In this final Lesson #5, Neville Goddard emphasizes the necessity of truly knowing an idea by being able to explain it clearly, using the analogy of a fisherman and the dolphin. He reinterprets Biblical stories as dramas of the human mind, illustrating how every character and event represents attributes of consciousness. Goddard then defines prayer as the ‘‘feeling of the wish fulfilled’’ and lays out techniques for assuming that feeling to manifest desires, including non-acceptance of sensory lack and complete forgiveness. He offers practical exercises: immobilizing the body, inducing a drowsy state, and vividly imagining a post-fulfillment event to reshape one’s future. The lecture culminates in a three-step method—define your objective, construct an indicative event, and mentally enact it here and now—and extends into advanced fourth-dimensional theory. Throughout, the importance of joy, singing, and rejoicing as the only acceptable spiritual offerings is underscored. Goddard closes by reminding students not to look back on past states, but to remain faithful to their assumption, trusting the unconscious to objectify it.
I know that when a man sees a thing clearly he can tell it, he can explain it. This past winter in Barbados a fisherman, whose vocabulary would not encompass a thousand words, told me more in five minutes about the behaviour of the dolphin than Shakespeare with his vast vocabulary could have told me, if he did not know the habits of the dolphin.
This fisherman told me how the dolphin loves to play on a piece of drift-wood, and in order to catch him, you throw the wood out and bait him as you would bait children, because he likes to pretend he is getting out of the water. As I said, this man’s vocabulary was very limited, but he knew his fish, and he knew the sea. Because he knew his dolphin he could tell me all about their habits and how to catch them.
When you say you know a thing but you cannot explain it, I say you do not know it, for when you really know it you naturally express it.
If I should ask you now to define prayer, and say to you, “How would you, through prayer, go about realizing an objective, any objective?” If you can tell me, then you know it; but if you cannot tell me, then you do not know it. When you see it clearly in the mind’s eye the greater you will inspire the words which are necessary to clothe the idea and express it beautifully, and you will express the idea far better than a man with a vast vocabulary who does not see it as clearly as you do.
If you have listened carefully throughout the past four days, you know now that the Bible has no reference at all to any persons that ever existed, or to any events that ever occurred upon earth.
The authors of the Bible were not writing history, they were writing a great drama of the mind which they dressed up in the garb of history, and then adapted it to the limited capacity of the uncritical, unthinking masses.
You know that every story in the Bible is your story, that when the writers introduce dozens of characters in the same story they are trying to present you with different attributes of the mind that you may employ. You saw it as I took perhaps a dozen or more stories and interpreted them for you.
For instance, many people wonder how Jesus, the most gracious, the most loving man in the world, if he be man, could say to his mother, what he is supposed to have said to her as recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel of St. John. Jesus is made to say to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” John 2:4.
You and I, who are not yet identified with the ideal we serve, would not make such a statement to our mother. Yet here was the embodiment of love saying to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”
You are Jesus, and your mother is your own consciousness. For consciousness is the cause of all, therefore, it is the great father-mother of all phenomena.
You and I are creatures of habit. We get into the habit of accepting as final the evidence of our senses. Wine is needed for the guests and my senses tell me that there is no wine, and I through habit am about to accept this lack as final. When I remember that my consciousness is the one and only reality, therefore if I deny the evidence of my senses and assume the consciousness of having sufficient wine, I have in a sense rebuked my mother or the consciousness which suggested lack; and by assuming the consciousness of having what I desire for my guests, wine is produced in a way we do not know.
I have just read a note here from a dear friend of mine in the audience. Last Sunday he had an appointment at a church for a wedding; the clock told him he was late, everything told him he was late.
He was standing on a street corner waiting for a street car. There was none in sight. He imagined that, instead of being on the street corner, that he was in the church. At that moment a car stopped in front of him. My friend told the driver of his predicament and the driver said to him, “I am not going that way, but I will take you there.” My friend got into the car and was at the church in time for the service. That is applying the law correctly, non-acceptance of the suggestion of lateness. Never accept the suggestion of lack.
