Neville Goddard (1954)
This being my last Sunday for a year, I wish to leave no doubt in your mind of what I tried to tell you in the last nineteen lectures. So I am going to ask a question which you can silently answer yourself. Have you lived this life of yours in such a way that you desire to live it again? Well, if you haven’t, you’d better listen very carefully to what I will say this morning, if you have not already started, for may I tell you the next life is this life. When the eye is opened you will see it, that man unless he awakes and changes the tracks of this life he walks them forever. So if you have not lived this life in such a way that you really desire to live it again, you start now to interfere with these tracks and laying new tracks.
Let me give you just one simple little vision; these are all true visions of the speaker. Lying on my bed, suddenly the eye opened, the inner eye opened, and I saw a man casually dressed in working clothes walking the sidewalks of a major city. As he came to a hole that was open to receive coal, in fact the coal had just been delivered, he dropped something from his hand and bending down instead of picking up the thing dropped, he picked up huge hunks of coal that were scattered around the hole, and then my vision relaxed. When I re-concentrated the vision it was on the early part of that scene of the man walking down the sidewalk. He came to the manhole, he dropped, as he had in the previous state, bending down he picked up the coal as he had done before. Everything was in detail. As I saw it for the second time, I said “Now that scene hasn’t changed one iota.” My attention again relaxed; when I re-concentrated it, it was on the early part of the scene. Now I could prophesy for that man; I knew exactly what he would do every moment of time right up to that manhole; that he would drop his package and not pick it up but pick up the coal. I knew he would look into that manhole and then change his mind either because someone below saw him pick it up and he didn’t want the consequences of his action or else he had a change of heart, but I knew in detail what that man would do.
We are walking tracks and the tracks are forever, and by the mere curvature of time your next life is this life. You simply replay it: so if you have not so played it that you are proud of it, you start now and you start the change today.
We have given you a system by which you change it. For those who haven’t heard why I say you walk tracks, you are standing forever in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy, and from this energy all things proceed, but they proceed according to pattern. Energy is moving in a certain pattern and you determine the pattern that it takes, for you actually lay down these tracks within you that energy flows over by the use of your inner conversations. This energy, I call it now mind, follows the tracks laid down in a man’s own inner talking. So if your inner conversations are not what they should be, I ask you today to start carrying on conversations within yourself from premises of fulfilled ideals; the man you want to be, the woman you want to be, if you have failed so far to embody it, now you begin to assume that you are that man, that you are that woman, and inwardly carry on conversations with your friends, those that respect you, or those you want to respect you, and carry on these conversations from the premises that they see in you the man and the woman that you want the world to see, just as though you were, and these words, inner words, which are really the breeding ground of future action will lay down new tracks and then the energy which is always flowing will flow over these tracks and the conditions and the circumstances of life will change. If you do not lay new tracks, I will prophesy for you you will find your self repeating it but you will not know you’ve done it before.
If I could only take you now into the inner vision with me and show you this room rising, everything rising in detail like a three dimensional curtain ascending, but everything is moving up and yet it remains. It is so altogether automatic that it ascends every moment of time the whole world is ascending, and as it ascends the world remains the same. It’s almost as though not a thing has happened, and so you can’t see it, but if the inner eye opens you see it ascend and as it leaves off that which begins is the duplicate, the perfect duplicate of the thing that rose and it rises in a three dimensional manner, so that when a man goes over these tracks he is totally unaware that he has walked them forever.
So I bring you a message to make you conscious: man must awake from the dream where he is simply an automaton. He moves like a machine, then he begins to awake and when he awakes then he is not that man at all that he seemingly in the past played for eternity. He awakes into a new being, a new man.
Now, the new man is a man of new conversations, as told you in Ephesians “Put off the former conversations, they belong to the old man that is corrupt, and put on the new man by a transformation of mind”, and the new man is identified with completely new words. He speaks only the kind things; he is incapable of any unlovely thought in the world; he is incapable of even listening to the unlovely for inwardly he speaks only the kind, only the loving things of the world. Then he finds himself awakening a man within that was asleep; he awakens the second man which is called Christ Jesus in the Bible, which I tell you now is your own wonderful, loving imagination. When imagination awakes it is incapable of being exercised in any way outside of the loving way. So every time you use your imagination lovingly, you are literally awakening this inner man and you’re mediating God to man. If I think of anyone in a loving way, I’m in contact with that being and God flows toward him.
