Note; On August 31st I posted an updated and shorter version of the Introduction below.
Lessons on how to think not hidden by Moses: the lost "flock" of Jethro?
When you think of Genesis and Exodus and, well, the Bible in general, you think "ancient history," right? An odd thought came to me the other day while I was reading Neville Goddard's interpretations of certain biblical stories, I suddenly realized that the biblical authors were not only all telling essentially the same story, they were all teaching the same lesson -- on how to think! These "esoteric" lessons have not been hidden, they are right here in our Bibles in black and white (and sometimes red). They have just been misread as history lessons.
The preponderance of lessons on how to think reinforces my belief that the Bible is about matters psychological. I believe that when Moses became "keeper of the flocks of Jethro," he became a disciple of Jethro's
teachings -- ideas that follow one another like flocks of sheep. Meditating (
"Horeb," to parch) on the teachings of Jethro, Moses received a revelation of God; enlightenment.
This great event in life, encountering God and coming to understand how the universe operates according to the nature of God, the Law, Moses knew had come from learning how to think correctly. And Moses, God bless him, published these teachings or "flocks" of Jethro in the appropriate language of the period, mythspeak. In mythspeak, spiritual truths are represented by symbols and woven into memorable stories. Thus the Bible isn't a history, it is the revelation of the Ineffable: of God, mind, thought, consciousness and imagination -- all the spirit's activity that is currently taking place within us.
The Bible is a book about how to think correctly according to the revelation of God. Right thinking -- thinking with purpose and effect -- is what the stories are about. Moses has given us a manual on how to think like God, as God, with purpose and effect.
That should sound like 'prayer'. Thinking in a way to get whatsoever you want is thinking like God. Please don't think that that is shallow and selfish; think of what it has gotten God!
Certainly Moses' and the other authors' intent was to get everyone to think right. And by "right" I do not mean to agree with religious doctrine and dogma. By "right" I mean in the right manner, having the right perspective, using the right technology and the right frame of mind, to get the right results.
The testimony of the Bible's authors is that right thinking is powerful thing, a very powerful
force. Belief, faith, knowing, call it what you will, if you can think correctly . . . "If thou
canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." Mark 9: 23.
Canst. Wow. "If thou
canst." Canst thou? Can you believe? Do you know
how to believe? The characters of scripture were constructed by the Bible's authors to teach us how to think in belief. They were giving us the formula, the key, to the creative force of God's Word. "Therefore I say unto you, what things soever ye desire, when you pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall have." Mark 11: 24.
"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." Mark 9: 23.
"With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible." Mark 10: 27.
"With God" it is possible. "If thou canst believe" it is possible. The equation here is that believing is "with God." We have to learn how to "God" -- an activity
we undertake -- by believing with the consciousness God placed within us to make us living beings.
Almost everyone thinks of the word 'God' as a noun, that God is a big guy sitting in a big chair in a big auditorium in a big park somewhere. I think of God as
the spiritual movement of the ineffable. Life is flux.
No, not the "life" you and I go through as a course of events. I mean Life as the definition of God, like "God is Light," and "God is Love." God is Life with a capital 'L'. Life is the motion of the ineffable. And Jesus Christ is the ineffable's connection with us, the power and wisdom of that flux making us.
What I perceived the other day from reading Neville was that Moses and other authors wrote to get our thoughts to
be that spiritual motion, to be in charge of the flux of the ineffable, for us to God (as a verb)
by believing. The Kingdom of God has to do with
attitudes: "Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD your God," "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect." Deuteronomy 18: 13; Matthew 5: 48.
Within the biblical stories is the technology of HOW TO, WITHIN OURSELVES, THINK AND BELIEVE CORRECTLY, "PERFECTLY," LIKE GOD. For what we believe, becomes. The world we presently experience reflects what we have already thought. The world mirrors what we believe -- we have brought our worlds into being. "That which hath been (in our thoughts) is now; and that which is to be (it is on its way!) hath already been (in our thoughts); and God requireth (to manifest in the future) that which is past (whatever we have thought)." Ecclesiastes 3: 15, parentheses mine.
Whatever we believe now proceeds into the future to confront us there. If whatever we believe must become manifest, and life so mirrors our beliefs, then we must think goodness to receive goodness. " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," "For a man to rejoice and to do good in his life, and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of his labor, it is the gift of God." Galatians 6: 7; Ecclesiastes 3: 12.
I have pretty much moved over to scripturally sound New Thought philosophy because it is, well, scripturally sound.
I must point out also that I believe in advaita, that God is one, "echad" in the Hebrew (Deuteronomy 6: 4). Advaita is a compound Sanskrit word meaning "not two." It is non-duality, the idea that God is one manifest as a multitude. "The more you read in the Hindu or the Buddhist or the Taoist or the Christian mystics, you realize this non-duality has been the great discovery beyond the rational mind with all its dualities -- good and evil and light and darkness and black and white, conscious, unconscious, male and female -- all these divisions are there, but they are contained in a unity, that is the thing. And in the Tibetan Dzogchen, which I came across fairly recently, I think it is put more profoundly than anywhere else: 'All deep sense of the whole, multiplicity of being is contained in the unity of the One in this non-dual relationship: not one and not two.'" -- Fr. Bede Griffiths.
