By Neville Goddard | November 19, 1971
The following is a transcription of a lecture.
When we read the Bible, we think it’s an old book, describing things that happened unnumbered years ago. As I tell you, it’s contemporary. You read about the flood, and you think, well certainly that happened unnumbered — if it ever did happen — it happened unnumbered years ago.
For this morning, as is my custom, I turned on the channel KFAC — that is the radio station. It plays through the day and night, twenty four hours a day, only lovely classical music. So you can read to that music. Only a few interruptions on the hour; you’ve got a five minute bulletin and a weather report. Between nine and ten, there is always a lovely piano recital, as it were, the great masterpieces played by great artists, and so I can sit down with my Bible and read as I listen to the music.
And the one interruption that came today was an ad from the Herald Examiner. And they were advertising this paper as the one paper in our city that gives the facts, only facts, not embellished. No, really, just plain facts, all facts. That’s why we should buy that paper, because it’s completely filled with facts.
Well, facts have overflowed the world, like the flood.
Man, actually, is drowned with facts. Victimized by facts. It is in the imagination that everything lives, and not in its actuality, not in the fact. Unless imagination penetrates the fact, the deluge remains a deluge. We are now in the deluge. This is the flood.
A man is in jail, that’s a fact. And he knows he’s there for X number of years. That’s a fact. And he simply waits, and hopes, that in some strange way, that he will get some early release from this confinement. He never uses his imagination, save in some violent way to get out — but to penetrate the fact! When, in March 1943, by using my imagination to penetrate the fact that I too was in prison in the Army. But I didn’t want any part of it. And so I simply penetrated the fact and saw myself in New York City in my own apartment with my family. And in nine days, I was out on honorable discharge in my apartment in New York City.
So I wrote a friend of mine, who was in the army; he was my age. He was a Freudian, our professional psychoanalyst; but Freud was his background, that was his schooling. And when I wrote him, indeed, of exactly what I had done – I didn’t mince matters. I told him exactly what I did, how as I simply physically slept on my little bed in the barracks, I imagined I was simply elsewhere, and the elsewhere was a definite spot in space, in New York City, in my apartment. And what I did, I could feel the bed. I could feel the things in my house. I went about feeling all the familiar objects in my apartment, and I gave them all the tones of reality and all sensory vividness, to the best of my ability. And I touched everything and it felt real. Then I went back to sleep, and then I told him exactly what happened to me that morning. And then nine days later I was honorably discharged by the same man that had disallowed my application. He didn’t answer my letter. Because in New York City, he used to come to my meetings, as a friend, because he was so convinced that the Freudian concept was true. But he said, “I come to your meetings for this reason, Neville.” We knew each other well. He’d come home for dinner. I’d go to his place for dinner.
But he said, “I come to your meetings because you turned my daily bread into the substance of fairy. I sort of liked that,” he said. “But when I listened to you, I hold the chair, and I put my feet right firmly on the ground to feel the reality and the profundity of things. You want me to take me away with you. You’re gonna leave me right here where things are solidly real, so I feel the place under my foot, and I feel the things next to my hand, and I hold on tightly, as you weave your story concerning moving off in one’s imagination.”
So he would not penetrate the facts. So, when did he get out? When the other millions got out. So he remained with his facts for the next three years. I got out in March of ‘43. He came home to New York City in ‘46, demobilized, as the other millions and millions of boys were. He could not let go of the facts.
This is the flood, no other flood. This is the flood. We are drowned with facts, victimized by them.
Now, does the Bible teach this story of getting through the facts using my imagination? It certainly does. Let me take you into the twenty-seventh chapter of the Book of Genesis; the first book, the book of the beginnings.
If you’re not familiar with the story of Isaac and his two sons, they were twins. Let me just refresh your memory, if you’ve forgotten. It is said in the story that Isaac had — that is, his wife had the two sons, Rebecca. But he was the father of the two sons, Esau and Jacob. It is said that Esau was a hairy one. He came out first, and then Jacob came out second, and he had no hair. He was completely hairless, while Esau was covered in hair, from head to foot. But he was the first. One was called Esau, and one was called Jacob, because he came out second and supplanted the other.
Now we are told that when the father Isaac was old and his eye was dim so that he could not see — in other words, he was blind — he said to his son Esau, “I cannot see, and my days are numbered. I want you to go into the fields and hunt and bring me some well-prepared, tasty venison, as I like it, savory venison.”