Now because this is my last Sunday I will give you what I gave the class last Friday. Do not see it just as some metaphorical picture; see it as an actual picture. Imagine yourself at the very base of a wonderful waterfall and that water is flowing beautifully on you and imagine it’s flowing through you and now from you and flowing towards someone you think of. I make this statement because it’s a true statement; we are now in Eden but we are asleep as told you in the second of Genesis; man went sound asleep when he was placed to dress it and to keep it.
To awake, do this–just imagine yourself the center through which water radiates and everyone in this world is rooted in me and ends in me as I am rooted in and end in God: so I am in God’s garden, it’s Eden, but in God’s garden every man in the world has a plot, a little garden. In that garden there are trees that grow, you can see them; if I look at this man now and inwardly look at his plot in my garden I will see the trees, some will be called health, some I call wealth, the tree of dignity, the tree of nobility, the tree of being wanted–they may be withered, they will never really die but they may be withered, they are in need of water. Just imagine that you are watering that plant and see in your mind’s eye the leaves appear on what formerly was a barren plant. See the fruit appear and wherever he is in the world as you water his garden, which really is your own garden, as you water it he will embody the very qualities that the tree is now beginning to bear and radiate. You name the tree; whatever you name it, that it is: and you name this one if you know he is unwanted: he wants to be wanted. You name it and let the water flow towards it. Imagine it’s growing healthily in that garden and see it put out its leaves and see it put out its fruit. Wherever he is in the world he will begin to be wanted by people in his world. If he is unemployed, it’s a tree of employment and see it radiate its leaves and radiate its fruit; he will be wanted and he will be gainfully employed.
I tell you this is not just an idle statement, everyone here can do it and everyone should do it, and when ever you water the tree in anyone’s garden at the same time you are watering your own garden in the eternal one of God. For “I am the vine and ye are the branches”, every man can say the same thing. So as you rise here, there are 2600 of you, you individually are the central vine of God’s garden and everyone in your world is a branch in that vine. So when I, as a central vine, water a branch in my garden, at that same moment I am being watered and my garden is being watered in your wonderful garden. I don’t have to water my own, just by taking care of the many gardens in God’s Eden I take care of my own garden that is in the vine of everyone in the world.
You try it, and you can bless everyone in the world and then eventually the eye opens, the ear opens, the inner man awakes and you see the most glorious world which is always here to be seen, only we in our sleep had shut it out. We shut the whole wonderful golden world out by going to sleep and becoming an automaton; but take me seriously for your next life is this life. You make this life what you want to make it because if you don’t you will find yourself automatically and you won’t even know it, because as a sleeping person you don’t know you are walking the same track, but if I could only take you within me and let you see with the eye of the inner eye and watch these automatons in the world, sleeping people; yes, the eye is open and they seem to be awake, but they’re really sound asleep for they’re repeating the same thing.
Now become conscious; as you become conscious you enter the most glorious circle of awakened humanity. I call it the conscious circle of humanity, or as my old teacher used to call it “The Brothers”. It simply means the awakened man and when he awakes they’re all glorious beings for they are all the image of the Divine One. So try it, try it today with the art of revision. At the end of this day, review today. If some unlovely thing in the day, don’t allow it, you rewrite it. Take that same scene and rewrite it, and having rewritten it replay it. In your imagination you imagine the action to be unfolding and you replay everything in the world; as you replay it as you ought to have played it the first time you’ve changed it. And the moment is never receding as people think, the moment is advancing.
Now this may seem an insane statement to tell you- -that yesterday is today’s future: it seems insane you think it’s not, it’s past: but by the curvature of time you will discover but you will not know it, because you will be asleep unless you begin to awaken, and you will come upon what is yesteryear in your future, for the moment is never receding, it is always advancing into the future to confront us. And so if you don’t change it, you will simply find yourself repeating over and over what luckily in God’s infinite mercy that sleep shuts out the memory of it, so you are doing it and you think you’re doing it for the first time. But I ask you to awake for the purpose of this platform is to awaken everyone who comes here that we may all enter this brotherhood of awakened humanity.