"Non-dual relationship." "Not one, and not two." These sound like oxymorons, but they aren't; they are the scriptural perspective. All dimensions of existence are God, though, of course, the ineffable Most High from which they proceed is much more than all universes. This is the Christian mystery and the Mystery of Moses: God has become manifest, that his manifestation may become him; and man is the manifestation of God who says, "I AM THAT I AM," or, "I am (become) that (what I desire)."
Kind of mind stretching.
There can only be one God from the transcendent, ineffable Most High to the most basic quantum particles of this world. "There is nothing but God in the universe." So then, I am God, and so are you! We, you and I, are God, all of us -- we just don't know it. We are the "I" in "I and my Father are one." John 10:30.
We haven't realized that we are God because to have this human experience, to "taste death" as it were, God has had to obliterate all knowledge of what he is from himself. We are God in complete amnesia as to what we actually are. God gave his son into us, but with total amnesia. Thus God is not only within us, he is us. There is no separation. Don't go looking for him somewhere up in the sky. He is within. He is reading this right now. Hi.
"No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten son (who has become us and is thinking in us as our imagination), which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed." John 1: 18.
Revealed? God is revealed in becoming our world through us, through our thought, through our belief, and through our imagining. Hence the impetus for the biblical authors to create a How to Think Right Manual, which we have now as the Bible.
This may not be the approach to the Bible you are familiar with, but test it and see. It doesn't make us genies, but it puts us on a biblical, scriptural course.
By the way, in the Dead Sea scrolls I have seen reference to a Book of Meditation. Jewish fathers were to begin teaching their sons how to meditate "according to the Book of Meditation" by about the ages seven to ten. Probably some collector has this book in his or her private collection and doesn't even realize it. I hope some day it will be discovered and published. Or perhaps it was a reference to the biblical scriptures themselves. I mention this because one should realize that the ancient Jews apparently read the Bible as meditative images, as sacred illustrations on how to think. They knew "Joshua" as God's salvation which takes us into Canaan, the perfect country, long before the historical Jesus came along.
What I was reading when I had this little epiphany was Neville Goddard's lectures from before 1959, before he had the experience he called the Promise, the waking up to realize that he was God. We will all eventually wake up. That is promised, for Christ is risen. After having that experience in 1959, Neville preached the Promise more than the Law. But I wanted to glean Neville's translations and interpretations (he isn't your typical Sunday School fare) regarding the Law, which is God's power and wisdom as technology. This perspective is not the dogmatic "Thou shalt nots," but rather the positive effects of God's nature as outlined by Raymond Holliwell in Working with the Law. Because of God's nature, there is the law of thinking, the law of supply the law of attraction, the law of receiving, the law of increase, the law of compensation, the law of non-resistance, the law of forgiveness, the law of sacrifice, the law of obedience, and the law of success. Because of these laws of nature, we have shalt-nots for our behavior: shalt not use the nature of God in vain, shalt not covet, etc..
I was going to cut and paste some of Neville's early lectures into succinct bites, but I have found that the best I can do is edit them a little and add some comments, underlining and italicizing. Read a few of them below, please, and see if you do not agree that the biblical authors had one set form to teach about thinking, to which they gave expression in numerous stories. I think how to think correctly is a good thing to learn. It may be a good thing to also teach, also.
Neville's lectures without my editing are available online in text, pdf, and audio forms (but watch out for viruses on the likes of scribd.com, etc.). Over the years I have collected most of the things published by him. And there are, of course, many other New Thought teachers. I have just found Neville to be a clearer proponent and his theology biblically sound.
*The Jesus Christ of history no one can dispute, because we can't get there. He may walk with us and talk with us quite literally, and he answers our prayers affirming our faith in the literal/historical view. And while I hope he has been real to you, it has been the psychological which has worked. Personally, I believe both after a fashion. As Peter says in Acts 2: 16, "This is that." That is, the authors of the Gospels recognized in the character of human person(s) the power and wisdom of God, and they used that (those) historical person(s) as a model upon which to hang their philosophy. "This guy," they might have said, "is that." You really need to understand history and the Therapeutae.
Neville Goddard, 1948.
Lesson 1
CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE ONLY REALITY
This is going to be a very practical course. Therefore, I hope that everyone in
this class has a very clear picture of what he or she desires, for I am
convinced that you can realize your desires by the technique you will receive
here this week in these five lessons.
That you may receive the full benefit of these instructions, let me state now
that the Bible has no reference at all to any persons who ever existed or to any
event that ever occurred upon earth.
The ancient story tellers were not writing history but allegorical picture
lessons of certain basic principles which they clothed in the garb of history,
and they adapted these stories to the limited capacity of a most uncritical and
credulous people.
Throughout the centuries we have mistakenly taken personifications for persons,
allegory for history, the vehicle that conveyed instruction for the instruction,
and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended.
The difference between the form of the Bible and its substance is as great as
the difference between a grain of corn and the germ of life within that grain.
Just as our assimilative organs discriminate between food that can be built into
our system and food that must be discarded, so do our awakened intuitive
faculties discover beneath the allegory and parable the psychological life-germ
of the Bible; and, feeding on this, we, too, cast off the forms which conveyed
the message.