We were told that Rebecca, who loved her second son more than she did the first, overheard the conversation between Esau and his father. And then, because she loved Jacob and wanted Jacob to get the blessing… for the father feels his days are numbered, and he ought now give his blessing to one of his sons, and the first one must get it.
So the mother told Jacob what she’d had heard, and then suggested that “we take one of the kids from the flock, and we kill it and take the skins of the kid and put it upon you, so that you will have the appearance of Esau.” Esau thought otherwise; he said, “Suppose my father discovered it?” That was Jacob; he said, “Suppose my father discovered it?”
And the mother said, “Leave that to me. It will be on my shoulder if he discovers it,” and sent Jacob into the field to bring a kid (for it’s a buck kid), and brought it tastily prepared for his father. He came quickly into the presence of the father. And the father said to him, “Come near, that I may feel you my son, whether you are my son Esau or not.” So Jacob came near to Isaac, his father, who felt him, and then Isaac said to Jacob, “Your voice is Jacob’s voice. But the hands are the hands of Esau,” and then he blessed him. He gave him his blessing. He had no sooner left the presence of his father when Esau comes in now with savory venison, and the father said, “Well who was it that came, for I’ve already eaten? Who came?” And then, he discovered it was his son Jacob who came with guile and betrayed him. But said the father, “I have given him your blessing, and I cannot retract it. And blessed he is, all will serve him. Everyone will serve him, because I gave him the blessing and I cannot take it back.” Now on the surface, you will say, now what is the story trying to tell us?
In the same book, in an earlier passage, we are told about the ark. Build the ark with three decks, the second and the third deck. But you think it’s a huge, big building. While you use your imagination, you can’t conceive of any buildings you could house all the animals of the world in pairs, and all the so-called good ones will be in seven pairs, and enough food to feed them for forty days and forty nights. Why, you just simply could not conceive of it! Nevertheless, that’s the story.
But there are three decks: the obvious thing is the facts of life; then the psychological interpretation of these so called stories; and then the spiritual consummation of the story. So you have the lower deck, the second deck, and then the third deck.
So here is a perfect example of the second deck: this room now is a fact. We’re all in the room. It’s a fact. But suppose I don’t want to be here? Suppose it becomes a prison to me? Can I get out of it? If I know how to penetrate the fact, if I know that I am the ark, that all things exist in the human imagination — and the human imagination and God are one; they are one, not two — I can, in my imagination, penetrate any wall.
I can now, without batting an eye, in the twinkle of an eye, I can stand on the street and see this thing [the platform] without a man standing before it. No problem whatsoever to assume I’m on the street and looking from the street to this platform. But you may say, well what would that do? But let me do it and feel the reality, feel that solidity of the street under my foot, and see this building from the street rather than looking to the street from here. If I do it and give it solidity, give it reality, I’ll be compelled to go there. This is what scripture teaches. That is my blessing. I can penetrate a fact, and penetrating a fact, I can stand wherever I want to stand in this world. Then the promise is made: “Wherever the soul of your foot shall stand, that I have given to you.” (Deut 11:24) I’m not going to make you a promise and not fulfill it. I’ll give it to you, if you can stand upon it. So I actually stood upon my apartment. I actually stood upon that floor. I felt the bed, I felt everything, and gave it reality. My friend wouldn’t allow himself to sleep in one place and assume that he were sleeping elsewhere, because that is a divided state of mind. He didn’t want to become a split personality, and so he wanted to be completely coordinated.
Well, he was coordinated alright, for the next three years, all one little spot, in his barracks. And for three years he couldn’t get out; because first of all, he wouldn’t try it, because I turned his daily bread into the substance of fairy. And so he did not answer my letter. I have reminded him a few times since, “Why didn’t you answer the letter?”
“Well, first of all, it didn’t make sense, and, I don’t believe,” said he, “that really what you did was the sole cause of your discharge.” They always question it. Then I repeat it another time, and tell him again what happened this time. “Well, that would have happened anyway.” You do it a third time; you do it a fourth time… Do you know, if you did it a thousand times, he will still say, “Do it once more?” This always… it will always happen, as far as they’re concerned. It just didn’t happen because you did something; “these things would have happened anyway.” I said, “So why do you analyze people then and let things happen? We are not the creatures of circumstances, said a man who bears your name.” For his first name is Israel; and Disraeli’s name is simply ‘of Israel’ — Benjamin Disraeli.
