“We have identified the Lord as your awareness of being. Therefore, to ‘magnify the Lord’ is to revalue or expand one’s present conception of one’s self to the point where this revaluation becomes natural.”.
Neville Goddard
Can we talk about how this does not cover all the things that we have identified god as being?
This will be my first post on correcting Neville. Upon realizing the amount of people who are atheist, and still have the audacity to use the bible, albeit in plagiarized form, to push their “no God but myself” agenda, I have decided to spend some time correcting Neville.
“Awareness of being” in one part true, but this does not explain the intelligent design of the universe, how every miniscule cell and electron, atom, has an end goal that it it designed to fulfill. A fruit fly cell can only become a fruit fly, not a horse fly, and certainly not a human.
Sure, “The Lord is your awareness of being” but that is far from everything that God is.
We instead think of “the creator” and “the creation”, and we think of ourselves as “created” or “creatures”. This makes more sense, and also, we can then ADD to this that we are created “in his image” so we have the same attributes as our creator, and part of His attribute is “awareness of being”. SO though Neville is right, he is also wrong.
Neville Goddard’s quote focuses ONLY on ONE aspect of the divine nature, which is the “awareness of being.” While this is an essential aspect, it doesn’t encompass the entirety of God’s attributes, such as intelligence, creativity, and omnipotence.
A revised version of the quote could be:
We have identified the Lord as the source of our awareness of being. However, the concept of God extends beyond mere awareness to encompass the intelligence and creative power behind the universe’s design. To ‘magnify the Lord’ is to expand our understanding of God to include His attributes of intelligence, creativity, and omnipotence, realizing that we are created in His image and share in these divine qualities.
A Better Neville Goddard
This revised version acknowledges Neville’s insight while broadening the perspective to encompass a more comprehensive understanding of God’s nature.
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Neville uses scripture exclusively, as a resource for his claims
He sometimes distorts what it says, because he has his own Neville Goggles on
He claims that the scriptures were written for a psychological purpose
They didn’ even have paper yet, still they wrote a psychology book! Dang!
Imagine that there is more in the Bible than just: “HOW TO GET MORE STUFF”
IF he believs that the only reason to write the Bible was so teach us how to get more stuff the a) why are there so MANY more segments to the bible that talk about other things? b) WHO is it that is providing the STUFF? c) WHO is it that MADE the stuff in the first place, and WHO is it that made us?
These are some questions that come to my mind when I read the socialmedia fanatisism, the toxicity, and the cognitive distortions that must HURT.
If you don’t beleive the Bible, why are you following auy who ONLY uses the Bible as a backup source?
Just follow some other dude or gal then. How about Abraham Hicks? Or Sadguru? They steer away from all things Biblical, and still manage to get tha “get more stuff” message out….
It’s important to understand that the Bible was not written with the primary intention of being a psychology book or a guide to understanding the mind’s power. Instead, the Bible is a collection of religious texts and literature that serves various purposes depending on one’s beliefs and interpretations.
The authors of the Bible, who lived in ancient times, wrote within the cultural and religious contexts of their societies.
They expressed their understandings of God, of moral principles and law, historical events, they even wrote songs!
The REAL intent of the Bible is to strenghten the relationship between humanity and God.
While these texts contain moral teachings, ethical guidelines, and narratives that can be applied to psychological principles, their primary aim was to convey religious, spiritual, and cultural messages.
Like a child that reads the Old Testament in a picture book, understands these stories in one way, so does Neville only seem to understand the very same Bible on his own level. His level being psychology and metaphysics is by no means the ultimate or most mature way of understanding it.
The highest level of understanding the Bible is of course, the understanding of God.
All other levels of reading and comprehending are naturally also correct, but that does not mean that it is everything that there is. The child’s level of understanding is still correct, but there is more. As we get older, this becomes more accessible for our brains.
Over time, various thinkers and philosophers, including individuals like Neville Goddard, have interpreted biblical texts through psychological lenses, finding parallels between the themes and teachings of the Bible and principles of human psychology.
This interpretive approach has led to the exploration of how biblical stories and teachings can be understood in terms of human consciousness, behavior, and inner workings of the mind. Ther is the plain and simple level that a child understands, then there is the mind over matter psychological empowerment level that Neville understands, then there is a metaphysical interpretation that seems to be mostly understood from reading the Hebrew language, this only applies to the old testament of course.
Then there is the divine level, where we finally meet and experience God. This is something that Neville never gets to, but that does not mean that it doesn’t exist.
…..Having studied multiple religions for many decades, I will also offer this for the soul that is seeking and seeking…. YES….there is SOMETHING in the New Testament that you will not find anywhere else. It is totally unique, and wonderful. I encourage you to seek there. Just begin with the first page, and see what happens.
But only if you are ready
Only if you are a seeker of ….something….deeper….a meaning of life….and….why are you here?
Yes, I have studied the Veda’s the Mahabarata, The Ramayana, The Dao, Buddhism, The Yoga Sutra’s, the Brahma Sutra’s….. still.
There is something that you can only find in one tiny little book consisting of 27 short stories.
It begins here…..
So, while the writers of the Bible may not have had modern psychological concepts in mind when they composed their texts, the richness and depth of the biblical narratives have allowed for diverse interpretations throughout history, including psychological ones.
YES Neville
Yes, Neville Goddard often referenced biblical scripture to support his teachings and claims.
Yes, he interpreted many biblical passages allegorically or metaphorically to convey his ideas about the power of the human mind and the concept of manifesting one’s desires through focused thought and imagination.
Yes, Goddard’s teachings emphasize the importance of assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled and living in the end result of one’s desires as if they have already been achieved.
Yes, while he primarily drew upon biblical texts, his interpretations are unconventional and yet effective, but focused more on their symbolic and psychological meanings rather than literal or spiritual interpretations.
NO Neville:
An NO! This is not WHY the Bible was written, the Bible is STILL a much greater authority than Neville ever was.
Neville is a man, nothing else, there is a LOT of fanaticism around him. Sadly humanity can’t seem to not form cult-like mindsets, it is innate to our limbic systems to form tribal behavior. He is JUST SOME GY who was taught in the Kabbalah point of view of the Hebrew Bible, by Abdullah a Rabbi, living in New York in the 30’s.
That is all, Neville later died of complication’s of alcoholism.
If you trust Neville Goddard, then also trust his source. The Bible, Old and New Testament, and go ahead and just read THAT. Neville knew the Bible like the back of his hand, so why don’t you?
What does the Bible ACTUALLY say about being God?
“In the pride of your heart you say, “I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god in the heart of the seas.” But you are a mere mortal and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god.”
Jesus: God’s Plan of Salvation | A Neville Goddard Lecture
Tonight’s subject is “Jesus: God’s Plan of Salvation.” God’s plan of salvation appears so different in prospect from what it really is in retrospect. If you haven’t experienced it and you trust the one who has, do not at any time forget or ignore the out and out supernatural character of this plan of salvation and never try to interpret it in some naturalistic way. That’s what the whole vast world tries to do with the plan of salvation. It’s supernatural from beginning to end. The whole drama takes place in the inner man: The inner man is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ in you is the hope of glory, so it hasn’t a thing to do with something on the outside. The whole drama is taking place on the inside. And so, I have experienced it, and let me share with you what I have experienced.
But first of all, let me thank you for what you’ve done over the last few months in sharing with me your letters, your experiences in the use of God’s law, and in your visions, your wonderful mystical experiences. This morning’s mail brought three perfectly wonderful letters, all visions. Let me give you the highlights of two of them. One I will take at some future date, it’s too long. But, I’ve told you in the past that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out and you and I only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively. You and I did not choose it. We were made subject unto futility, not willingly but by the will of him who subjected us in hope; and that hope was that you and I would be set free from this bondage to corruption, and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:20). We find ourselves here, and we must admit we were born of the action of powers not our own, and this is the physical birth. Let us now admit that we are also born spiritually by the actions of powers beyond ourselves. We certainly didn’t do it physically; we found ourselves here. Don’t let anyone tell you that by some effort on your part that you’re going to be born spiritually into some wonderful world. It’s all being done by the one who subjected us to this wheel of futility.
Now this morning’s letter brought…this mail brought this letter. She said, “My mother died in ’53. She was, I would say, seventy years old—-she might have been seventy-one, two, but she was in her late sixties or early seventies. I met her in my vision and mother was radiantly beautiful. She looked about thirty, and the joy, I can’t describe the joy of my mother. She told me that when she left here she moved into the age or the year 3,804 at the age of twenty-one. She found herself twenty-one years old, living in the year 3,804. Then I asked her many questions. There were many interruptions by people and circumstances, but I tried to get as many questions across as I could. She seemed to be quite familiar with your teaching, although in this world where she left eleven years ago she never heard of you in any way whatsoever. But your name was not a strange thing to her in that circle where she now lives. I got the impression that she’s married. And I tried to find my father and my brother Art to share with them my experience that I met mother. She told me she is living in a part of Pennsylvania. I asked her if death to her in that world of 3,804 is like death to us in this world, and she said it was the same thing. They feared it as we fear it, and they know it is the inevitable as we know it is the inevitable. Then she said, ‘Our moral code, our ethical code is just like your code, same thing.’ But she also said, ‘We have no choice in that time sequence into which we are placed. I found myself twenty-one years old. At death being seventy, I was twenty-one in a time sequence that is the 3804th year A.D.’”
