the Bible – the death of Moses, a story familiar to all of us. We are told that Moses comes out of the land of Moab (Deuteronomy 34) and then scales the mountain of Nebo, goes to Pisgah, sees Gilead, and finally he looks into the promised land of Jericho. But the Lord tells him: “I will let you see the land, but you cannot go into it.” Then Moses dies. (The present state cannot be carried into the new; it has to die as a consequence of the new made alive.)

“But his eye was not dim and his natural force was not abated.” And no one knows his burial place.

First remember that all the characters of the Bible take place in the mind of man. I am Moses, you are Moses. It means to “lift up” or to “draw out of.” We are told in the very beginning of the story that he was pulled from the bulrushes. The word [“Moses” – in Hebrew, “Moshe”] spelled backwards in the ancient Hebrew means “the Name” [haShem] or “I AM.” So I am drawing out of my own being, or the I AM.

Moses comes from “Mo ab.” This comes from two Hebrew words meaning “Mother-Father,” or “womb.” Then he scales the mount of Nebo, which means “to prophesy,” or which represents the subjective state I long for. I will prophesy for you, or you for another. You single out a person’s longing. If he longs for something it means that he does not have it, else there could be no longing.

But Moses climbs Nebo – that is, he participates in seeing the state longed for. I single out something that implies I am the man I want to be. I scale the mountain. Then comes Pisgah, which means, “to contemplate.” I contemplate what I want to be. Then he sees Jericho, which means “a fragrant odor.” I will contemplate the desired state until I get the feeling or reaction that satisfies.

I have not only scaled Nebo but I have reached Pisgah and looked into Jericho. I am filled with the emotion that implies the act is completed. Then there is Gilead, which means, “hills of witnesses.” Then I, as Moses, die. I cannot go into the promised land, and no one can find where I am buried.

What does it mean? If I am poverty-ridden and frightened and then you meet me and see me as free as a bird and happy, then I am not the man you knew who was frightened. Then where is that other man buried?

For Moses is the power in man (generic man, male-female) to draw out of himself anything in this world he desires, and to so enact the drama that he dies to what he was, that he may live to what he is enacting. That is Moses – and no one can know where he is buried. But we are told: “His eye was not dim nor his natural force abated.” That is [to say], when I die, that is when I enact the drama.

I do not wait for signs to appear; it is when I am most aware of my restrictions and feel the pressures, then is when I must learn to die. I must learn to let go of what my senses dictate and “go mad” and yield to what is only a dream. But sustaining it and living in it, I die to what was physically real as I gradually lift up what was only the dream. You knew only the frightened man and not the other one. No one can tell where the other has gone.

So this is how the art of dying is dramatized in the Bible as the death of a man. But it has nothing to do with any certain man, for the story of the Bible takes place in the mind of every man. I will crucify myself, for God crucified himself in me that I might live. But now I must nail myself upon the thing I desire and, remaining faithful to it, lift it up as God nailed himself upon me.

Neville Goddard Tree Bead

Neville Goddard Tree Bead

(The present body) is believing himself a man called Neville, giving Neville the same power that is his (but keyed low) in the hope that I will lift up the power to bigger things in my world to which I can nail myself, and so lift them up. There is no possibility of man making his dream alive unless He nails himself to this cross that is man.

We are living because God nailed himself to us. Now man, keyed low, yielding to other states and not to what the senses dictate, becomes one with the state and nails himself to it (fixes himself in the state through emotion and feeling) and then he will be lifted up.

For crucifixion comes before resurrection. Crucifixion without resurrection would be unthinkable; it would be the utter triumph of tyranny. If I could yield myself to my dream and it would not become flesh, it would be complete tyranny over this wonderful concept of life. But you cannot fail if you yield.

If you hold back within yourself, wondering “What will I play as my last card if this doesn’t work?” then you have not yielded, you have not nailed yourself to it. It is a complete yielding. It is the great cry “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” If you know that you’re God doing it, you can yield. But there must be complete abandonment as though it were true and then you make it a reality.

The cost is that form of mental abandonment that Blake calls “madness.” But man is afraid; he dare not so abandon himself to a dream, and so never “dies.” So Blake was right when he said: “There is nothing like death: the best thing in life is death.”

Many people only age, but never change inwardly. They only mature physically, but they have not died in the mystical sense. There is no transforming power in the physical death, and they will still be anchored in a larger world with all the trends of this world. To our senses they seem to be dead but they will still, on another plane, have to learn the art of dying. I can anywhere so completely detach myself from what is taking place that I can “die” to that state.

So every little death is the lifting of the divine image. This means dying as the mystic means it. It means dying mentally. Man dies to ill health, or poverty, or to disharmony, etc., but he does it by yielding to the other states.

Blake looks on all states as permanent, as in his great poem regarding the Halls of Los: “I curse the earth for man and made it permanent.” So states remain and man passes through states, as though cities. If I do not pass through some state but remain in it, I think [it] is the only reality. You cannot conceive of a state that is not, for the whole is finished; but man is awakening only by dying to state after state.

You take a friend who is not well or cannot set himself free from some state. You represent that friend to yourself as he should be seen by the whole world, and to the degree that you are faithful to that representation, to that degree you will bring him out of the old state.