And he [Disraeli] said, “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” He knew how to create things, all in his imagination. So I said, “You bear the name of Israel, but you don’t apply the story of Israel. If you’d only apply it, for these things are taught us in scripture.”
Scripture is not secular history. This is contemporary. It didn’t happen a thousand years ago. The flood is on, and this is the flood. The whole vast world is inundated with facts like this. Prominent papers, the evening papers, “Examiner”, and they’re proud of the fact. They only print facts. They don’t embellish it, no frills, only the facts.
Therefore buy the facts. What happened by the facts. And they go all over the world to find frightening facts. I’m not denying that he didn’t kill her. I’m not denying that he did not receive a sentence of X number of years. But when people ask anything of me, I’m not concerned about why it happens. What do you want? And I will simply apply my imagination lovingly on behalf of that request. I don’t care what brought you to that state. I am here to simply get you out of the state.
What do you want? All through the rifle, what do you want?
He didn’t condemn anyone — the woman taken in adultery. He didn’t condemn. So what do you want? “Go and sin no more.” He didn’t call the act of adultery a sin. If she called it, or they called it a sin, or I call it a sin… Therefore, don’t repeat it, if you call it a sin. But sin is simply knowing what to do and not doing it. That’s sinning.
So if I discover what to do, to penetrate a fact, to go beyond the fact and create a condition for myself and dwell in it, and think from it instead of thinking of it… For the great fallacy of the world is perpetual construction, deferred occupancy. Create and create in my mind’s eye all kinds of lovely things I would like to realize, but I never occupy them. I do not penetrate the state and go right into it and give it cubic reality. But I know, and you know; and it’s not difficult to understand why.
The sense of touch is something we believe in more profoundly than we do in the sense of sight, or the sense of hearing, or the sense of smell. I stumbled upon this one day in a dream. In my dream, I came upon this huge, big pillar, a pile driven into the ocean, and the brace that it formerly supported was gone now. Only the piles remained, and I knew I was dreaming.
And I figured to myself, if I held that pile, and I could touch it, if it seemed to me solidly real… What I’m going to do: I’m going to hold on to that pile, in the dream. I know it’s a dream, but I’m going to hold that pile as solidly as I can and compel myself to awake holding the pile. Well, I did. I held the pile with all of my might. I said, now Neville, you know you’re sleeping, you know that you’re dreaming now. Awake! And I awoke in the water. I am actually holding that pile, and I’m standing up in what formerly I knew to be a dream. It ceased to be a dream. It’s real. I’m in a world just as real as this. Here I am holding this enormous pile. And it’s in the East Indies, not the West Indies where I was born. It was in the Eastern… It’s a very primitive area. And then some animal came down to the beach…strange looking creature; and at that moment I was a little bit, I was panicky. At that moment of shaking emotion, I awoke on my bed in New York City. But I discovered that secret of feelings. So he said, “Come close, come near, that I may feel you, my son.” He heard the voice. He said, “Your voice is the voice of Jacob. Come near. Let me see really if you are Esau.” And he did it by feeling.
And so, lying on my bed one night, right here in Beverly Hills, many years ago — it must have been a fourteen or fifteen years ago — I suddenly became aware that I am seeing what I shouldn’t see. I am looking into the most marvelous interior of a plush hotel. It seemed that way to me. And so consciousness followed vision, and I found myself in the room, but I knew I was on the bed. So I came back to the bed. I’m still seeing the interior of this room, and I went back into that room. I came back again. I must have done it twelve or twenty times. It was fun going into the room, and the room was just like this. Really. Then I came back to the bed.
Now, I said, now I am now going to explore; regardless of consequences, I am going to explore. And so I went into the room. It seemed like a room thirty by twenty, from the bed. When I entered it with the decision to explore, the room closed upon me and became a third of itself. Say, it became ten by seven. And I found it was a dressing room for a huge, big suite, beautifully done, but it wasn’t yet occupied. It was there to be occupied, but the room at the moment, that is the suite, was not occupied. And I thought when I got through the door, I didn’t go through like some gossamer; I opened the door with my hand and I walked right through that door. I was solidly real to myself. Then I walked down the corridor. And the corridor that I walked down was intersected by the main corridor, and all the lights were on, and two ladies were coming down that corridor, the main one.