Now, in the Bible we’re taught that there is nothing new under the sun: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? I tell you it has been already, in ages past. But there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come after, among those who will come later; for there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9-11). That’s difficult for man to understand. And then he reads the Book of Ezekiel, where there are wheels within wheels within wheels, all turning. Then he reads the Book of Romans where you and I, not willingly, but subjected to the will of God for a divine purpose, that we would, being subjected, one day be freed from this futility and obtain, having gone through it, the glorious liberty of the children of God. And that liberty comes; and it is inaugurated by a divine event and we call that event resurrection.
But resurrection seen from a certain angle comes seemingly at the last, and it doesn’t. The great mystery: It comes not at the end of history, it comes within history. This very night it could come to all of you, or to one of you. I do not know, no one knows. So when they asked the question, “When, O Lord?” he said, “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons that’s fixed by the authority of God” (Acts 1:7), by his own authority. But wait for the promise of the Father, just wait—he has promised to redeem you. Redeeming you is redeeming himself, he’s not redeeming another. It is God who fell asleep in the great creation called “the wheels and wheels within wheels” for educative and creative purposes. That by putting himself into the state likened unto death—-it’s not really death but it’s so still, so altogether a sound sleep that it seems like death. But the ancient scripture, the Old Testament, does not use the word “resurrection,” it implies it. But I would rather go back and use the term that is used in the Old Testament. The New uses the word “resurrection” throughout, and I love it, it’s a marvelous term, and I use it here night after night. But in the old scripture, they only speak of “waking from sleep.”
The 78th Psalm, which is a maschil, meaning special instruction, it is a recapitulation of the entire history of Israel, which is divine history. We come to almost the end, the 65th and 66th verses, it’s a very long chapter, and then suddenly we’re told that God or “the Lord God awoke as from sleep” (Psalm 78:65, 66). He awoke as from sleep and then he chose Judah and chose David. Then we come to the end of the glorious awakening of the being who was asleep, as the whole story was being told. You start in the beginning of that chapter, the 78th chapter, and he simply tells the traditions of the fathers: “I will open my mouth in a parable, and I will utter dark sayings from of old.” And he tells all the stories of Israel, the horrors of the world, and the conquering of Jehovah—how he conquers, and he overcomes and he overcomes and he overcomes. Man still falls back, but God overcomes…and then the Lord God awakes. He awakes as from sleep. When he wakes from sleep, then the whole thing comes to an end.
Now we are all told to please tell it just as it happened. Don’t embellish it, don’t add to the word of God; don’t take from the word of God. Well, the word translated word—in the New Testament the word logos—-has as a root meaning “that which is behind the thing.” That is, the sense or the meaning of the thing. So when we are told, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God” (John 1:1) that word logos, translated “word,” means “that something that is the sense or the meaning behind the event, whatever that event is.” So when you tell it, tell it clearly. So at the end of Luke we are told, “They related their own experience”; they told what had happened, not embellished, don’t add to it. And that’s why I don’t quarrel with the use of the word resurrection, for it is part of the event. But I would go back to the 78th Psalm and rather use that terminology. For in my own case, when I was taken off the wheel of recurrence but left on it to tell the story, for I must tell it until this garment comes off; and when it comes off now it comes off for the last time. I do not find myself—like my friend Larry’s mother who found herself in the year 3,804—I am through with the wheels within wheels within wheels. But I must remain on the present wheel, the year 1964, and tell it until that time when the garment is taken off, and this time for the last time; for I am not going through death any more.
But I must tell you, the night it happened to me, that force, I can’t describe it save it was the most intense force. We call it an electrical force or charge. But, every morning I wake and I feel myself coming-to into this world and I wake. But that day, four years ago, I felt myself coming-to, and I thought it would be like the normal waking here. But it wasn’t! The most intense vibration I’ve ever felt, and I’m waking alright, but I’m waking to find myself in a tomb, and the tomb, the sepulcher is my skull, an entirely different form of awakening. So they say in the 78th Psalm, “And the Lord God awoke as from sleep.” I awoke from sleep, but it was a different waking from any waking I’ve ever had, that I have any memory of. I awoke to find myself entombed. So I can see the use of the word resurrection, for how could you possibly come out of a tomb, therefore resurrected, unless you were dead? But I had no sense of being dead; I felt I was waking from sleep. That’s what the Old Testament teaches. So I was waking from sleep and I awoke to find myself in a tomb. So I could only then conclude if I am now in a tomb I must have been dead or someone thought me dead, because you don’t put anyone in a tomb and seal it, as I was sealed in that tomb, unless you were dead. And so, the only sensation of being dead was that I am now in an actual sepulcher, a tomb.
And then you come out, and you come out and you are born from above. For this is the area of the tomb; it’s your skull. So when you come out of your skull, as you’re told in the Book of 1st Peter, “We are born anew by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3). Only Jesus Christ is ever awakened, ever resurrected; so everyone who resurrects or who is awakened to find himself entombed, he is Jesus Christ. He is now telling the story to the world, and they can accept it or reject it, it’s entirely up to them. But he must tell the story, and it is so important that the story of Jesus and the salvation of God be told, and then let man respond to it. He will accept it, sometimes modified. Let him just reject it completely or let him in some way just toy with the idea.
But all the minds who hear the story from the one who has experienced it are like certain soils in the world, and he, the one who tells the story, is the sower who goes forth to plant, and he spreads the seed of truth. It falls sometimes on the highway. It falls on the highway and then the birds devour it (Mat. 13:3). The birds are simply all the great rumors: “After all, that man is just a normal person like yourself, he’s been married twice, he has children, he knows what it is to know a person intimately, he is a meat eater, he drinks, he does all these things, so forget it.” And so, quickly the idea is gobbled up. Another one hears it with eagerness, but the cares of the day are more than his attention can cope with, and so the seed, the idea, is choked. And then you go from one to the other and all different soils of the world. You may find in a gathering…but we’re told in scripture you will always find a remnant. The remnant is considered ten percent, told in many ways in the Bible. There is always ten percent of any gathering who would listen to you, who will be the soil on which it can fall. It falls on that soil and brings forth a hundredfold, meaning that it will come forth. When it comes forth then he will have the identical experience—while you have been detached from the wheels of recurrence.
Now let me share with you another story that comes into this, this morning. This gentleman writes, he said, “I felt myself sitting on a nest. Of course it might have been prompted, said he, by the story you told of the dove that is now in your tree outside of your window, but I felt myself sitting on a nest as a dove would sit. Then I felt something move under me, like something alive, and I raised myself slightly, and then I looked and observed an egg. As I observed the egg, I felt the egg breaking. Suddenly the egg began to break and it broke, and out came you. You were about two inches tall but you were fully proportioned, everything was perfect in proportion. As you came out you said, ‘Bill’— that’s his name. And then he said to me, ‘But Neville you are so little!’ and I said to him, ‘In God’s creation everything begins small and then it expands and expands and expands’ and at that, before my eyes you grew to immensity before my eyes. Then, relative to you I was the little one and you were this immense being standing before me. Then you went over to another nest, and there you took from this nest our mutual friend Jan Johnson and you brought her. And with your hand on Jan and your hand on me, you still remained this immensity, and Jan was my size relative to you. We are both the same little ones and you are this immense being, and you took us both, each in a hand, and together we walked up into the sky.”
Now you have a vision, don’t discard it. Go back into scripture and search diligently for something that would throw light on it. Now, let me give you, if you’re in the audience tonight, the passage: it’s the 7th chapter of Amos, the 2nd verse. So you go back and you read the ancient scripture for some foreboding, some shadow, some intimation of what you had in the depths. For are we not told, “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and I will speak with him in a dream” (Num. 12:6). And so, you had it. Only God speaks to you in dream. There’s only one source of dream in scripture and that source is God. So he’s telling you something— go back into his word, his ancient scripture, and search. Well, in the 7th chapter you’ll find it and these are the words: “O Lord God, forgive! How can Jacob…how can Jacob stand? He is so small!” (Amos 7:2). How can Jacob stand? He is so small! And then we are told in that same chapter the Lord forgives and said, “It shall not be” and then he allowed Jacob to stand. Now, the word Jacob means, by the concordance, our biblical concordance, “to enlarge, to expand.” And there is no limit to the expansion, that’s the word Jacob. It’s called “the supplanter” on the surface, but in definition, it is “the capacity to enlarge and to expand.” So, here is the little one, “How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” and then God repented, changed an attitude towards this that is coming out, and allowed it to expand to the limit. And there is no limit to expansion, there’s only a limit to contraction; there’s no limit to translucency, there’s only a limit to opacity. So if my friend would go back into scripture and read it and search, he would find the secret of his vision, for I came out from that little egg.
Well, a few months ago, last year really, when the voice said to me, “The whole vast world is only for hatching,” that’s all that it is. The whole vast world is for hatching. And so, worlds within worlds, all turning, and so you slip from this age 1964 into 3804— and the purpose is only for hatching. At some moment in time man thinks now that this world is moving from moment to moment to moment in some linear progression. It isn’t, it’s a cycle. And so 1964 and 3804 are taking place at one and the same time. Columbus is now discovering this country for the first time on that wheel as it turns. Everything is turning at the same time…and we are inserted.
