THE ART OF DYING

Neville Goddard 3-23-1959

If you are with us for the first time, this is what we believe and teach here. We firmly believe that
you, the individual, can realize your every dream, and the reason is that God and man are one.
We believe that the difference is not in the mentality with which we operate, but only in the
degrees of intensity of the operant power itself, and that we call human Imagination.
Keats said: “You can take any one great and spiritual passage and it will serve as a starting point
to lead you to the two-and-thirty palaces. Take this simple one in Paul’s letters to the
Corinthians: “I die daily,” or Blake’s statement in his letter to Crab Robinson: “Death is the best
thing in life. There is nothing in life like death, but people take such a long time in dying. At
least, their neighbors never see them rise from the grave.” If you understood Blake you would
not think of death as the world thinks of death, but you would see that no one can grow without
outgrowing. But man is not willing to outgrow, [and] yet he wants other things than those he has.
But if you remain in one state, you will forever have to suffer the consequences of not being in
another state. (From the “Hermetica”). If I remain in the state of poverty, I must suffer the
consequences of not being in the state of wealth. So I must learn the art of dying. Paul says: “I
die daily.” Blake says: “People take such a long time in dying.” Man does not outgrow his state
of ill health or his old job or his environment. We must learn the art of dying, and this week is
the great death and we are told that God dies that man may live.
We say that the Imagination of God and man are one, no matter how far it goes. Universes are
created and sustained by “the same power that sustains our environment.” We say the power is
the same, but we recognize a vast difference between the power that sustains the universe and
that which sustains an environment. The difference is only in the degree of intensity of the center
of imagining. So, if we increase the intensity in the center of imagining, we will create greater
and greater things. So I see my dream, and I must learn to die to what I AM in order to live to
what I want to be.
Now this is the mystical meaning of a death in the Bible – the death of Moses, a story familiar to
all of us. We are told that Moses comes out of the land of Moab (Deuteronomy 34) and then
scales the mountain of Nebo, goes to Pisgah, sees Gilead, and finally he looks into the promised
land of Jericho. But the Lord tells him: “I will let you see the land, but you cannot go into it.”
Then Moses dies. (The present state cannot be carried into the new; it has to die as a
consequence of the new made alive.) “But his eye was not dim and his natural force was not
abated.” And no one knows his burial place. First, remember that all the characters of the Bible
take place in the mind of man. I am Moses, you are Moses. It means to “lift up” or to “draw out
of.” We are told in the very beginning of the story that he was pulled from the bulrushes. The
word [“Moses” – in Hebrew, “Moshe”] spelled backwards in the ancient Hebrew means “the
Name” [haShem] or “I AM.” So I am drawing out of my own being, or the I AM. Moses comes
from “Mo ab.” This comes from two Hebrew words meaning “Mother-Father,” or “womb.” Then
he scales the mount of Nebo, which means “to prophesy,” or which represents the subjective
state I long for. I will prophesy for you, or you for another. You single out a person’s longing. If
he longs for something it means that he does not have it, else there could be no longing. But
Moses climbs Nebo – that is, he participates in seeing the state longed for. I single out something
that implies I am the man I want to be. I scale the mountain. Then comes Pisgah, which means,
“to contemplate.” I contemplate what I want to be. Then he sees Jericho, which means “a
fragrant odor.” I will contemplate the desired state until I get the feeling or reaction that satisfies.
I have not only scaled Nebo, but I have reached Pisgah and looked into Jericho. I am filled with
the emotion that implies the act is completed. Then there is Gilead, which means “hills of
witnesses.” Then I, as Moses, die. I cannot go into the promised land, and no one can find where
I am buried.
What does it mean? If I am poverty-ridden and frightened and then you meet me and see me as
free as a bird and happy, then I am not the man you knew who was frightened. Then where is
that other man buried? For Moses is the power in man (generic man, male-female) to draw out of
himself anything in this world he desires, and to so enact the drama that he dies to what he was,
that he may live to what he is enacting. That is Moses – and no one can know where he is buried.
But we are told: “His eye was not dime nor his natural force abated.” That is [to say], when I die,
that is when I enact the drama. I do not wait for signs to appear; it is when I am most aware of
my restrictions and feel the pressures, then is when I must learn to die. I must learn to let go of
what my senses dictate and “go mad” and yield to what is only a dream. But sustaining it and
living in it, I die to what was physically real as I gradually lift up what was only the dream. You
knew only the frightened man and not the other one. No one can tell where the other has gone.
So this is how the art of dying is dramatized in the Bible as the death of a man. But it has nothing
to do with any certain man, for the story of the Bible takes place in the mind of every man. I will
crucify myself, for God crucified himself in me that I might live. But now I must nail myself
upon the thing I desire and, remaining faithful to it, lift it up as God nailed himself upon me. (the
present body) is believing himself a man called Neville, giving Neville the same power that is his
(but keyed low) in the hope that I will lift up the power to bigger things in my world to which I
can nail myself, and so lift them up. There is no possibility of man making his dream alive unless
He nails himself to this cross that is man. We are living because God nailed himself to us. Now
man, keyed low, yielding to other states and not to what the senses dictate, becomes one with the
state and nails himself to it (fixes himself in the state through emotion and feeling) and then he
will be lifted up.