But I knew this thing began as a dream. So I knew well, all ends run true to origins. Therefore the origin is the dream. This is the dream. So I say to the ladies, “Ladies, this is a dream. This whole vast world is a dream.” And then they were afraid of me. Who wouldn’t be afraid of a man, suddenly appears on a place in your… I would say, walking, and tells you this whole vast world is a dream? You would think he’s nuts, he’s insane. And so they thought I was insane. And they got just as far as they could from me, and walked right next to the wall duck-style, one behind the other, and looking at me very suspiciously. Then I saw this object hanging from space, and it reminded me of a similar object I had seen in a friend’s home in North Hollywood. So I say to them, “Look, see this?” And I held it, and to my surprise, it isn’t gossamer. This is not an after-image, this is not a memory image. This is real. The thing is solid. Well, I held it, and by this time, they’re a-way down. They took one great look, as they looked back at me, and then darted into the main room.
And here I am standing alone, holding onto this thing. I said to myself, Neville, you know, this is a dream. The origin is a dream, the end is a dream. Come on, wake up.
I close my eyes to the obvious, and I held this thing here, and I couldn’t… I opened my eyes again. I’m still standing there. But how am I going to get back to my room in Beverly Hills?
I didn’t know what… There was no place I could go to take me back there. But I remember ‘feeling is the secret.’ I’m holding this here, now; but it’s real, it’s solid. I’m sorry, they saw me, they heard my voice. And I walked on, and every step was solidly real as walking on here now.
So I imagined that my head was on a pillow; when I could feel a pillow under my head while I’m standing, I suddenly felt myself in a horizontal position, and my head is on a pillow. And then all of a sudden, I could feel that pillow. But I was cataleptic. I couldn’t open my eyes, I couldn’t move a hand, couldn’t move a finger. And here I am, a living being in a dead body.
So I said to myself, well, they’ll find the body tomorrow morning, and they’ve got to cut it up, because I’m insured for a little bit. And to prove that nobody took my life, they have to cut it up to find out why he died. Always have to ask that question; and they’ll give it the name, if they can’t find it. They’re going to give a name anyway.
So here I am. Couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t move my hand. In about fifteen, twenty seconds (it would seem much longer than that), my little finger, I could move it. And then I could move my hand a bit. Still couldn’t open my eyes. And we’re sleeping in a double bed. So I pushed my hand out, my left hand, and I could feel the warmth of my wife’s body. At that, I knew, I was back on my bed. In another fifteen or twenty seconds, I could, with great effort, open the lids to my eyes, and here came all the familiar objects on the walls, on the bureau, and everything returned to consciousness.
Now I stepped into a world just as real as this. I am telling you: there are worlds within worlds within worlds, and they’re all here, right now. Just like turning on a radio; and you turn it yet ever so slightly, and you have a new wavelength and a new station coming in, bringing something entirely different. And they’re not interfering with each other. And these worlds are all here now, and there are people, just as we are peopling this world, and they’re just as real as this world is terrestrial. And it doesn’t… You don’t have to walk for it. I was on the bed. I seemed to walk into it. I will say, what, ten feet away. But the same area permeated the bed, and the bed did not obstruct it. And that world into which I stepped did not obstruct the house that I lived in, in Beverly Hills.
It’s all here, the whole vast world. Worlds within worlds within worlds. So I tell you: facts are the flood, that’s the deluge. There was no other kind of flood. We are actually inundated with the facts of life. And these facts, we change them everyday. Today this is the cause of so and so. Tomorrow that’s not so. It’s another cause you found, and then the next day another cause. But while we haven’t found the next cause, we believe that to be the fact, and we worship the facts.
So I tell you, all things are in the human imagination. Man is all imagination, and God is man and exists in us, and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself. There is no other God. It’s all your own, wonderful human imagination. And the one thing the whole vast world aches for is the awakening of the imagination. And when it comes, it comes with the birth of the promised child, which sets a man free from the horrors of this world we call the world of nature. For nature is simply that principle on which depends the sameness of forms in transmitted light.
And so the thing goes over and over. Haven’t you observed the year… that at a certain time of the year, money is tight? But all of a sudden it flows… and then, at a certain time of the year, it’s tight. Why? It’s a habit; it’s a transmitted state.
You fix that fact in your mind’s eye. I think you’ve got fifty thousand dollars today, and saved for the month of December when it’s always tight; you’re going to loan the money out and give it away before December comes by, so when it comes by, you can be tight again. It’s a peculiar, I would say, slavery, this thing called “nature,” in the sameness of forms in transmitted light. Now you can penetrate the fact and break it.