But she also said this to her son, “We have no choice in that time sequence into which we are placed, none whatsoever.” Then you go back and read the scripture. “What is that in scripture?” she said that to him. And you go back and read the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans, that “The creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly but by reason of the will of him who subjected him in hope that the creature would be set free from this bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (verse 20). So we are subjected, but who subjected it? God, subjecting himself; it’s only God. It is God who awakes from this fantastic creation and when he wakes, he has by this strange subjection increased his capacity to create. For the only purpose of it all is to develop one’s creative power. And God is not absolute, as the world would call it, God is forever expanding. If God were absolute, the whole thing would be dead. God is potentially absolute and can create and create forever and forever. And God is man.
So to come back to this plan of salvation, the plan is in scripture. It begins…the whole thing is inaugurated with an event we call his resurrection from the dead; the first-fruits of those who slept; the first-born from the dead (Rev. 12:5). But the first-born, not the only born. So a great judgment is passed upon those who teach that the resurrection is past already. Read it in Paul’s letter, the 2nd letter to Timothy, he said: There are those who are teaching that the resurrection is past and over. They are misleading the people, and in misleading them they’re turning them from the faith (2:18). And he pronounces on them an uncompromising condemnation, for the resurrection has started. It is taking place. And moment after moment after moment you and I are being detached from this wonderful wheel where we were born out of it as it were. But being in it…if we were not in it, we could never develop beyond what we were prior to coming into it.
So we are told in scripture, the 20th of Luke: And the Sadducees—-the Sadducees are the wise people, they are the scientists of the day—-and they asked a question: Master, Moses in the law said that if a man marries leaving no offspring and has brothers, the brothers should marry the widow and raise up issue. Well, there were seven brothers; and the first one who’s married, he died leaving no offspring; and the second took her to wife and he left no offspring when he died, then the third, and finally all of them married her, and then they all died, and then she died. Whose wife is she in the resurrection (verses 27-36)? They did not believe in the resurrection, for they thought it just couldn’t be. They saw people die and that was the end of them, like all scientists of the world, or most of the scientists. And he said to this wise scientist, “You do not know the scripture. The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age, to the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they can die no more; they are now sons of God and sons of the resurrection” (verse 34). Well, by that very statement he implies that they do, in dying, still die. So he tells you they die no more. Well, here he talks to someone who is awake, who must actually go through the experience of death, physical death, but he’s telling you he dies no more. But these who seemingly die will continue to die, like my friend Larry’s mother. She knows that they fear death as we here fear death; they experience death as we experience death. And she will slip from the year 3804, however long she lives there—it may be 3890 before she makes her exit from that wheel—-to find herself in a wheel that is behind it in so-called time. For all are moving together. So what is up and what is down if the wheel is moving? This is now the apex and this is the nadir; but if the wheel is moving, this that is now the apex becomes the nadir, and this is apex. So what is up and what is down when the wheels are moving within wheels within wheels? And it’s all for the bringing out of this turning nest. It’s a nest…for the voice said, “The whole vast universe is for hatching, only hatching.”
This morning’s mail can bring two letters from two entirely different friends of mine. They meet here socially, but only in the last few months they met each other in this room. Prior to that, my friend Larry has been coming here for years, and my friend Bill, who wrote the other letter, only came here last November. So they only met here in the last few months…and they dovetail, one bringing out the hatching story that was told me, and the other bringing out the wheels within wheels. So here, 3804 she told him as he understood it. She knows that she never heard of me here in the year 1964. When she died in ’53, she never heard of me, I was completely unknown. But my works are known to her in the year 3804 and my name is not a stranger to her.
So it was always so. That’s part of the game, that’s part of the great play. And we come out of it in the most wonderful manner. But it begins…the whole thing is inaugurated by that event that we call resurrection—his resurrection from the dead. After the resurrection comes the birth, and after the birth comes that end of the book of the 78th chapter of Psalms. For as he awakes as one from sleep and becomes one who shouts as a man filled with wine, and he puts all of his enemies to rout, all adversaries are routed and they are everlastingly put to shame. The whole vast wheel is now put to shame as far as he who has awakened from it. For it subjected him to the most horrible things in the world. Then he awakens from it. Then he calls Judah, and then he calls David, and takes David from the flocks where he was taking care of the ewes, those that were “in lamb.” And David is then the third one. You find him, and you discover him, and discovering him you know who you are. In the same chapter of Luke that we quoted earlier, when the Sadducees asked about resurrection, on the heels of his answer he then brings up the question and asks the question concerning David. And then he answers the question and tells you who David is. But no one sees it.
That’s why I said at the beginning of this message tonight that this mystery of salvation, it appears in prospect so different from what it really is in retrospect. Who by reading the story would see it in prospect as it really is? It isn’t as the world will tell you. Seeing it in prospect, it took place two thousand years ago and he is something unique on the outside, and you worship him on the outside. And that isn’t so at all. It takes place in the new man. The new man is in every man being formed. When he’s completed, when he’s formed, then it unfolds like a flower in that new man who is in every man; for every man contains Jesus Christ. Well, “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is within you?” “Test him and see” (2 Cor. 13:5). Long before he unfolds these petals—-which is simply the resurrection; and the birth; and the discovery of the fatherhood of God; and the ascent into heaven in the form of a serpent; and the descent of the dove upon him, where he’s blessed and smothered with the affection of the Holy Spirit—-long before that, test him and see if he’s not within you. For by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that is made (John 1:3). So test him and see.
So the Jesus Christ of scripture is the Jesus Christ in you, and he is your own wonderful loving human Imagination. God and God alone became man. In becoming man he’s Jesus Christ. He now has to awaken. As he awakens, it’s nothing but God. There’s no intermediary between yourself and God, none whatsoever, as you’re told in the 43rd and the 45th chapters of Isaiah: “I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior” (verses 3, 5). He became man that man may become God. But in becoming man he and he alone goes through all the furnaces of affliction as he turns the wheels and wheel after wheel.
What determines the jump in time between 1953 when she made her exit and 3804? Strangely enough, she said, I awoke there; I was twenty-one. When he saw her he estimated her age at thirty, within the range of thirty…that would be the growth. So they still grow. They do exactly what you do, what I do, they have all the conflicts, but the year differs and all things differ. They make their exit through a grave to find themselves awake at a certain age in a different time-slot as it were. But this world here is the very limit of contraction. I have slipped into these worlds unnumbered times. When I speak of this world, not other worlds, ___(??), when I speak of this world, they are scared to death. This world to them is hell. They can’t conceive of anyone recovering from this world, they can’t.
I stepped into a world and here was Heine, and Heine, the brilliant German poet, essayist, artist, and Heine was instructing them. Heine said to me, “You know, they don’t call this world of yours where you just came from, they don’t call it Earth, they call it Woodland. They can’t conceive that anyone could ever recover from that descent to Woodland.” Well, now search the scriptures for it. Is it called Woodland? It is, in the 8th chapter of the Book of Mark (verse 24). You go back into Mark and the eye was opened. When the blind man, born blind, had his eyes opened he was asked, “What do you see?” and he said, “I see men; like trees walking.” So they call this…if a man would ever come here, he’d become like a tree, a tree walking. So he would lose all identity, he would lose his humanity, he would lose what he is by coming here. This is the limit of contraction. No one wants to come here. And when I decided to return to this world, and had to go, for my time was come to depart from that world, and I began to say goodbye, they all rushed because they didn’t believe my story. They said, “What an imaginative being! What stories he’s talking about!” But I was telling them only the things of Earth but they wouldn’t believe me. And they came…when I began to descend and a voice said “All down for Woodland” you should have seen the fear, sheer ghastly fear on their faces when I began to descend. Only one came with me and she was the old dowager, one who belonged to a certain group who had usurped my estate in my absence when I came here. These are fantastic stories but they’re all true.
So we’re living in a world…you think, well now, this is the most real world, and tomorrow we develop the present energy into something else, to something else, and it’ll go on forever in one direction. Don’t believe it! We’re going to turn the wheel, the wheel is turning, but the wheel is so large, we can’t see around the corner. Like you can’t see…the ship goes off to sea and it disappears; it hasn’t dropped off the Earth, it’s the curvature of space. Well, time is curved just as space is curved, and so things disappear in time. We see them disappear in space by the curvature of space. Well, they disappear in time but it’s only curved, and they’re turning. But the wheels are wheels within wheels. So you see a large wheel, when will it be turned? And man has no memory. “So is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See this is new’? It has been already, in ages past. But there’s no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come after among those who come later.” For there is nothing new under the sun, and how difficult that is to tell to anyone who knows in his own short little span of time that he’s never seen this before.
I say, with anyone living in this world today, born when I was born, where we had candle light, and then we had oil lamps, and we had gas lamps, these little gas mantles, and then came the day we had electricity. So I go back in my short space of time of fifty-nine years back to my grandmother’s day or your great-grandmother’s day. For your great-grandmother can’t go back beyond the time that I go back in my fifty-nine years, for I was put into a different space down the wheel. The space on which I was placed on this wheel of the same age, the 20th century, was so limited that my background would take you back, in your more marvelous way, back into the 19th century. I wasn’t born then. I was born in 1905. Well, 1905 is the space where I was placed on the wheel, goes back in the comforts of life back into, well, say 1850. Can I not see them now cleaning the chimneys and cleaning all these things and all outdoor plumbing. That was Barbados, where the kitchen was on the floor, I mean the floor, the earth; I don’t mean wood. And so, that is the space of the same wheel. So there are wheels within wheels within wheels. And then man is lifted off the wheel.