In this case I say to myself, “What have I to do with thee?” What have I to do with the evidence of my senses? Bring me all the pots and fill them. In other words, I assume that I have wine and all that I desire. Then my dimensionally greater Self inspires in all, the thoughts and the actions which aid the embodiment of my assumption.
It is not a man saying to a mother, “Woman what have I to do with thee?” It is every man who knows this law who will say to himself, when his senses suggest lack, “what have I to do with thee. Get behind me.” I will never again listen to a voice like that, because if I do, then I am impregnated by that suggestion and I will bear the fruit of lack.
We turn to another story in the Gospel of St. Mark where Jesus is hungry.
“And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.”
“And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.” Mark 11:13, 14
“And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.” Mark 11:20
What tree am I blasting? Not a tree on the outside. It is my own consciousness. “I am the vine.” John 15:1. My consciousness, my I AMness is the great tree, and habit once more suggests emptiness, it suggests barrenness, it suggests four months before I can feast. But I cannot wait four months. I give myself this powerful suggestion that never again will I even for a moment relieve that it will take four months to realize my desire. The belief in lack must from this day on be barren and never again reproduce itself in my mind.
It is not a man blasting a tree. Everything in the Bible takes place in the mind of man: the tree, the city, the people, everything. There is not a statement made in the Bible that does not represent some attribute of the human mind. They are all personifications of the mind and not things within the world.
Consciousness is the one and only reality. There is no one to whom we can turn after we discover that our own awareness is God. For God is the cause of all and there is nothing but God. You cannot say that a devil causes some things and God others. Listen to these words.
“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.”
“I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.”
“And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.” Isaiah 45: 1, 2, 3
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7.
“I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.”
“I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts.” Isaiah 45:12, 13
“I AM the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.” Isaiah 45:5.
Read these words carefully. They are not my words, they are the inspired words of men who discovered that consciousness is the only reality. If I am hurt, I am self hurt. If there is darkness in my world, I created the darkness and the gloom and the depression. If there is light and joy, I created the light and the joy. There is no one but this I AMness that does all.
You cannot find a cause outside of your own consciousness. Your world is a grand mirror constantly telling you who you are. As you meet people, they tell you by their behaviour who you are.
Your prayers will not be less devout because you turn to your own consciousness for help. I do not think that any person in prayer feels more of the joy, the piety, and the feeling of adoration, than I do when I feel thankful, as I assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled, knowing at the same time it is to myself that I turned.
In prayer you are called upon to believe that you possess what your reason and your senses deny. When you pray believe that you have and you shall receive. The Bible states it this way:
“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
“And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
“But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.” Mark 11:24, 25, 26
That is what we must do when we pray. If I hold some thing against another, be it a belief of sickness, poverty , or anything else, I must loose it and let it go, not by using words of denial but by believing him to be what he desires to be. In that way I completely forgive him. I changed my concept of him. I had ought against him and I forgave him Complete forgetfulness is forgiveness. If I do not forget then I have not forgiven.
I only forgive something when I truly forget. I can say to you until the end of time, “I forgive you.” But if every time I see you or think of you, I am reminded of what I held against you, I have not forgiven you at all. Forgiveness is complete forgetfulness. You go to a doctor and he gives you something for your sickness. He is trying to take it from you, so he gives you something in place of it.
Give yourself a new concept of self for the old concept. Give up the old concept completely.
A prayer granted implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, I myself am the spring of action, the directing mind and the one who grants the prayer.
Anyone who prays successfully turns within, and appropriates the state sought. You have no sacrifice to offer. Do not let anyone tell you that you must struggle and suffer. You need not struggle for the realization of your desire. Read what it says in the Bible.
“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.”
“When ye come to appear before me, who hath required that at your hand, to tread my courts?”
“Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.”
“Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them” Isaiah 1:11-14
“Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel.” Isaiah 30:29
“Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth.” Isaiah 42: 10.
“Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.” Isaiah 44:23
“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head. They shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” Isaiah 51:11
The only acceptable gift is a joyful heart. Come with singing and praise. That is the way to come before the Lord — your own consciousness. Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, and you have brought the only acceptable gift. All states of mind other than that of the wish fulfilled are an abomination; they are superstition and mean nothing.
When you come before me, rejoice, because rejoicing implies that something has happened which you desired. Come before me singing, giving praise, and giving thanks, for these states of mind imply acceptance of the state sought. Put yourself in the proper mood and your own consciousness will embody it.
If I could define prayer for anyone and put it just as clearly as I could, I would simply say, “It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” If you ask, “What do you mean by that?” I would say, “I would feel myself into the situation of the answered prayer and then I would live and act upon that conviction.” I would try to sustain it without effort, that is, I would live and act as though it were already a fact, knowing that as I walk in this fixed attitude my assumption will harden into fact.
Time does not permit me to go any further into the argument that the Bible is not history. But if you have listened attentively to my message these past four nights, I do not think you want any more proof that the Bible is not history. Apply what you have heard and you will realize your desires.
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“And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” John 14:29
Many persons, myself included, have observed events before they occurred; that is, before they occurred in this world of three dimensions. Since man can observe an event before it occurs in the three dimensions of space, then life on earth proceeds according to plan; and this plan must exist elsewhere in another dimension and is slowly moving through our space.
If the occurring events were not in this world when they were observed, then to be perfectly logical they must have been out of this world. And whatever is THERE to be seen before it occurs HERE must be “pre-determined” from the point of view of man awake in a three-dimensional world. Yet the ancient teachers taught us that we could alter the future, and my own experience confirms the truth of their teaching.
Therefore, my object in giving this course is to indicate possibilities inherent in man, to show that man can alter his: future; but, thus altered, it forms again a deterministic sequence starting from the point of interference — a future that will be consistent with the alteration.
The most remarkable feature of man’s future is its flexibility. The future, although prepared in advance in every detail, has several outcomes. We have at every moment of our lives the choice before us which of several futures we will have.
There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by everyone — a natural focus and a spiritual focus. The ancient teachers called the one “the carnal mind,” and the other “the mind of Christ.” We may differentiate them as ordinary waking consciousness, governed by our senses, and a controlled imagination, governed by desire.
We recognize these two distinct centers of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Cor. 2:14
The natural view confines reality to the moment called NOW. To the natural view, the past and future are purely imaginary. The spiritual view on the other hand sees the contents of time. The past and future are a present whole to the spiritual view. What is mental and subjective to the natural man is concrete and objective to the spiritual man.
The habit of seeing only that which our senses permit renders us totally blind to what, otherwise, we could see. To cultivate the faculty of seeing the invisible, we should often deliberately disentangle our minds from the evidence of the senses and focus our attention on an invisible state, mentally feeling it and sensing it until it has all the distinctness of reality.
Earnest, concentrated thought focused in a particular direction shuts out other sensations and causes them to disappear. We have only to concentrate on the state desired in order to see it.
The habit of withdrawing attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on the invisible develops our spiritual outlook and enables us to penetrate beyond the world of sense and to see that which is invisible. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” Rom. 1:20. This vision is completely independent of the natural faculties. Open it and quicken it!
A little practice will convince us that we can, by controlling our imagination, reshape our future in harmony with our desire. Desire is the mainspring of action. We could not move a single finger unless we had a desire to move it. No matter what we do, we follow the desire which at the moment dominates our minds. When we break a habit, our desire to break it is greater than our desire to continue the habit.
The desires which impel us to action are those which hold our attention. A desire is but an awareness of something we lack and need to make our life more enjoyable. Desires always have some personal gain in view, the greater the anticipated gain, the more intense is the desire. There is no absolutely unselfish desire. Where there is nothing to gain there is no desire, and consequently no action.