Now we are told there were ‘two gifts given to man at birth’–it doesn’t mean this little birth when I left my mother’s womb but when I left the womb of my Father that is the grand womb, the womb of creation when, before the world was, He created me and made me perfect and set me in this world for a purpose, educative purpose, but He gave me two gifts; He gave me His own mind and He gave me the gift of speech, the very thing He used to create a world. So He spoke the world into being and then gave me the gift by which he spoke the world into being; so He gave me mind and speech. If I use the gift wisely, and do it rightly, I will be led into the realization, into the fulfillment of my every desire; not one is beyond my ability to realize. If I continually use it wisely when I quit the body, as the world calls a man dead, when I leave this into another dimension by the wise use of the same two gifts, I will be brought into the company of the blessed, if I awake. If I don’t use it wisely, I continue my circle of sleep; if I use it wisely, I will break the circle of recurrence and rise beyond it into eternity. If I don’t, I continue on the curved line of time and repeat it over and over until some day I awake, for I am destined to be conformed to the image of His son.
So I have no doubt that everyone will awake but why not start the awakening process now? And you start it by practicing the art of revision. You try it; don’t treat it idly. I ask you and I beg you to read and read over and over again the chapter “The Pruning Shears of Revision” and take it day after day, and never let the sun descend upon your wrath–any vexation, or any problem of the day. Resolve it before you sleep and carry that resolved picture into sleep and you will find the inner man awakening. But you try it with your friends and that you are the grand waterfall.
The Bible speaks of water, the mystic knows it does not mean water, it means truth, and so when I see anyone in my mind’s eye and see him free, I am giving him the only truth that will set him free. So if I water his plant, imagine the water is really going to it and I see the leaves begin to appear and that man becoming free: he becomes healthy, he becomes secure, he becomes loved, then those trees are growing beautifully in my garden, and so as I do that, not only will he benefit from my watering his plant but I will benefit, I will begin to awaken.
So I ask everyone here to really try it. Now I know today the title was “The Coin of Heaven”, but this being the last day, I thought I would simply give a sort of quick summary of what I have tried to tell you, for the purpose behind the nineteen lectures was to stimulate you to interfere with your time track that you may do something about it for the passage of time cannot change it. If you wait, thinking there is going to be some change beyond the grave, I tell you you will wait in vain. There is no transforming power beyond the grave. All transforming power is in man now to interfere with his time track and you interfere with it by simply changing one moment in the course of a day, not accepting it as final no matter how factual the day. You know you did have that experience, don’t allow the day to descend upon it and say “Well, I did have it”. Go back to that moment in time. rewrite it, replay it in the revised version, and do it over and over in your imagination until that takes on the tones of reality. As it takes on the tones of reality you have changed your future. Take another incident and change it and keep on changing all the little episodes, all the little experiences and make them conform to a more idealistic experience and relive it.
If anyone is here for the first time, you might think, well that’s fooling yourself, but you try it. Try it and see if the inner man will not awaken and when he awakens you will see a world that is automatic. You will see a world that’s a machine and the whole vast world playing their parts that they’ve played forever, and will continue to play on the curvature of time forever until he snaps out of it and rises from the dead. As you are told, “Awake, you that sleep and rise from the dead.”
The state called sleep now, is likened unto death where the son has died, so we are told the second son, the prodigal, that when he returned from that cycle and he was met, the father said: “He that was lost is found, and he that was dead is alive again”. So this state of lost-ness is likened unto death and the only purpose now is to rise; not to amass a fortune, although you are entitled to it, not to become famous, although you are entitled to it, but simply to awake from the state of sleep. And I know of no other way to awaken a man unless I can show him how mechanical he is and if you will take and practice seriously the art of revision, the eye will open and you will have the experiences the speaker spoke of. You, too, lying on your bed will find the eye peering into a city that may be 2000 miles away and there you will see more clearly than I see you now and you will watch the tracks of a man, and then disinterest and all of a sudden you decide to once more to be interested and you don’t have a memory image of the man, you see the whole thing all over again. You see the man walk the same sidewalk, he does everything he did a moment before. Then take it back again, that track is laid forever and he will walk it forever until he awakes.
So I ask everyone here to take me seriously. If this seems a bit too mystical for you, I don’t apologize; it’s the only thing I can give you, for as I begin to awake I’ve got to give you the food on which then my father feeds me. He feeds me on new ideas; he changes my values, he changes all my meanings in the world. I don’t have the same meaning I had last year; I don’t have the same values I had last year; for the motives I had last year might have been along a different line; but then all of a sudden things change and you can’t place value where formerly you placed it. You can’t place it on wealth, you can’t place it on names, you can’t place it on recognition. All your values change and then you begin to inwardly see a new wonderful world.