The argument against the historicity of the Bible is too lengthy; consequently,
it is not suitable for inclusion in this practical psychological interpretation
of its stories. Therefore, I will waste no time in trying to convince you that
the Bible is not a historical fact.
Tonight I will take four stories and show you what the ancient story-tellers
intended that you and I should see in these stories. The ancient teachers
attached psychological truths to phallic and solar allegories. They did not know
as much of the physical structure of man as do modern scientists, neither did
they know as much about the heavens as do our modern astronomers. But the little
they did know they used wisely and they built phallic and solar frames to which
they tied the great psychological truths that they had discovered.
In the Old Testament you will find much of the Phallic worship. Because it is
not helpful, I am not going to emphasize it. I shall only show you how to
interpret it.
Before we come to the first of the psychological dramas that you and I may use
in a practical sense, let me state the two outstanding names of the Bible: the
one you and I translate as GOD or JEHOVAH, and the one we call his son, which we
have as JESUS.
The ancients spelled these names by using little symbols. The ancient tongue,
called the Hebraic language, was not a tongue that you exploded with the breath.
It was a mystical language never uttered by man. Those who understood it,
understood it as mathematicians understand symbols of higher mathematics. It is
not something people used to convey thought as I now use the English language.
They said that God's name was spelled, JOD HE VAU HE. I shall take these symbols
and in our normal, down to earth language, explain them in this manner:
The first letter, JOD in the name GOD is a hand or a seed. Not just a hand, but
the hand of the director. If there is one organ of man that discriminates and
sets him apart from the entire world of creation, it is his hand. What we call a
hand in the anthropoid ape is not a hand. It is used only for the purpose of
conveying food to the mouth, or to swing from branch to branch. Man's hand
fashions, it molds. You cannot really express yourself without the hand. This is
the builder's hand, the hand of the director: it directs, and molds, and builds
within your world.
The ancient story-tellers called the first letter of God's name JOD, the hand,
or the absolute seed out of which the whole of creation will come.
To the second letter, HE, they gave the symbol of a window. A window is an eye
-- the window is to the house what the eye is to the body.
The third letter, VAU, they called a nail. A nail is used for the purpose of
binding things together. The conjunction "and" in the Hebraic tongue is simply
the third letter, or VAU. If I want to say 'man and woman', I put the VAU in the
middle, it binds them together.
The fourth and last letter, HE, is another window or eye.
In this modern, down to earth language of ours, you can forget eyes and windows
and hands and look at it in this manner: You are seated here now. This first
letter, JOD, is your I AM-ness, your awareness. You are aware of being aware --
that is the first letter. Out of this awareness all other states of awareness
come.
The second letter, HE, called an eye, is your imagination, your ability to
perceive. You imagine or perceive something which seems to be other than Self,
as though you were lost in reverie and contemplated in a detached manner, making
the thinker and his thoughts separate entities.
The third letter, VAU, is your ability to feel you are that which you desire to
be (emphasis mine). As you feel you are what you desire, you become aware of
being it. To walk as though you are what you want to be is to take your desire
out of the imaginary world and put the VAU upon it. You have completed the drama
of creation: I am aware of something, then I become aware of actually being that
of which I was aware.
The fourth and last letter in the name of God is another HE, another eye,
meaning the visible, objective world which constantly bears witness to that
which I am conscious of being. You do nothing about the objective world; it
always molds itself in harmony with that which you are conscious of being
(hence, it mirrors what we believe to be true).
We are told this is the name by which all things are made, and without it there
is nothing made that is made. The name JOD HE VAU HE is simply what you have now
as you are seated here. You are conscious of being, aren't you? Certainly you
are. You are also conscious of something that is other than yourself: the room,
the furniture, the people.
You may become selective now. Maybe you do not want to be what you are, or to
own what you see. You have the capacity to feel what it would be like were you
now other than what you are. As you assume that you are that which you want to
be, you have completed the name of God or the JOD HE VAU HE. The final result,
the objectification of your assumption, is not your concern. It will come into
view automatically as you assume the consciousness of being it.
Now let us turn to the Son's name, for he gives the Son dominion over the world.
You are that Son. You are the great Joshua of the Bible. You know the name
Joshua, or Jehoshua, we have Anglicized as Jesus.
The Son's name is almost like the Father's name. The first three letters of the
Father's name are the first three letters of the Son's name, JOD HE VAU; then
you add a SHIN and an AYIN, making the Son's name read, JOD HE VAU SHIN AYIN.
You have heard what the first three are: JOD HE VAU. JOD means that you are
aware; HE means that you are aware of something; and VAU means that you became
aware of being that of which you were aware. You have dominion because you have
the ability to conceive and to become that which you conceive. That is the power
of creation.
But why is a SHIN put in the name of the Son? Because of the infinite mercy of
our Father. Mind you, the Father and the Son are one. But when the Father
becomes conscious of being man he puts within the condition called man that
which he did not give unto himself. He puts a SHIN for this purpose; a SHIN is
symbolized as a tooth.
A tooth is that which consumes, that which devours. I must have within me the
power to consume that which I now dislike. I, in my ignorance, brought to birth
certain things I now dislike and would like to leave behind me. Were there not
within me a tooth or flames that would consume it, I would be condemned forever
to live in a world of all my mistakes. But there is a SHIN, or flame, within the
name (nature) of the Son who is within me, which allows that Son to become
detached from states He formerly expressed within the world.