The spiritual man speaks to the natural man through the language of desire. The key to progress in life and to the fulfillment of dreams lies in ready obedience to its voice. Unhesitating obedience to its voice is an immediate assumption of the wish fulfilled. To desire a state is to have it. As Pascal has said, “You would not have sought me had you not already found me.”
Man, by assuming the feeling of his wish fulfilled, and then living and acting on this conviction, alters the future in harmony with his assumption. Assumptions awaken what they affirm. As soon as man assumes the feeling of his wish fulfilled, his fourth-dimensional Self finds ways for the attainment of this end, discovers methods for its realization.
I know of no clearer definition of the means by which we realize our desires than to EXPERIENCE IN THE IMAGINATION WHAT WE WOULD EXPERIENCE IN THE FLESH WERE WE TO ACHIEVE OUR GOAL. This imaginary experience of the end with acceptance, wills the means. The fourth-dimensional Self then constructs with its larger outlook the means necessary to realize the accepted end.
The undisciplined mind finds it difficult to assume a state which is denied by the senses. But here is a technique that makes it easy to “call things which are not seen as though they were,” that is, to encounter an event before it occurs. People have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things. But this simple formula for changing the future was discovered after years of searching and experimenting.
The first step in changing the future is DESIRE, that is, define your objective — know definitely what you want.
Secondly, 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 Self predominant.
Thirdly, immobilize the physical body, and induce a condition akin to sleep by imagining that you are sleepy. Lie on a bed, or relax in a chair. Then, with eyelids closed and your attention focused on the action you intend to experience in imagination, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action here and. now.
You must always participate in the imaginary action; not merely stand back 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. Also you must feel yourself into the action until it has all the vividness and distinctness of reality.
For example, suppose you desire promotion in your office. 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, immobilize the physical body; and induce a state akin to 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 action.
You do not visualize yourself at a distance in point of space and at a distance in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead, you make elsewhere HERE, and the future NOW. The future event is a reality NOW in a dimensionally larger world and oddly enough, now in a dimensionally larger world is equivalent to HERE in the ordinary three-dimensional space of everyday life.
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.
Desire, physical immobility bordering on sleep, and imaginary action in which Sell feelingly predominates HERE AND NOW, are not only important factors in altering the future, but they are also essential conditions in consciously projecting the spiritual Self.
When the physical body is immobilized and we become possessed of the idea to do something — if we imagine that we are doing it HERE AND NOW and keep the imaginary action feelingly going right up until sleep ensues — we are likely to awaken out of the physical body to find ourselves in a dimensionally larger world with a dimensionally larger focus and actually doing what we desired and imagined we were doing in the flesh.
But whether we awaken there or not, we are actually performing the action in the fourth-dimensional world, and will in the future re-enact it here in the third-dimensional world.
Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action, to condense the idea which is to be the object of our meditation into a single act, and to re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise, the attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of associated images will be presented to our attention, and in a few seconds they will lead us hundreds of miles away from our objective in point of space, and years away in point of time.
If we decide to climb a particular flight of stairs, because that is the likely event to follow the realization of our desire, then we must restrict the action to climbing that particular flight of stairs. Should the 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 field of presentation without any sensible effort on our part. We must, with the minimum of effort, permeate the mind with the feeling of the wish fulfilled.
Drowsiness facilitates change because it favours attention without effort, but it must not be pushed to the state of sleep, in which we shall no longer be able to control the movements of our attention, but a moderate degree of drowsiness in which we are still able to direct our thoughts.
A most effective way to embody a desire is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then, in a relaxed and sleepy 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, ” until the single sensation of thankfulness dominates the mind. Speak these words as though you addressed a higher power for having done it for you.
If, however, we seek a conscious projection in a dimensionally larger world, then we must keep the action going right up until sleep ensues. Experience in imagination with all the distinctness of reality what would be experienced in the flesh were we to achieve our goal and we shall in time meet it in the flesh as we met it in our imagination.