So when you have the experience, go back into the ancient scripture and seek and seek and seek. A great help is the Concordance, Strong’s Concordance, and take Strong’s Concordance, take a word and look it up. Don’t take anything for granted, just look it up and see what it means. Take the word resurrection, for instance, and you think in terms of resurrection as someone resurrected physically. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. The word, as defined in the Bible, in the Concordance, means “to rise up; to stand upright; to awake from sleep.” Read it—-to awake from sleep. Well, I know in my own case exactly what happened: I awoke from sleep. But the awakening was something entirely different: It was the inauguration of the grand unfolding of God’s plan of salvation. For, that was the first event, and on the heels of it came the child, and the men who saw the symbol called the child, and I took the child. And then, after that, came the others, one after the other.
So, resurrection as defined is “to awake from sleep.” But I didn’t know I was asleep until that moment in time. I always thought I went to bed at night and woke in the morning, so when I woke in the morning I was awake. I didn’t know that until that moment in time back in 1959 I had been sound asleep, and sound asleep in a tomb where someone placed me there because to them I must have been dead. For, you’re placed in a tomb only because you’re dead. So everyone in this world who is walking through the world, who will make their exit from this world, are just as sound asleep; and they are to those who behold this death, dead. So Blake tells us of the great eternal ones who contemplate death and say, “What seems to be to them, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of despair and eternal death; but divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus” (Blake,Jer.,Plt.36).
So he awakens that body, and as it awakens, then these things begin to unfold within him, and the very first act is the resurrection. That inaugurates the entire process: His resurrection from the dead; then comes his birth from above; then comes his discovery of the fatherhood of God through the son called David; then his ascent into heaven in serpentine form; and then the descent of the dove who smothers him with affection, which is he never in eternity will leave him, it smothers him and remains upon him. And everyone goes through the identical experience. So this is God’s plan of salvation. Everyone will be saved, for the simple reason everyone is now being occupied by God. God is only redeeming himself. And before he entered into the wheels that turn, he had planned his own pathway of return and his return is simply the development of his own creative power.
Now let us go into the Silence.
Q & A
Q:
I have two questions. First, on this wheel of recurrence is there any retention of spiritual progress? And, secondly, what authority is behind the Bible Concordance so that one would know that they were reading something…
A:
Alright, first of all, take the second. James Strong’s Concordance which is called the exhaustive concordance,
I personally think of the many concordances that I have that it is the greatest, the most exact translation of the original meaning of the words. He spent forty years compiling it, it was not done overnight. And he took these ancient manuscripts and compared them and compared them and compared them, and came up, after forty years, with this fantastic work. And it is truly an exhaustive concordance.
( NOTE FROM LIVINGWELLNESS: There are MANY translations and MANY sources now.Interlinear translation, Bible Study Tools, Logos Apostolicetc . In Nevilles era, the internet did not exist, and at the time he was correct, but Strong’s concordance is no longer the only source.)
So, if you…you don’t need to know Greek or Hebrew because you simply look up the little number that is next to the word. You look the word up in English, at the extreme end of the column you find a little number; then you turn, if it’s a Hebrew word that is in the Old Testament, you look up the number in the Hebrew section; if it is in the New Testament, you look up the number in the Greek section.
And it simply defines the word for you as it was originally intended, because words change their meaning from year to year. Even in this century we have changed words; in fact, today more than ever we have what is known as newspeak. When the Russians use the word democracy they don’t mean what you and I mean, but everything is “democracy” there. You have no choice in the matter…you vote for one man, and you simply put your vote in and affirm what a very small minority will tell you the populace wants. That’s “democracy.” It’s not my concept of it, yet they use the word all day long. And so, all through the world words change their meanings, and so we go back to the original intention of the prophet when he used the word. But I find that James Strong’s Concordance gives me the best light on these words.
Now to come back to your first question again…
Q:
I asked if you’re on this wheel of recurrence is there any retention of spiritual progress?
A:
My dear, by the vision of this gentleman and his mother, certainly there was infinite joy, beauty beyond measure. He said, “All the pictures of my mother taken of her when she was a young girl and a young lady don’t compare to the beauty of my mother today. I wanted so much to share her beauty and her joy with my brother Art and my father, but the interruptions, the people came through; and then circumstances changed and I couldn’t pump her with enough questions.” Yet she was quite willing to answer these questions. So there’s a certain retention, because God is simply not a God of retribution, he’s a God of love.
God is infinite love. And the only purpose is to go through this play and to come out as the one who is the author of the play and then the actor in the parts. God plays all the parts.
Q:
In the 65th and 66th of Psalm 78, the Lord God awakes, and chose Judah and chose David, do we hear of Judah as judgment?
A:
Well, Judah means “praise.” But Judah—bear in mind, there are so many facets of it—-Judah is the fourth son of Jacob, and Jacob is the little one that she said he regretted and Jacob began to expand.
The word means “to expand without limit”. No limit to the expansion of the little one who comes out to expand as God. He was contracted to the limit, and now as he breaks the shell, as Blake brings out, “At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.” But now you can’t limit him to the little one who broke the shell. Let him expand forever and forever without limit until some future date when he conceives a new play of contraction for the purpose of developing his creative talent, and then break it once more, and then expand forever and forever. But, Judah is the fourth, and as we told you the last time, the fourth doesn’t necessarily mean the fourth child of the womb of woman. It could be the fourth in your class, the fourth that came through the door tonight, the fourth in any sense, the fourth into a restaurant. I mean four, four means “the door.” It’s the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is Daleth.
He said, “I am the door. Anyone who comes through any other way is a thief and a robber.” One must go through simply by having the experience themselves. And so, I am…when he called me, he didn’t say “Neville is my father,” he called me Father. And I didn’t say, “So Neville is your father,” I said, “I am.” It’s “I am your Father.”
So, I am the door. He was standing against an open door, and there’s this open door, and David is looking out upon a pastoral scene. Here was the symbol of the door and he calls me Father, but he doesn’t say Neville. I don’t speak of so-and-so as his father, I am his father. You will say not “Tom is his father,” I am his father.
Everyone will say “I am his father.” So he calls us Father and that I am the door. The door is the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Daleth. He said, I am the door; anyone who comes in towards the sheepfold in any other way is a thief and a robber (John 10:9). And he was looking out on a pastoral scene, and he’s called the shepherd. For when they came to get him, they said, he’s out with his flocks and he said, “I will not sit down until you bring him in, bring him in. And as he was brought in, the voice of the Lord said, “That is he. Rise and anoint him” (1 Sam. 16:12).
The Lord’s anointed, his Son, who calls you Father, therefore, you are the Lord. He calls you Father; therefore, everyone must have it themselves. If they don’t have it themselves, then they’re still on the wheel, and they’ll make extravagant claims and all kinds of things because there are false prophets in the world, too. As told us in Ezekiel and Jeremiah:
There are those who will not feed my sheep. They’ll feed my sheep only to take from my sheep to fatten themselves. And so, they make all the false claims in the world—-that they are sent, that they are this, they are the other—-and they are all thieves and robbers, speaking without experience and not believing one word of scripture. But this is a nice little gimmick as far as they’re concerned. But that’s part of the play too. Let them go…they’ll make their little exit, and all people their exit, and then they move automatically without choice on their part into that wheel necessary for their awakening, whatever it is.
Q:
Does the word valley have any significance?
A:
Valley?
Q:
___(?) any similar word to valley?
A:
Certainly. The Bible is full of the use of the word valley.
We go down to the valley of death. The dark convolutions of the brain are called valleys and out of that we come. I would have said of everyone here, don’t despair, don’t despair because God has planned your redemption, everyone’s redemption.
I would only plead with you to be honest, rather die than be dishonest about it. If you can’t explain it, alright, be quiet. Don’t have to explain it. If someone asks of you and you can’t explain it, don’t make up something, just, alright, be quiet.
You have your belief, you believe that this is God’s plan of redemption, well, believe it! And if some wiseacre tries to dethrone you through argument, alright, leave him alone, perfectly alright. That’s what the Sadducee tried when he said, “Master, (this is the story)…whose wife is she?” and he thought he could dethrone him. So I would say to everyone, don’t be concerned; just live in hope that this will quickly awaken within you.
I’m thrilled beyond measure, an audience of this size, when this morning’s mail could bring me three letters—-one I didn’t touch tonight it’s too long—-from three young fellas in this audience. Well, why, what percentage is that of these visions? If they enclosed in this morning’s mail a large big check, may I tell you, it couldn’t be equal to their letters. If they wrote me a letter where they thanked me for my time here and enclosed a large check, that couldn’t compensate. That would be nothing compared to the letter that they wrote in which they told me their vision and shared with me their visions. That’s wealth beyond the wildest dream of this world…that vision of three young men in an audience the size of this.
Neville Goddard’s Library Of Books: A Collection of 11 popular books
Neville Goddard was born in Barbados on February 19, 1905, to Joseph Nathaniel and Wilhelmina Goddard. He immigrated to New York City c. 1922, where he initially worked as a ballet and ballroom dancer.In 1931, he began to study under an Ethiopian rabbi named Abdullah, who introduced him to Kabbalah
Neville Goddard teaches us that the human creates reality just by imagining rather than trying to change outside circumstances, that it is only the creation of the mind of what you desire, as well as everything you see, is created by the mind first whether you are conscious of it or not. IMAGINATION IS YOUR PERSONAL GOD.