Man is incapable of seeing other than the contents of his own consciousness. If
I now become detached in consciousness from this room by turning my attention
away from it, then, I am no longer conscious of it. There is something in me
that devours it within me. It can only live within my objective world if I keep
it alive within my consciousness (by believing it. I don't. It goes away.)
It is the SHIN, or "devouring tooth," in the Son's name that gives him absolute
dominion. Why could it not have been in the Father's name? For this simple
reason: nothing can cease to be in the Father. Even the unlovely things cannot
cease to be. If I once give it expression, forever and ever it remains locked
within the dimensionally greater Self which is the Father. But I would not like
to keep alive within my world all of my mistakes. So I, God, in my infinite
mercy gave to myself, when I became man, the power to become detached from these
things that I, in my ignorance, brought to birth in my world.
(This concept, "the dimensionally larger Self," is huge in Neville's approach.
Everything that ever has existed, ever will exist, even ever can exist -- every
possibility of experience -- exists NOW in the dimensionally larger Self, which
is God. God is our awareness of being, our imagination, so we can go to this
world of unlimited possibility in our imaginations. You will see that if we can
get there and experience the dimensionally larger Self in spirit, it will
manifest in our objective world.)
These are the two names which give you dominion. You have dominion if, as you
walk the earth, you know that your consciousness is God, the one and only
reality. You become aware of something you would like to express or possess. You
have the ability to feel that you are and possess that which but a moment before
was imaginary.
The final result, the embodying of your assumption, is completely outside of the
offices of a three-dimensional mind. It comes to birth in a way that no man
knows. If these two names are clear in your mind's eye, you will see that they
are your eternal names, your nature. As you sit here, you are this JOD HE VAU
HE; you are the JOD HE VAU SHIN AYIN.
--------------
The stories of the Bible concern themselves exclusively with the power of
imagination. They are really dramatizations of the technique of prayer, for
prayer is the secret of changing the future. The Bible reveals the key by which
man enters a dimensionally larger world for the purpose of changing the
conditions of the lesser world in which he lives.
A prayer "granted" implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer,
which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, man is the spring of
action, the directing mind, and the one who grants the prayer.
The stories of the Bible contain a powerful challenge to the thinking capacity
of man. The underlying truth -- that they are psychological dramas and not
historical facts -- demands reiteration, inasmuch as it is the only
justification for the stories. With a little imagination we may easily trace the
psychological sense in all the stories of the Bible:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness: and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God created he him" Gen. 1: 26, 27.
Here in the first chapter of the Bible the ancient teachers laid the foundation
that God and man are one, and that man has dominion over all the earth. If God
and man are one, then God can never be so far off as even to be near, for
nearness implies separation.
The question arises: What is God? God is man's consciousness, his awareness of
being, his I AM-ness. The drama of life is a psychological one in which we bring
circumstances to pass by our attitudes rather than by our acts. The corner-stone
on which all things are based is man's concept of himself. He acts as he does,
and has the experiences that he does, because of his concept of himself,
whatever that is, and for no other reason. Had he a different concept of
himself, he would act differently and have different experiences.
Man, by assuming the feeling of his wish fulfilled, alters his future in harmony
with his assumption. For assumptions, though false, if sustained will harden
into fact.
The undisciplined mind finds it difficult to assume a state which is denied by
the senses. But the ancient teachers discovered that sleep, or a state akin to
sleep, aided man in making his assumption. Therefore, they dramatized the first
creative act of man as one in which man was in a profound sleep. This not only
sets the pattern for all future creative acts, but shows us that man has but one
substance that is truly his to use in creating his world, and that is himself.
"And the Lord God (man) caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and
he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib,
which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman." Gen. 2: 21, 22.
Before God fashions this woman for man, he brings unto Adam the beasts of the
field and the fowls of the air and has Adam name them. "Whatsoever Adam called
every living creature, that was the name thereof."
If you will take a concordance or a Bible dictionary and look up the word thigh*
as used in this story you will see that it has nothing to do with the thigh. It
is defined as the soft parts that are creative in a man, that hang upon the
thigh of a man. (*Neville has here mixed up two symbols of the creative power of
life, the rib of Adam in Genesis 2 and the sinew on the hollow of Jacob's thigh
in Genesis 32. The synonyms are rib and sinew, anyway, not rib and thigh.
Without being vulgar, please note that the image is an excited state. The
"woman" Eve, the mother of all living, is man's fervent mental desire. There is
no human woman here; each individual is father-mother to his or her world. It is
all psychological.)
The ancient story-tellers used this phallic frame to reveal a great
psychological truth. An angel is a messenger of God. You are God, as you have
just discovered, for your consciousness is God. And you have an idea, a message.
You are wrestling with an idea, for you do not know that you are already that
which you contemplate, neither do you believe you could become it. You would
like to, but you do not believe you could (because we are in amnesia).
Who wrestles with the angel? Jacob. And the word Jacob, by definition, means the
supplanter. You would like to transform yourself and become that which reason
and your senses deny. As you wrestle with your ideal, trying to feel that you
are it, this is what happens:
When you actually feel that you are it, something goes out of you. You may use
the words, "Who has touched me, for I perceive virtue has gone out of me?" You
become for a moment, after a successful meditation, incapable of continuing in
the act, as though it were a physical creative act. You are just as impotent
after you have prayed successfully as you are after the physical creative act.