And that’s what we’re here to teach.
I come not to abolish the law and the prophets. I come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them, and tell you the real Law. It’s not washing your hands before meals, although that’s a very nice, clean thing to do. It’s not giving certain diets, doing this, that and the other. He explains that the entire law is psychological. He takes one of the commandments, which is a graphic one, to show you how everything must be interpreted psychologically. Said you have heard it said of old, “You shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you, any man who looks lustfully upon a woman has already committed the act in his heart with her.” (Matt 5:27,28) But what man hasn’t? What man has not violated that? So he tells you the whole thing is a psychological thing. You can’t restrain the impulse because you may restrain it based upon a thousand different reasons. Maybe you are afraid of the consequences. Maybe you’re afraid that someone will find out; maybe you’re afraid of this, that and the other. But the impulse was there. And he tells you the impulse was the act. Well, if the impulse was the act, then creative acts are imaginal. For it was an imaginal act. So I have to observe my imaginal acts. For the imaginal act is a fact; it’s going to actually become a fact, and then confront me.
Here was a lady in San Francisco. She said, “My brother…” And she said to me, “I think he’s innocent, but I do not know the facts of the case. But he was given six months of hard labor (he was in the army). And I don’t think my brother should get six months hard labor in the army.”
I said, “You want him out?“ She said, “Certainly, I do.”
I said, “I’ll tell you what, that you may try it, so you can give all praise to yourself and not to me. You do it.”
“For what must I do?”
“Well, if he was out, would he come home?”
“Oh yes, he’d come straight to my place!”
“Alright, and if he came to your place, what would you do?”
Well she said, “I would throw my arms around him and kiss him, feel him.”
I said, “Alright, do that. When you go home tonight, sit where you would normally sit, and just imagine that your brother is there, and that you have thrown your arms around him and you’re holding him and hugging him and kissing him.”
The next Sunday morning, in my meeting in San Francisco, that woman could rise and tell this story. She said, “I went home, and I imagined I heard the doorbell ring, and the doorbell is downstairs. I have to run down one flight of stairs to answer that door. So I heard it ring, and I ran downstairs, and I flung the doors open, and here stood my brother.”
“I went back upstairs. There was no brother, but I did it so deeply. It was almost like a disappointment that I didn’t actually see him standing there. But it seems so real to me.”
Well, a few days later, she’s sitting upstairs and the doorbell rings. She said, “I almost broke my neck to get downstairs because I knew what was going to happen.” And here she threw the door open. Here is her brother. And she stood up in the audience and told that story to the thousand who were present that Sunday morning. And they all saw… no one, I presume, would go and verify it. I trusted her implicitly. If she lied to me, well then that’s entirely up to her. But I am convinced the whole thing was true. I don’t check you. I believe you when you tell me that it happened. But the thing is to practice. We are the operant power. And the flood is on. Let no one you the flood is over. And the flood is deeper and deeper because we’re more inclined for facts; we want the facts of life.
You want the facts; well, you make the prison walls all the thicker. But learn how to penetrate the facts. And as you penetrate the fact, you must go to a certain objective beyond the fact. What do you want now? Well, then you go into the state of the wish fulfilled. What state? The state you decide. You determine what you want in this world, and you go right into that state, and then ignore the facts. Suppose the facts now still denies what you did. It doesn’t matter that the facts remain. They’ll dissolve. That all is all because you are going to remain faithful, and you will occupy the state. No longer are you going to construct it and not occupy it. You’re going to occupy the state. And as you occupy the state, it’s going to work.
You can do that with a job. A friend of mine in New York City, he came from out west. He was an engineer. And he said, “Neville I want more money, and I want more responsibility. I want to work for a certain… for a certain firm.”
I said, “Do you know where they are?” He said, “Yes, on Madison Avenue. They do international work. They build bridges, they build dams, they build things all over the world. I would like a job that would send me away because I would get three times the salary.”
I said, “Well, I’ll go to the place and see where you would sit if you got the job there, before they send you off. You’ll work in the home office first, wouldn’t you?”
Said, “I think so.”