Neville in his own voice All lectures downloadable MP3
I am currently working on a project that celebrates the beauty of love stories, particularly those who have found their soulmates. Your unique experiences and insights can contribute greatly to this endeavor!
Would you be willing to share your love story with me by answering a few questions? Your perspective on finding and marrying your soulmate can inspire and resonate with others seeking that special connection.
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If you’re interested in participating, please fill out the questionnaire below. I appreciate your time and willingness to contribute to this meaningful project.
Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Recently, I asked a very successful businessman his formula for success. He laughed and was a little embarrassed. Then he replied, “I guess it’s just because I can’t conceive of failure. It’s nothing that I think about much. It’s more a feeling that I have.”His statement coincided completely with my own beliefs and experiments.
We can think about something forever and never see it in our world, but once let us feel its reality, and we are bound to encounter it. The more intensely we feel, the sooner we will encounter it. We all regard feelings far too much as effects, and not sufficiently as causes of the events of the day. Feeling is not only the result of our conditions of life, it is also the creator of those conditions. We say we are happy because we are well, not realizing that the process will work equally well in the reverse direction. We are well because we are happy. We are all far too undisciplined in our feelings. To be joyful for another is to bless ourselves as well as him. To be angry with another is to punish ourselves for his fault. The distressed mind stays at home though the body travels to the ends of the earth, while the happy mind travels though the body remains at home.
Feeling is the secret of successful prayer, for in prayer, we feel ourselves into the situation of the answered prayer and, then, we live and act upon that conviction. Feeling after Him, as the Bible suggests, is a gradual unfolding of the soul’s hidden capacities. Feeling yields in importance to no other. It is the ferment without which no creation is possible. All forms of creative imagination imply elements of feeling.
All emotional dispositions whatever may influence the creative imagination. Feeling after Him has no finality. It is an acquisition, increasing in proportion to receptivity, which has not and never will have finality. An idea which is only an idea produces nothing and does nothing. It acts only if it is felt, if it is accompanied by effective feeling.
Somewhere within the soul there is a mood which, if found, means wealth, health, happiness to us.
The creative desire is innate in man. His whole happiness is involved in this impulse to create. Because men do not perfectly “feel,” the results of their prayers are unsure, when they might be perfectly sure. We read in Proverbs, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
Orchestral hearts burn in the oil of the lamp of the king. The spirit sings unto the Lord a new song. All true prayer wears a glad countenance; the good are anointed with the oil of gladness above their fellows. Let us, then, watch our feelings, our reactions to the day’s events. And let us guard our feelings even more zealously in the act of prayer, for prayer is the true creative state.
Dignity indicates that man hears the greater music of life, and moves to the tempo of its deeper meaning. If we did nothing but imagine and feel the lovely, the world’s reform would, at once, be accomplished. Many of the stories of the Bible deal exclusively with the power of imagination and feeling. “Feeling after Him” is the cry of the truth seeker. Only imagination and feeling can restore the Eden from which experience has driven us.
Feeling and imagination are the senses by which we perceive the beyond. Where knowledge ends, they begin. Every noble feeling of man is the opening for him of some door to the divine world. Let us measure men, not by the height of their cities, but by the magnificence of their imaginations and feelings. Let us turn our thought
up to Heaven and mix our imagination with the angels. The world that moves us is the one we imagine, not the world that surrounds us. In the imagination lie the unexplored continents, and man’s great future adventure. This consciousness of non-finality in “feeling after God” has been the experience of all earnest God-ward feelers. They realize that their conception of the Infinite has constantly deepened and expanded with experience. Those who endeavor to think out the meaning of the experience and to coordinate it with the rest of our knowledge, are the philosophic mystics; those who try to develop the faculty in themselves, and to deepen the experience are the practical or experimental mystics. Some, and among them the greatest, have tried to do both. Religion begins in subjective experience. Religion is what a man does with his solitude, for in solitude we are compelled to subjective experience. It is of the Religious Attitude that I shall speak next Sunday morning.
This will be the last Sunday morning I shall take the service for Dr. Bailes this season. The service is held at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, near La Cienega.
A True Religious Attitude is man’s salvation. God never changes; it is we who are changing; our spiritual eyes are ever getting keener; and this enlargement of truth will bring us an ever-increasing inner peace.
The best defense against the deceptive assault upon our mental and moral eyesight is the spiritual eye or the Eye of God. In other words, a spiritual ideal that cannot be changed by circumstance, a code of personal honor and integrity in ourselves and good will and love to others. “Not what thou art, nor what thou hast been, beholdeth God with his merciful eyes, but that thou wouldst be.” Through the veins of the humblest man on earth runs the royal blood of being.Therefore, let us look at man through the eyes of imaginative love which is really seeing with the Eye of God.
Under the influence of the Eye of God, the ideal rises up out of the actual as water is etherialized by the sun into the imagery cloudland. Things altogether distant are present to the spiritual eye. The Eye of God makes the future dream a present fact. Not four months to harvest – look again,
If we persist in this seeing, one day we will arise with the distance in our eyes, and all the staying, stagnant nearby will suddenly be of no importance. We will brush it aside as we pass on to our far-seen objective. The man who really finds himself cannot do otherwise than let himself be guided by love. He is of too pure eyes to behold iniquity. Our ability to help others will be in proportion to our ability to control and help ourselves. The day a man achieves victory over himself, history will discover that to have been a victory over his enemy. The healing touch is in an attitude, and one day man will discover that one governs souls only with serenity.
The mighty surrenders itself fully only to the most gentle
Recognizing the power of feeling, let us pay strict attention to our moods and attitudes. Every stage of man’s progress is made through the exercise of his imagination and feeling. By creating an “ideal” within our mental sphere we can feel ourselves into this “ideal image” till we become one and the same with it, absorbing its qualities into the very core of our being. The solitary or captive can, by the intensity of his imagination and feeling, effect myriads so that he can act through many men and speak through many voices. Extend your feelers, trust your touch, participate in all flights of your imaginations and be not afraid of your own sensitivities.
The best way to feel another’s good is to be more intensely aware of it. Be like my friend and have “more of a feeling” for the health, the wealth, the happiness you desire. Ideas do not bless unless they descend from Heaven and take flesh. Make results or accomplishments the crucial test of true imagination. As you observe these results, you will determine to fill your images with love and to walk in a high and noble mood for you will know with the poet: “That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields The sesamum was sesamum, the corn Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew So is man’s fate born. “
It has been my privilege and pleasure to address Dr. Frederick Bailes’ Sunday audiences in the past few years. Today, I am to extend the privilege in speaking to you, his unseen audience of the radio. This will be a very practical series of talks for my subjects will be drawn largely from the Bible, the most spiritual of all books.
And I am firmly convinced that whatever is most profoundly spiritual is, in reality, most directly practical. All mistakes made in Biblical interpretation come from referring statements of which the intention is spiritual and mystical, and implying principles or states to times, persons or places. In one sense, not one work of Scripture is true according to the letter. Yet, I say that every word is true; but the Scriptures are true only as He intended them that spoke them; they are true as God meant them, not as man will have them.
A spiritual and symbolical interpretation alone yields truth, whilst a literal acceptation profits nothing. The Bible contains historical elements, but these are always used as picture language of great ideas. The Gospel narrative is to be studied in order that we may know. It does not convey knowledge immediately. Getting to know is a gradual process – a progressive inner experience. God reveals Himself within us as we are able to receive Him. The deep meanings have always been recognized partially by a few, as will be found by consulting the writings of the seers of all past ages.
In assigning to the Bible its proper meaning, it is necessary to remember that as mystical Scriptures it deals primarily, not with material things or persons, but with spiritual significations. The Bible is addressed not to the outer sense or reason, but to the soul. Its object is not to give a historical account of physical life, but to exhibit the spiritual possibilities of humanity, at large, for religion is not in its nature historical and dependent upon actual sensible events, but consists in processes such as Faith and Redemption. These, being interior to all men, subsist irrespective of what any particular man has at any time done.
The perennial value of the Bible is its symbolic value. There are great controversies as to what is and what is not historical in the Bible, but let us remember that if we could settle all the historical questions tomorrow, that would not give us religion, nor would it give the Bible a biding value. Everything depends upon our finding the symbolical value of the facts. A fact of past history has nothing in it for present day religion unless it stands forth as a symbol of a Reality behind itself.
The Bible is a revelation of Truth expressed in Divine symbolism. From the literal point of view, the wording may sometimes be confusing; it is the symbolism, alone, which is precious and worthy of our best efforts to elucidate. All Scripture was written from the inward mystery and not with a mystical sense put into it. The stories conceal an underlying meaning, and the task of scripture interpretation is to discover these psychological truths which are expressed in this symbolism.
We, here, are not concerned with the surface meaning of the Scripture, whether it be reasonable or absurd, for in no case does it constitute the inner truth we are seeking. Throughout the centuries we have mistakenly taken personification for persons, allegory for history, the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself. and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended.
In most of the little things of life, this confusion is of trivial consequence. But the error which arises when you carry the confusion into questions of greater moment, such as religion, assumes gigantic proportions. For centuries, men have sought eagerly for bits of evidence which might be related to the happenings described in the Bible. While most people believe that its characters lived, no proof of their lives on earth has ever been found and may never be found.
This is unimportant for the ancient teachers were not writing history, but an allegorical picture lesson of certain basic principles, which they clothed in the garb of history.