When satisfaction is yours, you no longer hunger for it. If the hunger persists
you did not explode the idea within you, you did not actually succeed in
becoming conscious of being that which you wanted to be. There was still that
thirst when you came out of the deep.
If I can feel that I am that which but a few seconds ago I knew I was not, but
desired to be, then I am no longer hungry to be it. I am no longer thirsty
because I feel satisfied in that state. Then something shrinks within me, not
physically but in my feeling, in my consciousness, for that is the creativeness
of man. He so shrinks in desire, he loses the desire to continue in this
meditation. He does not halt physically, he simply has no desire to continue the
meditative act.
"When you pray, believe that you have received, and you shall receive." When the
physical creative act is completed, the sinew which is upon the hollow of man's
thigh shrinks, and man finds himself impotent or is halted. In like manner, when
a man prays successfully he believes that he is already that which he desired to
be, therefore he cannot continue desiring to be that which he is already
conscious of being. At the moment of satisfaction, physical and psychological,
something goes out which in time bears witness to man's creative power.
**************
Our next story is in the 38th chapter of the book of Genesis. Here is a King
whose name is Judah, the first three letters of whose name also begins JOD HE
VAU. Tamar is his daughter-in-law.
The word Tamar means a palm tree or the most beautiful, the most comely. She is
gracious and beautiful to look on and is called a palm tree. A tall, stately
palm tree blossoms even in the desert --- wherever it is there is an oasis. When
you see the palm tree in the desert, there will be found what you seek most in
that parched land. There is nothing more desirable to a man moving across a
desert than the sight of a palm tree.
In our case, to be practical, our objective is the palm tree. That is the
stately, beautiful one that we seek. Whatever it is that you and I want, what we
truly desire, is personified in the story as Tamar the beautiful.
We are told she dresses herself in the veils of a harlot and sits in the public
place. Her father-in-law, King Judah, comes by; and he is so in love with this
one who is veiled that he offers her a kid to be intimate with her.
She said, "What will you give me as a pledge that you will give me a kid?"
Looking around he said, "What do you want me to give as a pledge?"
She answered, "Give me your ring, give me your bracelets, and give me your
staff."
Whereupon, he took from his hand the ring, and the bracelet, and gave them to
her along with his scepter. And he went in unto her and knew her, and she bore
him a son.
That is the story, now for the interpretation. Man has one gift that is truly
his to give, and that is himself. He has no other gift, as told you in the very
first creative act of Adam begetting the woman out of himself. There was no
other substance in the world but himself with which he could fashion the object
of his desire. In like manner, Judah had but one gift that was truly his to give
-- himself, as the ring, the bracelets and the staff symbolized, for these were
the symbols of his kingship.
Man offers that which is not himself, but life -- Tamar -- demands that he give
the one thing that symbolizes himself: his kingship. "Give me your ring, give me
your bracelet, give me your scepter." These make the King. When he gives them,
he is actually giving himself.
You are the great King Judah. Before you can know your Tamar and make her bear
your likeness in the world, you must go in unto her and give yourself. Suppose I
want security. I cannot get it by knowing people who have it. I cannot get it by
pulling strings. I must become conscious of being secure.
Let us say I want to be healthy. Pills will not do it. Diet or climate will not
do it. I must become conscious of being healthy by assuming the feeling of being
healthy.
Perhaps I want to be dignified. I must become conscious of being noble and
dignified and walk as though I were that which I now want to be, lifted up in
this world. Merely looking at kings and presidents and noble people and living
in their reflection will not make me dignified. I must become conscious of being
noble and dignified and walk as though I were that which I want to be.
When I walk in that light, I give myself to the image that haunted my mind, and
in time she bears me a child; which means I objectify a world in harmony with
that which I am conscious of being.
You are King Judah, and you are also Tamar. When you become conscious of being
that which you want to be, you are Tamar. Then you crystallize your desire
within the world round about you.
No matter what stories you read in the Bible, no matter how many characters
these ancient story-tellers introduced into the drama, there is one thing you
and I must always bear in mind -- they all take place within the mind of the
individual man. All the characters live in the mind of the individual man.
As you read the story, make it fit the pattern of self. Know that your
consciousness is the only reality. Then know what you want to be. Then assume
the feeling of being that which you want to be, and remain faithful to your
assumption, living and acting on your conviction. Always make it fit that
pattern.
**************
Our third interpretation is the story of Isaac and his two sons: Esau and Jacob.
The picture is drawn of a blind man being deceived by his second son into giving
him the blessing which belonged to his first son.
The story stresses the point that the deception was accomplished through the
sense of touch. "And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee that I may
feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near
unto Isaac his father; and he felt him. . . . And it came to pass, as soon as
Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from
the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his
hunting." Gen. 27: 21, 30.
This story can be very helpful if you will re-enact it now. Again bear in mind
that all the characters of the Bible are personifications of abstract ideas and
must be fulfilled in the individual man. You are the blind father and both sons.
Isaac is old and blind, and, sensing the approach of death, calls his first son
Esau, a rough hairy boy, and sends him into the woods that he may bring in some
venison.