I’ll go up there and just take a good look. He walked into the place, picked out the desk, picked out the place, and then he assumed when he got back home, he was seated at that desk, and that was his job. And he named the sum of money, which was a considerable sum of money. He and his wife and daughter used to come to my meetings. Within a month, he was in that job, and within two weeks he was on his way to the near East, building bridges. Unfortunately, in a way, he did not live very long. He was a young man, but in about three years, he was gone — heart attack and he was gone. But that he would have gone anyway, whether he was here or there. For we come on time, and we go on time. But at least before he departed this world, he found the principle, which he will carry with him into the next world. For there is no death.
He is restored to life in a world just like this, clothed in a body just like his, only young, young as he was then, he’ll be younger. But he has at least the memory of what he did to get what he wanted, and it worked, and so now he goes with the principle in his mind’s eye.
So when you tell me that your dreams, and that you and your dreams are applying this principle, like the lady tonight, she is here, she told me her dream. I asked her to write it out for me. But right in the dream, she’s actually discussing with others this principle of imagining and how you imagine a certain state and you produce them to this world. And that nothing in this world dies, all things are restored to life, and she’s carrying on this conversation in her dream. Well, to me, that is most flattering and very thrilling, when you can carry it beyond into what the world would tell you is a state where you’re not in control of vision, that you are simply the slave of vision rather than its master. You don’t direct it, you simply follow it. But she didn’t follow it. She directed vision. And when you get to the point that you can direct in what they call a state called dream, where you are not supposed to be in control, you’re simply the victim of your vision. But she is not the victim of her vision. She actually controlled the vision.
And so the day will come, it’s inevitable. We all take off the garment. But I tell you that you’re going to find yourself completely restored, instantly. Not waiting for anything, instantly restored, in a terrestrial world with problems that you have failed, but you know how to solve them. You will solve the problem because you know the principle.
So the flood is on. The whole Bible from beginning to end is contemporary.
Jesus is not something that died, He is something that lives within man. He is dwelling in man. God himself came and comes into human history in the person of Jesus, in you, in me, in everyone in the world. And the day will come. You’ll know it, and you are the Lord Jesus. But asleep to what you are. The day will come you’ll be completely awake with the fact that you are the Father, and then you’ll know.
I have been asked, why do you express it all the time? It’s important. It is so important about the Father; it is the most important part of scripture. The most important part of scripture. Oh, I can have all the power of the world, and yet not know I’m God. I can have a sensible awareness where there is not a thing in the world with myself, and yet not feel that I am God. But when the Father comes, and I know that I am the father of that one and only son of his, then I know I’m God. There’s no other way to know it. If I have power that I could destroy the universe, I still wouldn’t know I’m God. And if I was completely aware, as I was in 1926, when I’m reading a book, it fell upon my chest. It must have been not more than ten o’clock. I awoke next morning, it’s nine. And I had not turned from left to right in the entire interval, because the book was still on my chest and the light was still on my bed. And usually, in the course of a night, a man turns often, from side to side. How often, I do not know, but we all do. No one goes to bed on his back and remains there for nine unbroken, or in this case, almost eleven unbroken hours. So I went right down under a deep, deep sleep, in a trance, and in that state, I became infinite light. There was nothing but light, and I was in. There was no circumference. I was ascent of it all. No light outside of this light that I am. No sun, no moon, no stars, but nothing outside of the beam that I am. I was an infinite pulsing light. But still I did not bring back the feeling of being God. Yet, it evaded me. But when you see his son, and that son calls you father, and you know, well, then there is no doubt in your mind as to who you are.
So I say it’s the most important part of scripture, and yet it’s the one thing that people will question me on. Why do you emphasize it? Why do you repeat it over and over? Because, the one thing in the world that you will one day experience which will convince you that you are God — not a thing in the world will convince you outside of that.
But meanwhile, we can penetrate the facts. The man imprisoned need not be behind bars. We are imprisoned by the things that we do. Alright, we can break them, break anything in this world. A man can be imprisoned by gluttony. He can break it if he knows what he wants. Maybe he doesn’t really want to give it up. If he wants to give it up, let him create within his mind’s eye, a scene, a simple scene, that if he had given it up, a friend or some relative would know. And he doesn’t brag about it; they simply know. And it’s a normal discussion that he has no longing for it anymore. He has no desire for it, didn’t take any drugs for it, didn’t do anything to beat it. It just simply, it wasn’t there. That a certain taste that we have in this world… all of a sudden, you’ve had it, you’ve saturated yourself with it, and you don’t want it anymore. All things are required.