The form of the various stories of the Bible is as distinct from its substance as the form of a grain of wheat is distinct from the life germ within it. As the assimilative organs of the body discriminate between food that can be built into the physical system and food that must be cast off, so do the awakened intuitive faculties discover, beneath allegory and parable, the psychological life germ, and feeding on this, they cast off the fiction which conveyed it. The Bible is the largest selling book in this country. It is probably the least read and certainly the least understood.
Throughout the Bible, the symbols of stone, water and wine are used. The stones of the Bible are its literal truths. The Ten Commandments, we are told, were written on stone. The water of the Bible is the psychological meaning hidden in these literal truths of stone.”I give you living waters,” that is, the inner knowledge that can make these stories a living reality in your life. The wine you must make for yourself through the wise use of this living water or psychological truth. This is an absolute necessity to the truly religious man. This is what Sir Walter Scott meant when he said, “Man’s greatest education is that which he gives to himself.”
On Sunday morning, I shall speak on, “Are You Stone, Water or Wine?” I shall be taking Dr. Bailes’ service at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega.
When you hear this message, you may ask yourselves, “Are you stone, water or wine?” You may judge whether your understanding of the Bible is merely literal, psychological, or truly spiritual and, therefore, profoundly practical.
The Bible is, from beginning to end, all about transcending the violence which characterizes mankind’s present level of being. It affirms the possibility of a development of another level of being surmounting violence. The point of view taken is that the goal of man is this inner development, which is the only real psychology.
To take the Bible away from its central idea of rebirth, which means an inner evolution and implies the existence of a higher level, is to understand nothing of its real meaning. The Word of God, that is, the psychological teaching in the Bible, is to make a man different, first in thought and then in being, so that he becomes a new man or is born again.
Whenever an entirely new attitude enters into a person’s life, psychological rebirth to some extent has occurred. Man wants to be better, not different. The Bible speaks, not of being better, but of another man, a man reborn. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God…” “Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again.”” (John 3.)
The Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone for those incapable of seeing any deeper meaning. Stone represents the most external and literal form of spiritual truth, and water refers to another way of understanding the same truth. Wine or spirit is the highest form of understanding it.
“Such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be,” wrote John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist. “The God of the moralist is before all things a great judge and schoolmaster; the God of Science is impersonal and inflexible Vital Law; the God of the savage is the kind of chief he would be himself if he had the opportunity.” No man’s conduct will be higher than his conception of God, and his conception of God is determined by the kind of man he, himself, is. “For such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be,” and what is true of man’s concept of God is equally true of man’s concept of God’s Word, the Bible. It will be to him what he is to himself.
“God is God from the creation, Truth alone is man’s salvation; But the God that now you worship Soon shall be your God no more For the soul in its unfolding Evermore its thoughts remolding, Learns more truly in its progress How to love and to adore.”
The great mystic, William Blake, wrote almost two hundred years ago, “What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be.” Now, at first, this mystical gem seems a bit involved, or at best to be a play on words; but it is nothing of the kind. Listen to it carefully. “What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be.” That is certainly clear enough. It is a simple truth about the law of assumption, and a warning of the consequences of its misuse. The author of the Epistle to the Romans declared in the fourteenth chapter, “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclearn.”
We see by this that it is not superior insight but pure blindness that reads into the greatness of men some littleness with which it chances to be familiar, for what seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be.
Experiments recently conducted at two of our leading universities revealed this great truth about the law of assumption. They stated in their releases to the newspapers, that after two thousand experiments they came to the conclusion that, ‘What you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make when you look. What you believe to be the real physical world is actually only an assumptive world.” In other words, you would not define your husband in the same way that you mother would. Yet, you are both defining the same person. Your particular relationship to a thing influences your feelings with respect to that thing and makes you see in it an element which is not there. If your feeling in the matter is a self-element; it can be cast out. If it is a permanent distinction in the state considered, it cannot be cast out. The thing to do is to try. If you can change your opinion of another, then what you now believe of him cannot be absolutely true, but relatively true.
Men believe in the reality of the external world because they do not know how to focus and condense their powers to penetrate its thin crust. Strangely enough, it is not difficult to penetrate this view of the senses. To remove the veil of the senses, we do not employ great effort; the objective world vanishes as we turn our attention from it. We have only to concentrate on the state desired to mentally see it; but to give reality to it so that it will become an objective fact, we must focus our attention upon the desired state until it has all the sensory vividness and feeling of reality. When, through concentrated attention, our desire appears to possess the distinctness and feeling of reality; when the form of thought is as vivid as the form of nature, we have given it the right to become a visible fact in our lives. Each man must find the means best suited to his nature to control his attention and concentrate it on the desired state. I find for myself the best state to be one of meditation, a relaxed state akin to sleep, but a state in which I am still consciously in control of my imagination and capable of fixing my attention on a mental object. If it is difficult to control the direction of your attention while in this state akin to sleep, you may find gazing fixedly into an object very helpful. Do not look at its surface, but rather into and beyond any plain object such as a wall, a carpet or any object which possesses depth. Arrange it to return as little reflection as possible. Imagine, then, that in this depth you are seeing and hearing what you want to see and hear until your attention is exclusively occupied by the imagined state. At the end of your meditation, when you awake from your controlled waking dream you feel as though you had returned from a great distance. The visible world which you had shut out returns to consciousness and, by its very presence, informs you that you have been self-deceived into believing that the object of your contemplation was real; but if you remain faithful to your vision this sustained mental attitude will give reality to your visions and they will become visible concrete facts in your world
Define your highest ideal and concentrate your attention upon this ideal until you identify yourself with it. Assume the feeling of being it – the feeling that would be yours were you now embodying it in your world. This assumption, though now denied by your senses, “if persisted in” – will become a fact in your world. You will know when you have succeeded in fixing the desired state in consciousness simply by looking mentally at the people you know. This is a wonderful check on yourself as your mental conversations are more revealing than your physicalv conversations are. If, in your mental conversations with others, you talk with them as you formerly did, then you have not changed your concept of self, for all changes of concepts of self result in a changed relationship to the world. Remember what was said earlier, “What you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make when you look.” Therefore, the assumption of the wish fulfilled should make you see the world mentally as you would physically were your assumption a physical fact. The spiritual man speaks to the natural man through the language of desire. The key to progress in life and to the fulfillment of dreams lies in the ready obedience to the voice. Unhesitating obedience to its voice is an immediate assumption of the wish fulfilled. To desire a state is to have it. As Pascal said, “You would not have sought me had you not already found me.” Man, by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then living and acting on this conviction changes his future in harmony with his assumption.
To “change his future” is the inalienable right of freedom loving individuals. There would be no progress in the world were it not for the divine discontent in man which urges him on to higher and higher levels of consciousness.
I have chosen this subject so close to the hearts of us all – “Changing Your Future” — for my message next Sunday morning. I am to have the great joy of speaking for Dr. Bailes while he is vacationing. The service will be held at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega Boulevard.
Since the right to change our future is our birthright as sons of God, let us accept its challenge and learn just how to do it. Again today, speaking of changing your future, I wish to stress the importance of a real transformation of self – not merely a slight alteration of circumstances which, in a matter of moments, will permit us to slip back into the old dissatisfied man. In yourvmeditation, allow others to see you as they would see you were this new concept of self a concrete fact. You always seem to others the embodiment of the ideal you inspire. Therefore, in meditation, when you contemplate others, you must be seen by them mentally as you would be seen by them physically were your conception of yourself an objective fact. That is, in meditation, you imagine that they see you expressing this nobler man you desire to be. If you assume that you are what you want to be, your desire is fulfilled and, in fulfillment, all longing “to be” is neutralized. This, also, is an excellent check on yourself as to whether or not you have actually succeeded in changing self. You cannot continue desiring what has been realized. Rather, you are in a mood to give thanks for a gift received. Your desire is not something you labor to fulfill, it is recognizing something you already possess. It is assuming the feeling of being that which you desire to be.
Believing and being are one. The conceiver and his conception are one. Therefore, that which you conceive yourself to be can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. If you assume that you are that finer, nobler one you wish to be, you will see others as they are related to your high assumption.
All enlightened men wish for the good of others. If it is the good of another you seek, you must use the same controlled contemplation. In meditation, you must represent the other to yourself as already being or having the greatness you desire for him.
As for yourself, your desire for another must be an intense one. It is through desire that you rise above your present sphere and the road from longing to fulfillment is shortened as you experience in imagination all that you would experience in the flesh were you or your friend the embodiment of the desire you have for yourself or him.
Experience has taught me that this is the perfect way to achieve my great goals for others as well as for myself. However, my own failures would convict me were I to imply that I have completely mastered the control of my attention. I can, however, with the ancient teacher say:
“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before – I press towards the mark for the prize.”
How many times have we heard someone say, “Oh, it’s only his imagination?” Only his imagination – man’s imagination is the man himself. No man has too little imagination, but few men have disciplined their imagination. Imagination is itself indestructible. Therein lies the horror of its misuse.
Daily, we pass some stranger on the street and observe him muttering to himself, carrying on an imaginary argument with one not present. He is arguing with vehemence, with fear or with hatred, not realizing that he is setting in motion, by his imagination, an unpleasant event which he will presently encounter.