The second son, Jacob, a smooth skin boy, overheard the request of his father.
Desiring the birthright of his rough, hairy brother, Jacob, the smooth-skinned
son, slaughtered one of his father's flock and skinned it. Then, dressed in the
hairy skins of the kid he had slaughtered, he came through subtlety and betrayed
his father into believing that he was Esau.
The father said, "Come close my son that I may feel you. I cannot see, but come
that I may feel." Note the stress that is placed upon feeling in this story.
Jacob came close and the father said to him, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but
the hands are the hands of Esau." And feeling this roughness, the reality of the
son Esau, he pronounced the blessing and gave it to Jacob.
You are told in the story that as Isaac pronounced the blessing and Jacob had
scarcely gone out from his presence, that his brother Esau came in from his
hunting.
This is an important verse. Do not become distressed in our practical approach
to it, for as you sit here you, too, are Isaac.
This room in which you are seated is your present Esau. This is the rough or
sensibly-known world, known by reason of your bodily organs. All of your senses
bear witness to the fact that you are here in this room. Everything tells you
that you are here, but perhaps you do not want to be here.
You can apply this toward any objective. The room in which you are seated at any
time, the environment in which you are placed, this is your rough or
sensibly-known world or "son" which is personified in the story as Esau. What
you would like in place of what you have or are is your smooth-skinned state or
Jacob, the supplanter.
You do not send your visible world hunting, as so many people do, by denial. By
saying it does not exist, you make it all the more real. Instead, you simply
remove your attention from the region of sensation which at this moment is the
room round about you, and you concentrate your attention on that which you want
to put in its place, that which you want to make real.
In concentrating on your objective, the secret is to bring it here. You must
make elsewhere "here" and then "now." Imagine that your objective is so close
that you can feel it, as Isaac does Jacob's kid covered hands.
Suppose at this very moment I want a piano here in this room. To see a piano in
my mind's eye existing elsewhere does not do it. But to visualize a piano in
this room as though it were here and to put my mental hands upon it and to feel
it solidly real, is to take that subjective state personified as my second son,
Jacob, and bring it so close that I can feel it.
Isaac is called a blind man. You are blind because you do not see your objective
with your bodily organs. You cannot see it with your objective senses. You only
perceive it with your mind, but you bring it so close that you can feel it as
though it were solidly real now. When this is done and you lose yourself in its
reality and feel it to be real, open your eyes.
When you open your eyes what happens? The room that you had shut out but a
moment ago returns from the hunt as Esau. You no sooner gave the blessing --
felt the imaginary state to be real -- than the objective world, which seemingly
was unreal, returns. It does not speak to you with words as recorded of Esau,
but the very room round about you tells you by its presence that you have been
self-deceived.
It tells you that when you lost yourself in contemplation, feeling that you were
now what you wanted to be, feeling that you now possess what you desire to
possess, that you were simply deceiving self. Look at this room. It denies that
you are elsewhere.
If you know the law, you now say: "Even though your brother came through
subtlety and betrayed me and took your birthright, I gave him your blessing and
I cannot retract."
In other words, you remain faithful to this subjective reality and you do not
take back from it the power of birth. You gave it the right of birth and it is
going to become objective within this world of yours. There is no room in this
limited space of yours for two things to occupy the same space at the same time.
By making the subjective real, it resurrects itself within your world.
Take the idea that you want to embody, and assume that you are already it. Lose
yourself in feeling this assumption is solidly real. As you give it this sense
of reality, you have given it the blessing which belongs to the objective world,
and you do not have to aid its birth any more than you have to aid the birth of
a child or a seed you plant in the ground. The seed you plant grows unaided by a
man, for it contains within itself all the power and all the plans necessary for
self-expression.
You can this night re-enact the drama of Isaac blessing his second son and see
what happens in the immediate future in your world. Your present environment
vanishes, all the circumstances of life change and make way for the coming of
that to which you have given your life. As you walk, knowing that you are what
you wanted to be, you objectify it without the assistance of another.
**************
The fourth story for tonight is taken from the last of the books attributed to
Moses. If you need proof that Moses did not write it, read the story carefully.
It is found in the 34th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. Ask any priest or
rabbi, "who is the author of this book?", and they will tell you that Moses
wrote it.
In the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy you will read of a man writing his own
obituary, that is, Moses wrote this chapter. A man may sit down and write what
he would like to have placed upon his tombstone, but here is a man who writes
his own obituary. And then he dies and so completely rubs himself out that he
defies posterity to find where he has buried himself.
"So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to
the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over
against Beth-poer: but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day. And Moses
was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated." Deut. 34: 5, 6, 7.
You must this night -- not tomorrow -- learn the technique of writing your own
obituary and so completely die to what you are that no man in this world can
tell you where you buried the old man. If you are now ill and you become well,
and I know you by reason of the fact that you are ill, where can you point and
tell me you buried the sick one?
If you are impoverished and borrow from every friend you have, and then suddenly
you roll in wealth, where did you bury the poor man? You so completely rub out
poverty in your mind's eye that there is nothing in this world you can point to
and claim, that is where I left it. A complete transformation of consciousness
rubs out all evidence that anything other than this ever existed in the world.
The most beautiful technique for the realizing of man's objective is given in
the first verse of the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy:
"And Moses went up from the Plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top
of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of
Gilead, unto Dan."