Today, I like, for instance, a thing called an oyster, love them, especially those lovely Eastern oysters. But the first time I had an oyster, I thought I’d die. I was a small boy, I would have said about nine or ten, and I went down. It was then called the Virgin Islands, owned by Denmark. They are now our islands, Saint Thomas and John and Saint Croix. And my mother said to me, now Neville, you know, you’re going to a strange place and they speak Danske. You don’t understand the language, but you’ll get by. But you’re going to a room—a boarding house, and maybe twenty or twenty-five boarding. You all sit at one big table together. Now you’re a boy, and you do not know their habits. So watch what the lady does, and whatever she does, you do it. I sat down at the table, and then here it was this plate of oysters. I’d never seen an oyster in my life before, and then all the little things before it. I saw this lady take as little fork, from the size, so I picked up my fork. And then she took little horseradish. She took something else. Then she took a little tabasco, did all these things do it. Then she stuck it into the oyster, and dipped it into all that she had done. She closed her eyes and she eight years though you had honey in your mouth. I expected the same thing. So I did the same thing. And when I got that thing in my mouth…. Lord! It wouldn’t go down. I couldn’t bring it up. I’m not supposed to bring it up. Mother told me that, and so, here it stuck…. But the funny part about it, I not only had that one, I come to find there were five others, and they had to go down. Well that was my introduction to oysters. But now today, I love them. I acquired the taste of oysters.
The first time I had a drink, well, I can’t tell anyone that it was something like honey to me, but I acquired the taste. And today, I thoroughly enjoy a drink. I try not to go beyond a certain point because I wanted to keep my faculty alive. But I enjoy a drink.
I’ve tried and tried and tried to acquire a taste for smoking. I can’t, before I gave that up when I tried it for about six months. I couldn’t do it. I was then only twenty-one or twenty-two, and I couldn’t seem to enjoy a cigarette or a cigar or anything. It made me sick. So I gave it up. Never acquired it. But all the other things we have acquired, we don’t come into the world with these tastes. You acquire these tastes. You can acquire the taste of living in comfort. You can acquire the taste of living as a gentleman, as a lady. Acquire the taste, you want to actually live like a lady, live like a gentleman, with no pressure to pay the rank, no pressure to do these things. Alright, assume that you are that lady, you are that gentleman. Penetrate the facts. The facts tell you that you are not. You don’t have it. Penetrate the facts and live in the state as though you had it. And may I tell you from experience, you will have it. You will actually have it. Don’t ask me how; the ways and means are contained within the state that you enter. So you enter a state, and it contains all that is necessary to externalize that state.
So pick out your state, a lovely state, and go right into that state and dwell in it. I call that “occupying the state” and “thinking FROM it, instead of thinking OF it.” Just as you now think from your present state, with all the facts around you to anchor you into it, get into another state, or in your imagination, and the facts will appear to anchor you into that state. And although you tire of it, you can get out of it and go into another state. You know when you move into a new home and move into a new city, you have to actually adjust yourself to it. Well, you are the pilgrim passing through unnumbered states. The states remain, but you the pilgrim pass through them, like a traveler passing through a city. The city remains, but you, the traveler, passed through it, so you go right into another city. You don’t rub out the state. Poverty remains a state, but a man who was once poor moves out of it. So he moves out of poverty into the state of affluence. But he doesn’t destroy the state of property; anyone can fall into it.
So Blake said, “I do not consider the just or the unjust to be in a supreme state, but only to be in these states of sleep, which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil.”
So he toys with this state and he find itself enamored with the state, and he falls into it. He’s not supreme because he’s wealthy, and the other one is not ignored because he’s poor. It’s a state. Don’t condemn the occupant of the state. The state is the thing, but the occupant is God. For the occupant in a state called poverty, he is saying “I AM” before there’s a “poor.” He doesn’t say “I am poor,” meaning he’s different as far as “I AM” goes from the one who says “I am rich,” — the same I AMness that occupies the state of poverty is occupying the of wealth. And so you can go into any state, and being in the state is God. And you wear these states as you wear clothes. But you must be consistent and actually believe it.
First of all, as you’re told in that sixth chapter of John, “we believed and have come to know that thou art the Holy One of God.” First, faith that ventures on a possibility. And then, something more sure than faith, something steadier than faith: personal experience. You venture, that’s faith. I will actually believe you now.