Feed the mind with premises — that is, assertions presumed to be true, because assumptions, though false, if persisted in until they have the feeling of reality, will harden into fact.
To an assumption, all means which promote its realization are good. It influences the behaviour of all, by inspiring in all the movements, the actions, and the words which tend towards its fulfillment.
To understand how man molds his future in harmony with his assumption — by simply experiencing in his imagination what he would experience in reality were he to realize his goal – we must know what we mean by a dimensionally larger world, for it is to a dimensionally larger world that we go to alter our future.
The observation of an event before it occurs implies that the event is predetermined from the point of view of man in the three-dimensional world. Therefore to change the conditions here in the three dimensions of space we must first change them in the four dimensions of space.
Man does not know exactly what is meant by a dimensionally larger world, and would no doubt deny the existence of a dimensionally larger Self. He is quite familiar with the three dimensions of length, width and height, and he feels that, if there were a fourth-dimension, it should be just as obvious to him as the dimensions of length, width and height.
Now a dimension is not a line. It is any way in which a thing can be measured that is entirely different from all other ways. That is, to measure a solid fourth-dimensionally, we simply measure it in any direction except that of its length, width and height. Now, is there another way of measuring an object other than those of its length, width and height?
Time measures my life without employing the three dimensions of length, width and height. There is no such thing as an instantaneous object. Its appearance and disappearance are measurable. It endures for a definite length of time. We can measure its life span without using the dimensions of length, width and height. Time is definitely a fourth way of measuring an object.
The more dimensions an object has, the more substantial and real it becomes. A straight line, which lies entirely in one dimension, acquires shape, mass and substance by the addition of dimensions. What new quality would time, the fourth dimension give, which would make it just as vastly superior to solids, as solids are to surfaces and surfaces are to lines? Time is a medium for changes in experience, for all changes take time.
The new quality is changeability. Observe that, if we bisect a solid, its cross section will be a surface; by bisecting a surface, we obtain a line, and by bisecting a line, we get a point. This means that a point is but a cross section of a line; which is, in turn, but across section of a surface; which is, in turn, but a cross section of a solid; which is, in turn, if carried to its logical conclusion, but across section of a four-dimensional object.
We cannot avoid the inference that all three-dimensional objects are but cross sections of four-dimensional bodies. Which means: when I meet you, I meet a cross section of the four-dimensional you — the four-dimensional Self that is not seen. To see the four-dimensional Self I must see every cross section or moment of your life from birth to death, and see them all as co-existing.
My focus should take in the entire array of sensory impressions which you have experienced on earth, plus those you might encounter. I should see them, not in the order in which they were experienced by you, but as a present whole. Because CHANGE is the characteristic of the fourth dimension, I should see them in a state of flux — as a living, animated whole.
Now, if we have all this clearly fixed in our minds, what does it mean to us in this three-dimensional world? It means that, if we can move along times length, we can see the future and alter it if we so desire.
This world, which we think so solidly real, is a shadow out of which and beyond which we may at any time pass. It is an abstraction from a more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — a more fundamental world abstracted from a still more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — and so on to infinity. For the absolute is unattainable by any means or analysis, no matter how many dimensions we add to the world.
Man can prove the existence of a dimensionally larger world by simply focusing his attention on an invisible state and imagining that he sees and feels it. If he remains concentrated in this state, his present environment will pass away, and he will awaken in a dimensionally larger world where the object of his contemplation will be seen as a concrete objective reality.
I feel intuitively that, were he to abstract his thoughts from this dimensionally larger world and retreat still farther within his mind, he would again bring about an externalization of time. He would discover that, every time he retreats into his inner mind and brings about an externalization of time, space becomes dimensionally larger. And he would therefore conclude that both time and space are serial, and that the drama of life is but the climbing of a multitudinous dimensional time block.
Scientists will one day explain WHY there is a Serial Universe. But in practice HOW we use this Serial Universe to change the future is more important. To change the future, we need only concern ourselves with two worlds in the infinite series; the world we know by reason of our bodily organs, and the world we perceive independently of our bodily organs.
