I have posted an improved, easier to copy version of this text at
http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2014/06/mental-diets-text-improved-version-of.html.
Transcriber's Note: We are told in the Bible that God created the
universe by speaking it into existence. Neville notes here that "We
call not out loud, but by an inner effort of intense attention. To
listen attentively, as though you heard, is to create."
Neville Goddard 1955
MENTAL DIETS
Talking to oneself is a habit everyone indulges in. We could no more stop
talking to ourselves than we could stop eating and drinking. All that we can do
is control the nature and the direction of our inner conversations. Most of us
are totally unaware of the fact that our inner conversations are the causes of
the circumstance of our life.
We are told that "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." But do we know that
man's thinking follows the tracks laid down in his own inner conversations? To
turn the tracks to which he is tied in the direction in which he wants to go, he
must put off his former conversation, which is called in the Bible the Old Man,
and be renewed in the spirit of his mind. Speech is the image of mind;
therefore, to change his mind, he must first change his speech. By 'speech' is
meant those mental conversations we carry on with ourselves.
The world is a magic circle of infinite possible mental transformations. For
there are an infinite number of possible mental conversations. When man
discovers the creative power of inner talking, he will realize his function and
his mission in life. Then he can act to a purpose. Without such knowledge, he
acts unconsciously. Everything is a manifestation of the mental conversations
which go on in us without our being aware of them. But as civilized beings, we
must become aware of them and act with a purpose.
A man's mental conversations attracts his life. As long as there is no change in
his inner talking, the personal history of the man remains the same. To attempt
to change the world before we change our inner talking is to struggle against
the very nature of things. Man can go 'round and around in the same circle of
disappointments and misfortunes, not seeing them as caused by his own negative
inner talking, but as caused by others. This may seem far-fetched, but it is a
matter which lends itself to research and experiment. The formula the chemist
illustrates is not more certainly provable than the formula of this science by
which words are clothed in objective reality.
One day a girl told me of her difficulties in working with her employer. She was
convinced that he unjustly criticized and rejected her very best efforts. Upon
hearing her story, I explained that if she thought him unfair, it was a sure
sign that she herself was in need of a new conversation piece. There was no
doubt but that she was mentally arguing with her employer, for others only echo
that which we whisper to them in secret. She confessed that she argued mentally
with him all day long. When she realized what she had been doing, she agreed to
change her inner conversations with her employer. She imagined that he had
congratulated her on her fine work, and that she in turn had thanked him for his
praise and kindness. To her great delight, she soon discovered that her own
attitude was the cause of all that befell her. The behavior of her employer
reversed itself. It echoed, as it had always done, her mental conversations with
him.
I rarely see a person alone without wondering, "to what conversation piece is he
tied? On what mysterious track is he walking?" We must begin to take life
consciously. For the solution of all problems lies just in this: the Second Man,
the Lord from heaven in all of us, is trying to become self-conscious in the
body, that he may be about his father's business. What are his labors? To
imitate his father, to become master of the Word, master of his inner talking,
that he may mold this world of ours into a likeness with the Kingdom of Love.
The prophet said, "Be ye imitators of God as dear children." How would I imitate
God? Well, we are told that God calls things that are not seen as though they
were seen, and the unseen becomes seen. This is the way the girl called forth
praise and kindness from her employer. She carried on an imaginary conversation
with her employer from the premise that he had praised her work, and he did.
Our inner conversations represent in various ways the world we live in. Our
individual worlds are self-revelations of our own inner speech. We are told that
every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof. For by
their words shall they be justified, and by their words they shall be condemned.
We abandon ourselves to negative inner talking, yet expect to retain command of
life. Our present mental conversations do not recede into the past as man
believes. They advance into the future to confront us as wasted or invested
words. "My Word," said the prophet, "shall not return unto me void, but it shall
accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in all the things whereto I
sent it."
How would I send my Word to help a friend? I would imagine that I am hearing his
voice, that he is physically present, that my hand is on him. I would then
congratulate him on his good fortune, tell him that I have never seen him look
better. I would listen as though I heard him; I would imagine that he is telling
me he has never felt better, he has never been happier. And I would know that in
this loving, knowing communion with another, a communion populous with loving
thoughts and feelings, that my word was sent, and it shall not return unto me
void, but it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
"Now it the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." It is only what is done
now that counts, even though its effects may not be visible until tomorrow. We
call not out loud, but by an inner effort of intense attention. To listen
attentively, as though you heard, is to create. The events and relationships of
life are your Word made visible. Most of us rob others of their willingness and
their ability to be kind and generous by our fixed attitudes towards them. Our
attitudes unfold within us in the form of mental conversations. Inner talking
from premises of fulfilled desire is the way to consciously create
circumstances.
