The Law and the Promise

He said that we experience definite time intervals and that a time interval is part of the nature of our existence. I may want a new house and I may want that house right now, and I may think from the end of having that house, but he said, in effect, “The fact of the world that we experience here and now is that the trees have to grow to produce wood. The wood has to be harvested and the carpenter has to cut it. There will be time intervals.” And he would say, “Your time interval could be an hour, it could be a month, it could be weeks, it could be years.” There is a time interval. You nonetheless must stick to the ideal and try to make it just exquisitely effortless. He didn’t endorse using the will. This isn’t about saying, “I’m going to think this way.” It is going into this meditative or drowsy or hypnagogic state, picturing something that confirms the realization of your desire, and feeling it emotionally; he said that when the method fails maybe it’s because you’re trying too hard. Neville wanted people to understand that there is an exquisite ease that one should feel with exercises.

What you’re hearing now is something to try. Neville’s challenge was as ultimate as it was simple: “Put my ideas to the test.” Prove them to yourself or dismiss them, but what a tragedy would be not to try. It’s all so simple.

You exist in this world of infinite possibilities and realities, and that, in fact, when you mentally picture something, you’re not creating it—it already exists. You’re claiming it. The very fact of being able to experience it mentally confirms that in this world
of infinite possibilities, where imagination is the ultimate creative agent, everything that you can picture already is.

So I’m telling you of the power within you and that power is your own wonderful human imagination. And that is the only God in the world. There is no other God. That is the Jesus Christ of Scripture, so tonight take it seriously. If you really have an objective in this world and you’re waiting for something to happen on the outside to make it so, forget it. Do it in your own wonderful human imagination. Actually bring it into being in your own imagination. Conjure a scene which would imply the fulfillment of that dream and lose yourself in the action as you contemplate it, and completely lose yourself in that state. If you’re completely absorbed in it, you will objectify it and you will see it seemingly independent of your perception of it. But even if you do not have that intensity, if you lose yourself in it and feel it to true—the imaginal act—then drop it. In a way you do not know, it will become true.

Coué said that when imagination and will are in conflict, imagination always win. Your emotional state always overcomes your intellect.

Certainty in the absence of personal experience precludes effort.

Coué told people to gently repeat the mantra, “Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

We fear failure and humiliation more than we crave success, so we constantly sabotage our plans in order to avoid the possibility of failure. We procrastinate. We make excuses. We blow important due dates or wreck professional relationships because we’re more frightened of failure than we are hungry for success. But Brande further believed that if you were to act as though it were impossible to fail, you could bypass this self-negating pattern and achieve great things.

This presents a challenge. Because when you enact your mental scene of fulfillment, you also must attain the emotive state that you would feel in your fulfillment. When you approach this teaching you benefit from being a kind of actor or thespian, as Neville was early in his career. Method Acting is a good exercise for enacting this method. Read Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares. Anybody who’s been trained in Method Acting often learns to use a kind of inner monologue to get themselves into an emotional state. That’s a good exercise. You must get the emotions in play.

Let’s say you want a promotion at work. You could picture your boss saying to you, “Congratulations—well done!” You must try to feel the emotions that you would feel in that state. Hypnagogia can also help with this because, as noted, the rational defenses are lowered and the mind is more suggestible.

To review Neville’s formula: 1) Identify an intense and sincere desire. 2) Enter a state of physical immobility, i.e., the drowsy hypnagogic state. 3) Gently run a scene through your mind that would occur if your wish was fulfilled. Let it be an emotional experience.

Neville would always say, “When you open your eyes, you’ll be back here in the coarse world that you might not want to be in, but if you persist in this, your assumption will harden into fact.”