The world, as imagination sees it, is the real world. Not facts, but figments of the imagination, shape our daily lives. It is the exact and literal minded who live in a fictitious world. Only imagination can restore the Eden from which experience has driven us out. Imagination is the sense by which we perceived the above, the power by which we resolve vision into being. Every stage of man’s progress is made by the exercise of the imagination. It is only because men do not perfectly imagine and believe that their results are sometimes uncertain when they might always be perfectly certain. Determined imagination is the beginning of all successful operation.
The imagination, alone, is the means of fulfilling the intention. The man who, at will, can call up whatever image he pleases is, by virtue of the power of his imagination, least of all subject to caprice. The solitary or captive can, by intensity of imagination and feeling, affect myriads so that he can act through many men and speak through many voices. “We should never be certain,” wrote William Butler Yeats in his IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL, “that it was not some woman treading in the wine-press who began that subtle change in men’s minds, or that the passion did not begin in the mind of some shepherd boy, lighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way.”
Let me tell you the story of a very dear friend of mine, at the time the costume designer of the Music Hall in New York. She told me, one day, of her difficulty in working with one of the producers who invariably criticized and rejected her best work unjustly; that he was often rude and seemed deliberately unfair to her. Upon hearing her story, I reminded her, as I am reminding you, that men can only echo to us that which we whisper to them in secret. I had no doubt but that she silently argued with the producer, not in the flesh, but in quiet moments to herself. She confessed that she did just that each morning as she walked to work. I asked her to change her attitude toward him, to assume that he was congratulating her on her fine designs and she, in turn, was thanking him for his praise and kindness. This young designer took my advice and as she walked to the theater, she imagined a perfect relationship of the producer praising her work and she, in turn, responding with gratitude for his appreciation. This she did morning after morning and in a very short while, she discovered for herself that her own attitude determined the scenery of her existence. The behavior of the producer completely reversed itself.
He became the most pleasant professional employer she had encountered. His behavior merely echoed the changes that she had whispered within herself. What she did was by the power of imagination. Her fantasy led his; and she, herself, dictated to him the discourse they eventually had together at the time she was seemingly walking alone.
Let us set ourselves, here and now, a daily exercise of controlling and disciplining our imagination. What finer beginning than to imagine better than the best we know for a friend. There is no coal of character so dead that it will not glow and flame if but slightly turned.
Don’t blame; only resolve.
Life, like music, can by a new setting turn all its discords into harmonies.
Represent your friend to yourself as already expressing that which he desires to be. Let us know that with whatever attitude we approach another, a similar attitude approaches us.
How can we do this? Do what my friend did. To establish rapport, call your friend mentally. Focus your attention on him and mentally call his name just as you would to attract his attention were you to see him on the street. Imagine that he has answered, mentally hear his voice – imagine that he is telling you of the great good you have desired for him. You, in turn, tell him of your joy in witnessing his good fortune. Having mentally heard that which you wanted to hear, having thrilled to the news heard, go about your daily task. Your imagined conversation must awaken what it affirmed; the acceptance of the end wills the means. And the wisest reflection could not devise more effective means than those which are willed by the acceptance of the end.
However, your conversation with your friend must be in a manner which does not express the slightest doubt as to the truth of what you imagine that you hear and say. If you do not control your imagination, you will find that you are hearing and saying all that you formerly heard and said. We are creatures of habit; and habit, though not law, acts like the most compelling law in the world. With this knowledge of the power of imagination, be as the disciplined man and transform your world by imagining and feeling only what is lovely and of good report. The beautiful idea you awaken in yourself shall not fail to arouse its affinity in others.
Do not wait four months for the harvest. Today is the day to practice the control and discipline of your imagination. Man is only limited by weakness of attention and poverty of imagination. The great secret is a controlled imagination and a well sustained attention, firmly and repeatedly focused on the object to be accomplished.
“Now is the acceptable time to give beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He might be glorified.”
Now is the time to control our imagination and attention.
By control, I do not mean restraint by will power but rather cultivation through love and compassion.
With so much of the world in discord we cannot possibly emphasize too strongly the power of imaginative love.
Imaginative Love, that is my subject next Sunday morning when I shall speak for Dr. Bailes while he is on his holiday. The services will be held as always at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, near La Cienega at 10:30. “As the world is, so is the individual,” should be changed to, “As the individual is so is the world.” And I hope to be able to bring to each of you present the true meaning of the words of Zechariah, “Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor.” What a wonderful challenge to you and to me. “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” As a man imagines so is he. Hold fast to love in your imagination. By creating an ideal within your mental sphere you can approximate yourself to this “ideal image” till you become one and the same with it, thereby transforming yourself into it, or rather, absorbing its qualities into the very core of your being. Never, never, lose sight of the power that is within you. Imaginative love lifts the invisible into sight and gives us water in the desert. It builds for the soul its only fit abiding place. Beauty, love and all of good report are the garden, but imaginative love is the way into the garden.
Sow an imaginary conversation, you reap an act; Sow an act, you reap a habit; Sow a habit, you reap a character
Sow a character, you reap your destiny.
By imagination, we are all reaping our destinies, whether they be good, bad, or indifferent. Imagination has full power of objective realization and every stage of man’s progress or regression is made by the exercise of imagination.
I believe with William Blake,
“What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, and eternal death. By imagination and desire we become what we desire to be. Let us affirm to ourselves that we are what we imagine. If we persist in the assumption that we are what we wish to be, we will become transformed into that which we have imagined ourselves to be. We were born by a natural miracle of love and for a brief space of time our needs were all another’s care. In that simple truth lies the secret of life.
Except by love, we cannot truly live at all. Our parents in their separate individualities have no power to transmit life. So, back we come to the basic truth that life is the offspring of love. Therefore, no love, no life. Thus, it is rational to say that, “God is Love.”
In the creation of a new way of life, we must begin at the beginning, with our own individual regeneration. The formation of organizations, political bodies, religious bodies, social bodies is not enough. The trouble we see goes deeper than we perceive. The essential revolution must happen within ourselves.
Everything depends on our attitude towards ourself – that which we will not affirm within ourself can never develop in our world.
This is the religion by which we live, for religion begins in subjective experience, like charity, it begins at home. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” is the ancient formula and there is no other.
Everything depends upon man’s attitude toward himself. That which he cannot or will not claim as true of himself can never evolve in his world. Man is constantly looking about his world and asking, “What’s to be done? What will happen?” when he should ask himself “Who am I? What is my concept of myself?” If we wish to see the world a finer, greater place, we must affirm the reality of a finer, greater being within ourselves. It is the ultimate purpose of my teaching to point the road to this consummation. I am trying to show you how the inner man must readjust himself – what must be the new premise of his life, in order that he may lose his soul on the level he now knows and find it again on the high level he seeks. It is impossible for man to see other than the contents of his own consciousness, for nothing has existence for us save through the consciousness we have of it. The ideal man is always seeking a new incarnation but unless we, ourselves, offer him human parentage, he is incapable of birth.
We are the means whereby the redemption of nature from the law of cruelty is to be effected. The great purpose of consciousness is to effect this redemption. If we decline the burden and point to natural law as giving us conclusive proof that redemption of the world by imaginative love is something that can never come about, we simply nullify the purpose of our lives through want of faith. We reject the means, the only means, whereby this process of redemption must be effected.
To change the present state we, like Dr. Millikan, must rise to a higher level of consciousness. This rise is accomplished by affirming that we are already that which we want to be; by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. The drama of life is a psychological one which we bring to pass by our attitudes rather than by our acts. There is no escape from our present predicament except by a radical psychological transformation. Everything depends upon our attitude towards ourselves. That which we will not affirm as true of ourselves will not develop in our lives.
We hear much of the humble man, the meek man – but what is meant by a meek man? He is not poor and groveling, the proverbial doormat, as he is generally conceived to be. Men who make themselves as worms in their own sight have lost the vision of that life – into the likeness of which it is the true purpose of the spirit to transform this life. Men should take their measurements not from life as they see it but from men like Dr. Millkan, who, while poor and unproven, dared to assume, “I have a lavish, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit.” Such men are the meek of the Gospels, the men who inherit the earth. Any concept of self less than the best robs us of the earth. The promise is, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
In the original text, the word translated as meek is the opposite of the words – resentful – angry. It has the meaning of becoming “tamed” as a wild animal is tamed.
After the mind is tamed, it may be likened to a vine, of which it may be said, “Behold this vine. I found it a wild tree whose wanton strength had swollen into irregular twigs. But I pruned the plant, and it grew temperate in its vain expense of useless leaves, and knotted as you see into these clean, full clusters to repay the hand that wisely wounded it.”
A meek man is a self-disciplined man. He is so disciplined he sees only the finest, he thinks only the best. He is the one who fulfills the suggestion, “Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
We rise to a higher level of consciousness, not because we have curbed our passions, but because we have cultivated our virtues. In truth, a meek man is a man in complete control of his moods,and his moods are the highest, for he knows he must keep a high mood if he would walk with the highest.
It is my belief that all men can, like Dr. Millikan, change the course of their lives. I believe that Dr. Millikan’s technique of making his desire a present fact to himself is of great importance to any seeker after the “truth.” It is also his high purpose to be of “mutual benefit” that is inevitably the goal of us all. It is much easier to imagine the good of all than to be purely selfish in our imagining. By our imagination, by our affirmations, we can change our world, we can change our future. To the man of high purpose, to the disciplined man, this is a natural measure, so let us all become disciplined men.
Next Sunday morning, July 15th , I am speaking as the guest of Dr. Bailes at 10:30 at the Fox-Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, near La Cienega. My subject for next Sunday is “Changing Your Future.” It is a subject near to the hearts of us all.