Our inner conversations are perpetually out-pictured all around us in
happenings. Therefore, what we desire to see and hear without we must see and
hear within, for the whole manifested world goes to show us what use we have
made of the Word. If you practice this art of controlled inner speaking, you too
will know what a thrill it is to be able to say, "And now I have told you before
it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might believe." You will be
able to consciously use your imagination to transform and channel the immense
creative energies of your inner speech from the mental, emotional level to the
physical level. And I do not know what limits, if any, there are to such a
process.
What is your aim? Does your inner talking match it? It must, you know, if you
would realize your aim. For as the prophet asked, "Can two walk together except
they be agreed?" And of course the answer is, "No, they cannot." The two who
must agree are your inner conversation and the state desired. That is, what you
desire to see and hear without, you must see and hear within. Every stage of
man's progress is made by the conscious exercise of his imagination matching his
inner speech to his fulfilled desire. As we control our inner talking, matching
it to our fulfilled desires, we can lay aside all other processes. Then we
simply act by clear imagination and intention: we imagine the wish fulfilled and
carry on mental conversations from that premise. The right inner speech is the
speech that would be yours were you to realize your ideal. In other words, it is
the speech of fulfilled desire.
Now you will understand how wise the ancient was when he told us in the
Hermetica, "There are two gifts which God has bestowed upon man alone and on no
other mortal creature. These two are Mind and Speech, and the gift of Mind and
Speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man uses these two gifts
rightly, he will differ in nothing from the Immortals. And when he quits his
body, Mind and Speech will be his guides, and by them he will be brought into
the troop of the gods and the souls that have attained to bliss."
With the gift of Mind and Speech you create the conditions and circumstances of
life. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God." The Word, said Hermes, is Son, and Mind is Father of the Word. They
are not separate one from the other, for life is the union of Word and Mind. You
and your inner talking, or Word, are one. If your mind is one with your inner
conversations, then to be transformed in mind is to be transformed in
conversation. It was a flash of the deepest insight that taught Paul to write,
"Put off the former conversation, the Old Man which is corrupt, and be renewed
in the spirit of your mind. Put on the New Man." "Put on the New Man," and "be
renewed in the spirit of your mind," is to change your inner conversation, for
speech and mind are one - a change of speech is a change of mind.
The prophet Samuel said, "The Lord spake by me, and his Word was in my tongue."
If the Lord's Word was in the prophet's tongue, then the Lord's mouth that
uttered the Word must be the prophet's mind, for inner conversations originate
in the mind and produce little tiny speech movements in the tongue. The prophet
is telling us that the mouth of God is the mind of man, that our inner
conversations are the Word of God creating life about us as we create it within
ourselves.
In the Bible you are told that the Word is very near to you, in your mouth and
in your heart, that you may do it. "See, I have set before you this day life and
good, death and evil, blessings and cursings. Choose life." The conditions and
circumstances of life are not created by some power external to yourself; they
are the conditions which result from the exercise of your freedom of choice,
your freedom to choose the ideas to which you will respond.
Now is the accepted time. This is the day of salvation. Whatsoever things are of
good report, think on these things. For your future will be formed by the Word
of God which is your present inner talking. You create your future by your inner
conversations. The worlds were framed by the Word of God, that is, your inner
talking.
See yonder fields? The sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn.
The silence and the darkness knew! So is a man's fate born.
(The Light of Asia)
For ends run true to origins. If you would reap success, you must plant success.
The idea in your mind which starts the whole process going is the idea which you
accept as truth. This is a very important point to grasp, for truth depends upon
the intensity of imagination, not upon "facts." When the girl imagined that her
employer was unfair, his behavior confirmed her imagination. When she changed
her assumption of him, his behavior reflected the change, proving that an
assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact.
The mind always behaves according to the assumption with which it starts.
Therefore, to experience success, we must assume that we are successful. We must
live wholly on the level of the imagination itself, and it must be consciously
and deliberately undertaken. It does not matter if at the present moment
external facts deny the truth of your assumption, if you persist in your
assumption it will become a fact. Signs follow, they do not precede.