So I tell you this garden of which I speak is a true garden, this you call the world. Don’t believe for one moment you are in exile; this wonderful visible objective world of ours is not a place of exile, it’s the living garment of my father. It really is his living garment but it needs interpreters. Individual men come as they begin to awaken and they will interpret for you this strange discordant harmony, for to you if I tell you, everything in your world is related by affinity to your own mental activity, you can’t see it and so you can’t quite see this discord as related to you if you didn’t think that way that you know of, you weren’t conscious of it. If you were conscious of the activity within you, you would see everything related to yourself, your own being. What you do not now see you will still know it is still related, so interpreters come because the interpreter as he begins to awaken, he knows this wonderful world has a voice for him that speaks of things behind the veil, behind the veil of your own mind, for behind your face right now there’s an activity, an activity of your own imagination, and that activity, could you see it you would see it projected as the conditions and circumstances of your life. Not one thing is out of order, change the activity and you change the world in which you live, and you change that activity by the changing of your inner speech, for speech mirrors your mind and your mind mirrors God. If you don’t change the speech you haven’t changed the activity, and if you don’t change the activity you can’t change the conditions of life, for they only come bearing witness of this inner action of your mind.
So you want to change–I hope you do; but if you can now reflect upon your life, be it ten years, or be it sixty years, and you can’t say within yourself “I would want to live this again if I had the freedom of choice”, then you better start right now changing it, because I make you a prophesy, I make you a promise, your next life is this life. So if you cannot now in reflection say “I desire to live it again”, then start today to lay down new tracks because if you don’t you’re going to live it again, and living it again you won’t even know you are living it again. It is so altogether automatic, it’s so effortless as you walk the tracks, for you stand in the presence of energy and you can’t stop walking; you’ve laid them and you will walk them, and the curvature of time will bring you back and back and back forever and forever until you break it and you begin to awaken and when you awaken you enter a circle of awakened humanity. And I’ll tell you you know them more intimately than anyone you now know in the state of sleep. There is not a person on earth that you know as intimately as those who have awakened when you awake.
When you go into their presence and you mingle with them you become one. You do not lose your identity: in fact you tend ever toward greater and greater individualization. You never become absorbed and lose your identity, but as you awaken you awaken to the being that you always were but you had forgotten it and went sound asleep. There is a beauty in the inner man that the outer has never touched, never scarred, and so as you awaken and they will be there to meet you because they are awaiting eagerly for the breaking of the circle of recurrence. So you try it.
We have told you many things this year, many things that seemed too mystical, but I warned you, when I took it four Sundays ago, this year I would give you the end of a golden string and I called upon you to roll it into a ball, and if you did it would lead you in at heaven’s gate built in Jerusalem’s wall.
Well, I felt I have given you that string but I cannot roll it into a ball for you. I promise you I will water your garden but it won’t awaken you, it will awaken you only to lovelier things in a way, but it will not really break the circle for you, so I offer you now this day again the end of the golden string but I call upon you to wind it and roll it into a ball by the daily application of the principle of revision, by daily watching your inner actions and see if they correspond to the actions you desire to perform in the outer world.
Watch your conversations carefully; are they from premises of fulfilled ideas? If they’re not, go back and make them and make them actually correspond to the ideal you want to embody in this world. Start, that is winding it into a ball and it will lead you in at heaven’s gate built in Jerusalem’s wall. I have no doubt in my mind for I know from experience that’s how I opened up that wall; I opened it up by application. So I warned you every time I have taken the platform that the knowledge you have now is of no avail unless it’s applied. A little knowledge if carried out in action is more profitable than much knowledge which you neglect to carry out in action. If you had all the knowledge in the world and you didn’t put it into practice, you wouldn’t awaken.
Now here this morning everyone has heard it; you take it today and start this day revising, and watch the circle begin to snap, watch the eye begin to open, and I tell you there isn’t a gift on earth, there isn’t a possession in the world that you would want more than the opening of the eye when the eye opens. That’s why I say your values change, the meaning of life changes, for you wouldn’t sell the eye that opens for all the wealth of the world; you wouldn’t exchange it for any recognition in the world now conferred upon the so-called great. You see the so called great all equally sound asleep playing their parts walking curved lines, and then you snap it and move into a wonderful world of awakened humanity and there you see these glorified beings, but really glorified beings, who preceded you into the conscious circle of humanity.
And now my time is up.