The Fox / Saban theater in Los Angeles
I hope you will all come on Sunday to learn how to be the disciplined man, the meek man, who “changes his future” to the benefit of his fellow man. If you are observant, you will notice the swift echo or response to your every mood in this message and you will be able to key it to the circumstances of your daily life.
When we are certain of the relationship of mood to circumstance in our lives, we welcome what befalls us. We know that all we meet is part of ourselves. In the creation of a new life we must begin at the beginning, with a change of mood. Every high mood of man is the opening of the door to a higher level for him. Let us mould our lives about a high mood or a community of high moods. Individuals, as well as communities, grow spiritually in proportion as they rise to a higher ideal. If their ideal is lowered, they sink to its depths; if their ideal is exalted, they are elevated to heights unimagined. We must keep the high mood if we would walk with the highest; the heights, also, were meant for habitation.
All forms of the creative imagination imply elements of feeling. Feeling is the ferment without which no creation is possible. There is nothing wrong with our desire to transcend our present state. There would be no progress in this world were it not for man’s dissatisfaction with himself. It is natural for us to seek a more beautiful personal life; it is right that we wish for greater understanding, greater health, greater security. It is stated in the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John, “Heretofore have ye asked for nothing in my name; ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”
A spiritual revival is needed for mankind, but by spiritual revival I mean a true religious attitude, one in which each individual, himself, accepts the challenge of embodying a new and higher value of himself as Dr. Millikan did. A nation can exhibit no greater wisdom in the mass than it generates in its units. For this reason, I have always preached self-help, knowing that if we strive passionately after this kind of self-help, that is, to embody a new and higher concept of ourselves, then all other kinds of help will be at our service.
The ideal we serve and hope to achieve is ready for a new incarnation; but unless we offer it human parentage it is incapable of birth. We must affirm that we are already that which we hope to be and live as though we were, knowing like Dr. Millikan, that our assumption, though false to the outer world, if persisted in, will harden into fact.
The perfect man judges not after appearances; he judges righteously. He sees himself and others as he desires himself and them to be. He hears what he wants to hear. He sees and hears only the good. He knows the truth, and the truth sets him free and leads him to good.
The truth shall set all mankind free. This is our spiritual revival. Character is largely the result of the direction and persistence of voluntary attention.
“Think truly, and thy thoughts shall the world’s famine feed; Speak truly, and each word of thine shall be a fruitful seed; Live truly, and thy life shall be a great and noble creed.”
Many people tell me they cannot meditate. This seems to me a bit like saying they cannot play the piano after one attempt. Meditation, as in every art or expression, requires constant practice for perfect results. A truly great pianist, for instance, would feel he could not play his best if he missed one day of practice. If he missed a week or a month of practice he would know that even his most uninitiated audience would recognise his defects. So it is with meditation. If we practice daily with joy in this daily habit, we perfect it as an art. I find that those who complain of the difficulty in meditation do not make it a daily practice, but rather, wait until something pressing appears in their world and then, through an act of will, try to fix their attention on the desired state. But they do not know that meditation is the education of the will, for when will and imagination are in conflict, imagination invariably wins.
The dictionaries define meditation as fixing ones attention upon; as planning in the mind; as devising and looking forward; engaging in continuous and contemplative thought. A lot of nonsense has been written about meditation. Most books on the subject get the reader nowhere, for they do not explain the process of meditation. All that meditation amounts to is a controlled imagination and a well-sustained attention. Simply hold the attention on a certain idea until it fills the mind and crowds all other ideas out of consciousness. The power of attention shows itself the sure guarantee of an inner force. We must concentrate on the idea to be realised, without permitting any distraction. This is the great secret of action. Should the attention wander, bring it back to the idea you wish to realise and do so again and again, until the attention becomes immobilised and undergoes an effortless fixation upon the idea presented to it. The idea must hold the attention must fascinate it so to speak. All meditation ends at last with the thinker, and he finds he is what he, himself, has conceived. The undisciplined man’s attention is the servant of his vision rather than its master. It is captured by the pressing rather than the important.
In the act of meditation, as in the act of adoration, silence is our highest praise. Let us keep our silent sanctuaries, for in them the eternal perspectives are preserved. Day by day, week by week, year by year, at times where none through love or lesser intentions were allowed to interfere, I set myself to attain mastery over my attention and imagination. I sought out ways to make more securely my own, those magical lights that dawned and faded within me. I wished to evoke them at will and to be the master of my vision.
I would strive to hold my attention on the activities of the day in unwavering concentration so that, not for one moment, would the concentration slacken. This is an exercise - a training for higher adventures of the soul. It is no light labour. The ploughmans labour, working in the fields is easier by far.
Empires do not send legions so swiftly to obstruct revolt as all that is alive in us hurries along the nerve highways of the body to frustrate our meditative mood. The beautiful face of one we love glows before us to enchant us from our task. Old enmities and fears beleaguer us. If we are tempted down these vistas, we find, after an hour of musing, that we have been lured away. We have deserted our task and forgotten that fixity of attention we set out to achieve. What man is there who has complete control of his imagination and attention.
A controlled imagination and steadied attention, firmly and repeatedly focused on the idea to be realized, is the beginning of all magical operations. If he persists through weeks and months, sooner or later, through meditation, he creates in himself a center of power. He will enter a path all may travel but on which few do journey. It is a path within himself where the feet first falter in shadow and darkness, but which later is made brilliant by an inner light. There is no need for special gifts or genius.
It is not bestowed on any individual but won by persistence and practice of meditation. If he persists, the dark caverns of his brain will grow luminous and he will set out day after day for the hour of meditation as if to keep an appointment with a lover.
When it comes, he rises within himself as a diver, too long under water, rises to breathe the air and see the light. In this meditative mood he experiences in imagination what he would experience in reality had he realized his goal, that he may in time become transformed into the image of his imagined state.
The only test of religion worth making is whether it is trueborn; whether it springs from the deepest consciousness of the individual; whether it is the fruit of experience; or whether it is anything else whatever. This is my reason for speaking to you on my last Sunday in Los Angeles about The True Religious Attitude.
What is your religious attitude? What is my religious attitude? I shall speak on this subject next Sunday morning at 10:30 as Dr. Bailes’ guest. The service will be held at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega. I shall endeavor to show you that the methods of mental and spiritual knowledge are entirely different. For we know a thing mentally by looking at it from the outside, by comparing it with other things, by analyzing and defining it; whereas we can know a thing spiritually only by becoming it. We must be the thing itself and not merely talk about it or look at it. We must be in love if we are to know what love is. We must be God-like if we are to know what God is.
Meditation, like sleep, is an entrance into the subconscious. “When you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret and your Father which is in secret shall reward you openlhy.” Meditation is an illusion of sleep which diminishes the impression of the outer world and renders the mind more receptive to suggestion from within.
The mind in meditation is in a state of relaxation akin to the feeling attained just before dropping off to sleep. This state is beautifully described by the poet, Keats, in his ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE. It is said that as the poet sat in the garden and listened to the nightingale, he fell into a state which he described as “A drowsy numbness pains my senses as though of hemlock I had drunk.” Then after singing his ode to the nightingale, Keats asked himself this question, “Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is the music; do I wake or sleep?” Those are the words of one who has seen something with such vividness or reality that he wonders whether the evidence of his physical eyes can now be believed.
Any kind of meditation in which we withdraw into ourselves without making too much effort to think is an outcropping of the subconscious. Think of the subconscious as a tide which ebbs and flows. In sleep, it is a flood tide, while at moments of full wakefulness, the tide is at its lowest ebb. Between these two extremes are any number of intermediary levels.
When we are drowsy, dreamy, lulled in gentle reverie, the tide is high.
The more wakeful and alert we become, the lower the tide sinks.
The highest tide compatible with the conscious direction of our thoughts occurs just before we fall asleep and just after we wake. An easy way to create this passive state is to relax in a comfortable chair or on a bed. Close your eyes and imagine that you are sleepy, so sleepy, so very sleepy. Act precisely as though you were going to take a siesta. In so doing, you allow the subconscious tide to rise to sufficient height to make your particular assumption effective.
When you first attempt this, you may find that all sorts of counter-thoughts try to distract you, but if you persist, you will achieve a passive state. When this passive state is reached, think only on “things of good report” — imagine that you are now expressing your highest ideal, not how you will express it, but simply feel HERE AND NOW that you are the noble one you desire to be. You are it now. Call your high ideal into being by imagining and feeling you are it now. I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, to assume the mask of some other more perfect life. If we cannot imagine ourselves different from what we are and try to assume that second more desirable self, we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves though we may accept discipline from others.
Meditation is an activity of the soul; it is an active virtue; and an active virtue, as distinguished from passive acceptance of a code is theatrical. It is dramatic; it is the wearing of a mask. As your goal is accepted, you become totally indifferent to possible failure, for acceptance of the end wills the means to the end. When you emerge from the moment of meditation it is as though you were shown the happy end of a play in which you are the principal actor. Having witnessed the end in your meditation, regardless of any anti-climatic state you encounter, you remain calm and secure in the knowledge that the end has been perfectly defined.
Creation is finished and what we call creativeness is really only a deeper receptiveness or keener susceptibility on our part, and this receptiveness is
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
Through meditation, we awaken within ourselves a center of light, which will be to us a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
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