You read that verse and say, "So what?" But take a concordance and look up the
words. The first word, Moses, means to draw out, to rescue, to lift out, to
fetch. In other words, Moses is the personification of the power in man that can
draw out of man that which he seeks, for everything comes from within, not from
without. You draw from within yourself that which you now want to express as
something objective to yourself.
You are Moses coming out of the plains of Moab. The word Moab is a contraction
of two Hebraic words, Mem and Ab, meaning mother-father. Your consciousness is
the mother-father: there is no other cause in the world. Your I AM-ness, your
awareness, is this Moab or mother-father. You are always drawing something out
of it. (He created Adam male and female.)
The next word is Nebo. In your concordance Nebo is defined as a prophecy. A
prophecy is something subjective. If I say, "So-and-so will be, " it is an image
in the mind; it is not yet a fact. We must wait and either prove or disprove
this prophecy.
In our language, Nebo is your wish, your desire. It is called a mountain because
it is something that appears difficult to ascend and is therefore seemingly
impossible of realization. A mountain is something bigger than you are, it
towers over you. Nebo personifies that which you want to be in contrast to that
which you are.
The word Pisgah, by definition, is to contemplate. Jericho is a fragrant odor.
And Gilead means the hills of witnesses. The last word is Dan, the Prophet.
Now put them all together in a practical sense and see what the ancients tried
to tell us. As I stand here, having discovered that my consciousness is God, and
that I can by simply feeling that I am what I want to be transform myself into
the likeness of that which I am assuming I am, I know now that I am all that it
takes to scale this mountain.
I define my objective. I do not call it Nebo, I call it my desire. Whatever I
want, that is my Nebo, that is my great mountain that I am going to scale. I now
begin to contemplate it, for I shall climb to the peak of Pisgah.
I must contemplate my objective in such a manner that I get the reaction that
satisfies. lf I do not get the reaction that pleases, then Jericho is not seen,
for Jericho is a fragrant odor. When I feel that I am what I want to be, I
cannot suppress the joy* that comes with that feeling.
*Feeling joy, appreciation and gratitude is, in fact, a huge factor in prayer.
I must always contemplate my objective until I get the feeling of satisfaction
personified as Jericho. Then I do nothing to make it visible in my world; for
the hills of Gilead, meaning men, women, children, the whole vast world round
about me, come bearing witness. They come to testify that I am what I have
assumed myself to be and am sustaining within myself. When my world conforms to
my assumption, the prophecy is fulfilled.
If I now know what I want to be, and assume that I am it, and walk as though I
were, I become it and becoming it I so completely die to my former concept of
self that I cannot point to any place in this world and say: that is where my
former self is buried. I so completely died that I defy posterity to ever find
where I buried my old self.
There must be someone in this room who will so completely transform himself in
this world that his close immediate circle of friends will not recognize him.
For ten years I was a dancer, dancing in Broadway shows, in vaudeville, night
clubs, and in Europe. There was a time in my life when I thought I could not
live without certain friends in my world. I would spread a table every night
after the theatre and we would all dine well. I thought I could never live
without them. Now I confess I could not live with them. We have nothing in
common today. When we meet we do not purposely walk on the opposite side of the
street, but it is almost a cold meeting because we have nothing to discuss. I so
died to that life that as I meet these people they cannot even talk of the old
times.
But there are people living today who are still living in that state, getting
poorer and poorer. They always like to talk about the old times. They never
buried that man at all; he is very much alive within their world.
Moses was 120 years, a full, wonderful age as 120 indicates. One plus two plus
zero equals three, the numerical symbol of expression, of completion. I am fully
conscious of my expression. My eyes are undimmed and the natural functions of my
body are not abated. I am fully conscious of being what I do not want to be.
But knowing this law by which a man transforms himself, I assume that I am what
I want to be and walk in the assumption that it is done. In becoming it, the old
man dies and all that was related to that former concept of self dies with it.
You cannot take any part of the old man into the new man. You cannot put new
wine in old bottles or new patches on old garments. You must be a new being
completely.
As you assume that you are what you want to be, you do not need the assistance
of another to make it so. Neither do you need the assistance of anyone to bury
the old man for you. Let the dead bury the dead. Do not even look back, for no
man having put his hand to the plow and then looking back is fit for the kingdom
of heaven.
Do not ask yourself how this thing is going to be. It does not matter if your
reason denies it. It does not matter if all the world round about you denies it.
You do not have to bury the old. "Let the dead bury the dead." You will so bury
the past by remaining faithful to your new concept of self that you will defy
the whole vast future to find where you buried it. To this day no man in all of
Israel has discovered the sepulcher of Moses.
**************
These are the four stories I promised you tonight. You must apply them every day
of your life. Even though the chair on which you are now seated seems hard and
does not lend itself to meditation you can, by imagination, make it the most
comfortable chair in the world.
Let me now define the technique as I want you to employ it. I trust each one of
you came here tonight with a clear picture of your desire. Do not say it is
impossible. Do you want it? You do not have to use your moral code to realize
it. It is altogether outside the reach of your code.
Consciousness is the one and only reality. Therefore, we must form the object of
our desire out of our own consciousness.