To assume a new concept of yourself is to that extent to change your inner
talking or Word of God and is, therefore, putting on the New Man. Our inner
talking, though unheard by others, is more productive of future conditions than
all the audible promises and threats of men. Your ideal is waiting to be
incarnated, but unless you yourself offer it human parentage it is incapable of
birth. You must define the person you wish to be and then assume the feeling of
your wish fulfilled in faith that that assumption will find expression through
you.
The true test of religion is in its use, but men have made it a thing to defend.
It is to you that the words are spoken, "Blessed is she that believed, for there
shall be an accomplishment of those things which were spoken unto her from the
Lord." Test it. Try it. Conceive yourself to be one that you want to be and
remain faithful to that conception, for life here is only a training ground for
image making. Try it and see if life will not shape itself on the model of your
imagination.
Everything in the world bears witness of the use or misuse of man's inner
talking. Negative inner talking, particularly evil and envious inner talking,
are the breeding ground of the future battlefields and penitentiaries of the
world. Through habit man has developed the secret affection for these negative
inner conversations. Through them he justifies failure, criticizes his
neighbors, gloats over the distress of others, and in general pours out his
venom on all. Such misuse of the Word perpetuates the violence of the world.
The transformation of self requires that we meditate on a given phrase, a phrase
which implies that our ideal is realized, and inwardly affirm it over and over
and over again until we are inwardly affected by its implication, until we are
possessed by it. Hold fast to your noble inner convictions or "conversations."
Nothing can take them from you but yourself. Nothing can stop them from becoming
objective facts. All things are generated out of your imagination by the Word of
God, which is your own inner conversation. And every imagination reaps its own
Words which it has inwardly spoken.
The great secret of success is a controlled inner conversation from premises of
fulfilled desire. The only price you pay for success is the giving up of your
former conversation which belongs to the Old Man, the unsuccessful man. The time
is ripe for many of us to take conscious charge in creating heaven on earth. To
consciously and voluntarily use our imagination, to inwardly hear and only say
that which is in harmony with our ideal, is actively bringing heaven to earth.
Every time we exercise our imagination lovingly on behalf of another, we are
literally mediating God to that one. Always use your imagination masterfully, as
a participant, not an onlooker. In using your imagination to transform energy
from the mental, emotional level to physical level, extend your senses - look
and imagine that you are seeing what you want to see, that you are hearing what
you want to hear, and touching what you want to touch. Become intensely aware of
doing so. Give your imaginary state all the tones and feeling of reality. Keep
on doing so until you arouse within yourself the mood of accomplishment and the
feeling of relief.
This is the active, voluntary use of the imagination as distinguished from the
passive, involuntary acceptance of appearances. It is by this active, voluntary
use of the imagination that the Second Man, the Lord from heaven, is awakened in
man. Men call imagination a plaything, the "dream faculty." But actually it is
the very gateway of reality. Imagination is the way to the state desired, it is
the truth of the state desired, and the life of that state desired. Could you
realize this fully, there would you know that what you do in your imagination is
the only important thing. Within the circle of our imagination the whole drama
of life is being enacted over and over again. Through the bold and active use of
the imagination we can stretch out our hand and touch a friend ten thousand
miles away and bring health and wealth to the parched lips of his being. It is
the way to everything in the world. How else could we function beyond our
fleshly limitations? But imagination demands of us a fuller living of our dreams
in the present.
Through the portals of the present the whole of time must pass. Imagine
elsewhere as here, and then as now. Try it and see. You can always tell if you
have succeeded in making the future dream a present fact by observing your inner
talking. If you are inwardly saying what you would audibly say were you
physically present and physically moving about in that place, then you have
succeeded. And you could prophesy it from these inner conversations, and from
the moods which they awaken within you, what your future will be. For one power
alone makes a prophet - imagination, the divine vision. All that we meet is our
Word made visible. And what we do not now comprehend is related by affinity to
the unrecognized forces of our own inner conversations and the moods which they
arouse within us. If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign
that we are in need of a change of mental diet. For man, we are told, lives not
by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And having
discovered the mouth of God to be the mind of man, a mind which lives on Words
or inner talking, we should feed into our minds only loving, noble thoughts. For
with Words or inner talking we build our world.
Let love's lordly hand raise your hunger and thirst to all that is noble and of
good report, and let your mind starve e'er you raise your hand to a cup love did
not fill or a bowl love did not bless. That you may never again have to say,
"What have I said? What have I done, O all powerful human Word?"