It does not matter if he knows you did it or not; he does not have to know. But remain faithful and you will bring him out of the old state into the new state that you are seeing. All things are burned up when we cease to behold them.

Moses could see the promised land but he could not go into it. If I am true to the likeness of what I behold, then I – the “old” man – cannot go into the new state. Something called the power goes into it, but [no one] recognizes it, for they cannot recognize the transformed being.

We all feel so secure in recurrence. If we know that a thing is fixed and that next week things will be as they are today, I feel secure in that recurrence. I can have done something that violates the moral codes, I can have come from the wrong side of the tracks, but I can accept that, for I am used to it.

But to say that something awakes in me and can become what it will – that is frightening to man. So we are told to awake out of sleep, for recurrence brings security to the whole vast world. One does what he does as if he did it in a nightmare. For God had to “forget” he was God to become man, and that whittling down to this level is [the] very limit of contraction, But then comes the awakening from that deep dream into which he threw himself to make me alive.

So this lifting-up power goes about setting men free, for God became every man, that every man may in time awaken as God. Eventually the whole [world] will awaken and the poem will be in full bloom and it will be noble beyond our wildest dreams. And then it will exist for us and we will be one with the creator of the great poem. That is [the] art of dying.

Next Sunday is the great drama. I am riding a beast and I am at the crossroads. “Bring me a colt on which no man ever sat, that is tied by the road where two ways meet.” Here is state I have never ridden before. It is so unnatural to feel myself to be the man I want to be and to actually get into that state and ride it without being thrown by reason, which tells me I am mad. But if you know the Lord is your Imagination, you can ride it into Jerusalem.

We [are] told [we] will find the animal at a crossroads where two roads meet. We are always at a crossroads of what I am and what I want to be. So, can I ride the beast I find at the crossroads and ride it into Jerusalem? Then I am going toward “heaven,” but it is not continuous on my line of motion. It is contiguous. It is adjacent to where I am, for heaven is a state of consciousness. I try to catch the feeling that would be mine if [I were] the man I [want] to be, but that involves a death. I must abandon myself to my dream as if it were true, and – living in it – I lift it up and make it real.

Everyone must pass through this state, for this is the only true religion in the world. Religion, like charity, begins at home, with one’s self. The mother seed of all religious beliefs lies in the mystical experiences of the individual. All ceremonies are but secondary growths superimposed upon it.

Religion means, “to be tied or devoted to.” But if I am not in love with what I am tied to, I must yield to something more lovely and make it real. I must bear my cross. I go so far and then I want to cross to the other line where my heaven is. For everything is interrelated. We all interpenetrate each other. We are all one.

So there is interpenetration of the whole world and then comes conflict, and from that comes the solution of the conflict. For we must conflict if we are all interpenetrated. But then we must bring about reconciliation. Whatever the solution is, that is the reconciliation. But we cannot stay in a state or any condition forever.

Each new state bears within it the seeds of new conflict. Every heaven becomes in time hell. A thing is ours for a moment, but as we continue in it, it will bring about conflict. As long as there is interpenetration there is always conflict. So live in any desired state and then as conflict arises resolve it and die to it and then move into another state. Thus we grow and outgrow; thus man awakes.

No man can be born in one environment and ever realize another if he does not yield to the state desired. So Blake was right: “The best thing in life is death but it takes man so long to die that his friends never see him rise from the grave.” Can you not see then how it is with your friend who always tells you the same things, even though you have not seen him for ten years? Everything is still recurring, nothing is new, but that makes him feel secure. Man does not want change; it frightens him.

I tell you that your Imagination is God. Believe it. Exercise it. It is keyed low, but as you lift it up you intensify it and then vision after vision will be yours as you begin to awake. Do not think you are greedy because you are demanding things or the changing of things. You are here to create as your Father creates.

how_to_feel_it_real_yeildingWant what you want and yield to it and create it. Then you will want higher and higher things. But nothing blesses a man unless it comes down from its heavenly state and takes on flesh. You are the only one who can clothe it in reality. But it remains a state unless you yield to it.

This drama in the Bible is all about you, for the Christ Jesus of the gospels is your own wonderful Imagination. There is only an infinite God and the creation he loved. And he so loved it, he wanted to make it alive and then share it and even change it, so God became man that man may become God. That is the great story of the gospels. Every mystic in the world tells this same story. Then every man is free.

There is no judgment, for no matter what man has done, it is God’s doing it in a nightmare. There is only complete forgiveness of sin – no judgment and no argument, but man can change facts. The past can be unmade. So a man has done this or that. Use your strange Imagination and “turn the great wheel backward until Troy unburns.” It means to revise.

I know a lady who burned her hand and then “unburned” it. She poured boiling water on her hand. She lay on the couch and tried to undo mentally what had been done. It was difficult because of the pain but she kept trying. She redid the scene and poured the boiling water on the tea and brewed it and then she drank the tea. She did it over and over and finally in the act of thus making the tea she fell asleep.

When she awoke some hours later there was no trace of the burn. She wrote: “You would have thought I should go right to the hospital, but now there is not even a sign of the burn.”

Now let us go into the silence.
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