People have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things, and the
suggestion to create a state akin to sleep in order to aid you in assuming that
which reason and your senses deny, is one of the simple things you might slight.
However, this simple formula for changing the future, which was discovered by
the ancient teachers and given to us in the Bible, can be proved by all.
The first step in changing the future is Desire, that is, define your objective
-- know definitely what you want.
Second, construct an event which you believe you would encounter FOLLOWING the
fulfillment of your desire -- an event which implies fulfillment of your desire
-- something which will have the action of (your)self predominant.
The third step is to immobilize the physical body and induce a state akin to
sleep. Then, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action. Imagine all
the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW. You must
participate in the imaginary action in your imagination, not merely stand by and
look on, but FEEL that you are actually performing the action, so that the
imaginary sensation is real to you.
It is important always to remember that the proposed action must be one which
FOLLOWS the fulfillment of your desire, one which implies fulfillment. For
example, suppose you desired promotion in office. Then being congratulated would
be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire.
Having selected this action as the one you will experience in imagination to
imply promotion in office, immobilize your physical body and induce a state
bordering on sleep, a drowsy state, but one in which you are still able to
control the direction of your thoughts, a state in which you are attentive
without effort. Then visualize a friend standing before you. Put your imaginary
hand into his. Feel it to be solid and real, and carry on an imaginary
conversation with him in harmony with the FEELING OF HAVING BEEN PROMOTED.
You do not visualize yourself at a distance, in a distant point of space and at
a distant in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead,
you MAKE elsewhere HERE and the future NOW. The difference between FEELING
yourself in action, here and now, and visualizing yourself in action, as though
you were on a motion-picture screen, is the difference between success and
failure.
The difference will be appreciated if you will now visualize yourself climbing a
ladder. Then, with eyelids closed imagine that a ladder is right in front of you
and FEEL YOURSELF ACTUALLY CLIMBING IT.
Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action which implies
fulfillment of the desire, to condense the idea into a single act, and to
re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise,
your attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of
associated images will be presented to your attention, and in a few seconds they
will lead you hundreds of miles away from your objective in point of space and
years away in point of time.
If you decide to climb a particular flight of stairs because that is the likely
event to follow the fulfillment of your desire, then you must restrict the
action to climbing that particular flight of stairs. Should your attention
wander off, bring it back to its task of climbing that flight of stairs, and
keep on doing so until the imaginary action has all the solidity and
distinctness of reality.
The idea must be maintained in the mind without any sensible effort on your
part. You must, with the minimum of effort, permeate the mind with the feeling
of the wish fulfilled.
Drowsiness facilitates change because it favors attention without effort, but it
must not be pushed to the state of sleep in which you no longer are able to
control the movements of your attention. But a moderate degree of drowsiness in
which you are still able to direct your thoughts.
A most effective way to embody a desire is to assume the feeling of the wish
fulfilled and then, in a relaxed and drowsy state, repeat over and over again
like a lullaby, any short phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, such
as, "Thank you, thank you, thank you" as though you addressed a higher power for
having given you that which you desired.
I know that when this course comes to an end on Friday many of you here will be
able to tell me you have realized your objectives. Two weeks ago I left the
platform and went to the door to shake hands with the audience. I am safe in
saying that at least 35 out of a class of 135 told me that which they desired
when they joined this class they had already realized. This happened only two
weeks ago. I did nothing to bring it to pass save to give them this technique of
prayer. You need do nothing to bring it to pass - save apply this technique of
prayer.
With your eyes closed and your physical body immobilized, induce a state akin to
sleep and enter into the action as though you were an actor playing the part.
Experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now in
possession of your objective. Make elsewhere HERE and then NOW. And the greater
you, using a larger focus, will use all means and call them good which tend
toward the production of that which you have assumed.
You are relieved of all responsibility to make it so, because as you imagine and
feel that it is so your dimensionally larger self determines the means. Do not
think for one moment that someone is going to be injured in order to make it so,
or that some one is going to be disappointed. It is still not your concern. I
must drive this home. Too many of us, schooled in different walks of life, are
so concerned about the other.
You ask, "If I get what I want, will it not imply injury to another?" There are
ways you know not of, so do not be concerned.
Close your eyes now because we are going to be in a long silence. Soon you will
become so lost in contemplation, feeling that you are what you want to be, that
you will be totally unconscious of the fact that you are in this room with
others.
You will receive a shock when you open your eyes and discover we are here. It
should be a shock when you open your eyes and discover that you are not actually
that which, a moment before, you felt you were, or felt you possessed. Now we
will go "into the deep."
SILENCE PERIOD.........
**************
I need not remind you that you are now that which you have assumed that you are.
Do not discuss it with anyone, not even self. You cannot take thought as to the
HOW when you know that you ARE already.
Your three-dimensional reasoning, which is a very limited reasoning indeed,
should not be brought into this drama. It does not know. What you have just felt
to be true is true.
Let no man tell you that you should not have it. What you feel that you have,
you will have. And I promise you this much, after you have realized your
objective, on reflection you will have to admit that this consciously reasoning
mind of yours could never have devised the way.
You are that and have that which this very moment you appropriated. Do not
discuss it. Do not look to someone to give you encouragement because the thing
might not come. It has come. Go about your Father's business doing everything
normally and let these things happen in your world.