I have stated that man has at every moment of time the choice before him which of several futures he will have. But the question arises: “How is this possible when the experiences of man, awake in the three-dimensional world, are predetermined?” as his observation of an event before it occurs implies.
This ability to change the future will be seen if we liken the experiences of life on earth to this printed page. Man experiences events on earth singly and successively in the same way that you are now experiencing the words of this page.
Imagine that every word on this page represents a single sensory impression. To get the context, to understand my meaning, you focus your vision on the first word in the upper left-hand corner and then move your focus across the page from left to right, letting it fall on the words singly and successively. By the time your eyes reach the last word on this page you have extracted my meaning.
But suppose on looking at the page, with all the printed words thereon equally present, you decided to rearrange them. You could, by rearranging them, tell an entirely different story, in fact you could tell many different stories.
A dream is nothing more than uncontrolled four-dimensional thinking, or the rearrangement of both past and future sensory impressions. Man seldom dreams of events in the order in which he experiences them when awake. He usually dreams of two or more events which are separated in time fused into a single sensory impression; or else he so completely rearranges his single waking sensory impressions that he does not recognize them when he encounters them in his waking state.
For example, I dreamed that I delivered a package to the restaurant in my apartment building. The hostess said to me, “You can’t leave that there,” whereupon, the elevator operator gave me a few letters and as I thanked him for them he, in turn, thanked me. At this point, the night elevator operator appeared and waved a greeting to me.
The following day, as I left my apartment, I picked up a few letters which had been placed at my door. On my way down I gave the day elevator operator a tip and thanked him for taking care of my mail, whereupon, he thanked me for the tip.
On my return home that day I overheard a doorman say to a delivery man, “You can’t leave that there.” As I was about to take the elevator up to my apartment, I was attracted by a familiar face in the restaurant, and as I looked in the hostess greeted me with a smile. That night I escorted my dinner guests to the elevator and as I said good-bye to them, the night operator waved good-night to me.
By simply rearranging a few of the single sensory impressions I was destined to encounter, and by fusing two or more of them into single sensory impressions, I constructed a dream which differed quite a bit from my waking experience.
When we have learned to control the movements of our attention in the four-dimensional world, we shall be able to consciously create circumstances in the three-dimensional world. We learn this control through the waking dream, where our attention can be maintained without effort, for attention minus effort is indispensable to changing the future. We can, in a controlled waking dream, consciously construct an event which we desire to experience in the three-dimensional world.
The sensory impressions we use to construct our waking dream are present realities displaced in time or the four-dimensional world. All that we do in constructing the waking dream is to select from the vast array of sensory impressions those, which, when they are properly arranged, imply that we have realized our desire.
With the dream clearly defined we relax in a chair and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. A state which, although bordering on sleep, leaves us in conscious control of the movements of our attention. Then we experience in imagination what we would experience in reality were this waking dream an objective fact.
In applying this technique to change the future it is important always to remember that the only thing which occupies the mind during the waking dream is THE WAKING DREAM, the predetermined action and sensation which implies the fulfillment of our desire. How the waking dream becomes physical fact is not our concern. Our acceptance of the waking dream as physical reality wills the means for its fulfillment.
Let me again lay the foundation of prayer, which is nothing more than a controlled waking dream:
1. Define your objective, know definitely what you want.
2. Construct an event which you believe you will encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant — an event which implies the fulfillment of your desire.
3. Immobilize the physical body and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. Then, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action, until the single sensation of fulfillment dominates the mind; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW so that you experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now to realize your goal. Experience has convinced me that this is the easiest way to achieve our goal.
However, my own many failures would convict me were I to imply that I have completely mastered the movements of my attention. But I can, with the ancient teacher, say:
“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize.” Phil. 3:13,14
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Again I want to remind you that the responsibility to make what you have done real in this world is not on your shoulders. Do not be concerned with the HOW, you have assumed that it is done, the assumption has its own way of objectifying itself. All responsibility to make it so is removed from you.
There is a little statement in the book of Exodus which bears this out. Millions of people who have read it, or have had it mentioned to them throughout the centuries have completely misunderstood it. It is said, “Steep not a kid in its mothers milk.” (King James version, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mothers milk.” Exodus 23:19).
Unnumbered millions of people, misunderstanding this statement, to this very day in the enlightened age of 1948, will not eat any dairy products with a meat dish. It just is not done.
They think the Bible is history, and when it says, “Steep not a kid in its mother’s milk,” milk and the products of milk, butter and cheese, they will not take at the same time they take the kid or any kind of meat. In fact they even have separate dishes with which to cook their meat.
But you are now about to apply it psychologically. You have done your meditation and you have assumed that you are what you want to be. Consciousness is God, your attention is like the very stream of life or milk itself that nurses and makes alive that which holds your attention. In other words, what holds your attention has your life.
Throughout the centuries a kid has been used as the symbol of sacrifice. You have given birth to everything in your world. But there are things that you no longer wish to keep alive, although you have mothered and fathered them. You are a jealous father that can easily consume, like Cronus, his children. It is your right to consume what formerly you expressed when you did not know better.
Now you are detached in consciousness from that former state. It was your kid, it was your child, you embodied and expressed it in your world. But now that you have assumed that you are what you want to be, do not look back on your former state and wonder HOW it will disappear from your world. For if you look back and give attention to it, you are steeping once more that kid in its mother’s milk.
Do not say to yourself, ‘I wonder if I am really detached from that state,” or “I wonder if so and so is true.” Give all your attention to the assumption that the thing is so, because all responsibility to make it so is completely removed from your shoulders. You do not have to make it so, it IS so. You appropriate what is already fact, and you walk in the assumption that it is, and in a way that you do not know, I do not know, no man knows, it becomes objectified in your world.
Do not be concerned with the how, and do not look back on your former state. “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62
Simply assume that it is done and suspend reason, suspend all the arguments of the conscious three-dimensional mind. Your desire is outside of the reach of the three-dimensional mind.
Assume you are that which you wish to be; walk as though you were it; and as you remain faithful to your assumption — it will harden into fact.
Goddard begins by contrasting superficial knowledge with true understanding. The fisherman’s simple yet precise account of dolphin behavior stands as a metaphor for the clarity of vision one must cultivate: when you truly ‘‘know’’ something, you can express it in your own words. This opening sets the stage for his larger thesis on consciousness and the power of imagination.
He then reinterprets the Bible, not as historical record but as a symbolic drama of the mind. Characters like Jesus and events like the fig tree are personifications of mental states—consciousness is the only reality, and our sensory experiences are mere cross-sections of a larger, invisible world. This allegorical reading frees the student from dogmatic constraints and opens the door to inner transformation.
Central to the lesson is Goddard’s definition of prayer as ‘‘the feeling of the wish fulfilled.’’ He provides concrete exercises: assume the state you desire, replay it vividly in a drowsy, relaxed state, and persist until that assumption hardens into fact. He stresses non-acceptance of negative suggestions—asking ‘‘What have I to do with thee?’’ of senses that contradict the wished-for state—and complete forgiveness as total forgetfulness of past grievances.
Moving into fourth-dimensional theory, Goddard explains how time functions as a dimension of change. By experiencing in imagination events that follow fulfillment, one effectively moves into a ‘‘dimensionally larger world’’ where the future is already present. Controlled waking dreaming, anchored by desire, attention without effort, and sensory vividness, becomes the mechanism for reshaping destiny.
Finally, he offers practical wisdom: do not concern yourself with how manifestation occurs, and never look back. ‘‘Steep not a kid in its mother’s milk’’ becomes a metaphor for withholding attention from obsolete states. By remaining faithful to one’s assumption and relinquishing doubt, the inner ‘‘I AMness’’ works invisibly to bring the wish into three-dimensional reality.
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