For crucifixion comes before resurrection. Crucifixion without resurrection would be
unthinkable; it would be the utter triumph of tyranny. If I could yield myself to my dream and it
would not become flesh, it would be complete tyranny over this wonderful concept of life. But
you cannot fail if you yield. If you hold back within yourself, wonder “What will I play as my
last card if this doesn’t work?” then you have not yielded, you have not nailed yourself to it. It is
a complete yielding. It is the great cry “My God! My God! Why has Thou forsaken me?” If you
know that you’re God doing it, you can yield. But there must be complete abandonment as
though it were true and then you make it a reality. The cost is that form of mental abandonment
that Blake calls “madness.” But man is afraid; he dare not so abandon himself to a dream, and so
never “dies.” So Blake was right when he said: “There is nothing like death: the best thing in life
is death.”
Many people only age, but never change inwardly. They only mature physically, but they have
not died in the mystical sense. There is no transforming power in the physical death, and they
will still be anchored in a larger world with all the trends of this world. To our senses they seem
to be dead but they will still, on another plane, have to learn the art of dying. I can anywhere so
detach myself from what is taking place that I can “die” to that state. So every little death is the
lifting of the divine image. This means dying as the mystic means it. It means dying mentally.
Man dies to ill health, or poverty, or to disharmony, etc., but he does it by yielding to other
states.
Blake looks on all states as permanent, as in his great poem regarding the Halls of Los: “I curse
the earth for man and made it permanent.” So states remain and man passes through states, as
though cities. If I do not pass through some state, but remain in it, I think [it] is the only reality.
You cannot conceive of a state that is not, for the whole is finished; but man is awakening only
by dying to state after state.
You take a friend who is not well or cannot set himself free from some state. You represent that
friend to yourself as he should be seen by the whole world, and to the degree that you are faithful
to that representation, to that degree you will bring him out of the old state. It does not matter if
he knows you did it or not; he does not have to know. But remain faithful and you will bring him
out of the old state into the new state that you are seeing. All things are burned up when we cease
to behold them. Moses could see the promised land but he could not go into it. If I am true to the
likeness of what I behold, then I – the “old” man – cannot go into the new state. Something
called the power goes into it, but [no one] recognizes it, for they cannot recognize the
transformed being.
We all feel so secure in recurrence. If we know that a thing is fixed and that next week things
will be as they are today, I feel secure in that recurrence. I can have done something that violates
the moral codes, I can have come from the wrong side of the tracks, but I can accept that, for I
am used to it. But to say that something awakes in me and can become what it will – that is
frightening to man. So we are told to awake out of sleep, for recurrence brings security to the
whole vast world. One does what he does as if he did it in a nightmare. For God had to “forget”
he was God to become man, and that whittling down to this level is [the] very limit of
contraction. But then comes the awakening from that deep dream into which he threw himself to
make me alive. So this lifting-up power goes about setting men free, for God became every man,
that every man may in time awaken as God. Eventually the whole [world] will awaken and the
poem will be in full bloom and it will be noble beyond our wildest dreams. And then it will exist
for us and we will be one with the creator of the great poem. That is [the] art of dying.
Next Sunday is the great drama. I am riding a beast and I am the crossroads. “Bring me a colt on
which no man ever sat, that is tied by the road where two ways meet.” Here is a state I have
never ridden before. It is so unnatural to feel myself to be the man I want to be and to actually
get into that state and ride it without being thrown by reason, which tells me I am made. But if
you know the Lord is your Imagination, you can ride it into Jerusalem. We [are] told [we] will
find the animal at a crossroads where two roads meet. We are always at a crossroads of what I
am and what I want to be. So, can I ride the beast I find at the crossroads and ride it into
Jerusalem? Then I am going toward “heaven,” but it is not continuous on my line of motion. It is
contiguous. It is adjacent to where I am, for heaven is a state of consciousness. I try to catch the
feeling that would be mind if [I were] the man I [want] to be, but that involves a death. I must
abandon myself to my dreams as if it were true, and – living in it – I lift it up and make it real.
Everyone must pass through this state, for this is the only true religion in the world. Religion,
like charity, begins at home, with one’s self. The mother seed of all religious beliefs lies in the
mystical experiences of the individual. All ceremonies are but secondary growths superimposed
upon it.
Religion means, “to be tied or devoted to.” But if I am not in love with what I am tied to, I must
yield to something more lovely and make it real. I must bear my cross. I go so far and then I
want to cross to the other line where my heaven is. For everything is inter-related. We all
interpenetrate each other. We are all one. So there is interpenetration of the whole world and then
comes conflict, and from that comes the solution of the conflict. For we must conflict if we are
all interpenetrated. But then we must bring about reconciliation. Whatever the solution is, that is
the reconciliation. But we cannot stay in a state or any condition forever. Each new state bears
within it the seeds of new conflict. Every heaven becomes in time hell. A thing is ours for a
moment, but as we continue in it, it will bring about conflict. As long as there is interpenetration
there is always conflict. So live in any desired state and then as conflict arises resolve it and die
to it and then move into another state. Thus we grow and outgrow; thus man awakes.
No man can be born in one environment and ever realize another if he does not yield to the state
desired. So Blake was right: “The best thing in life is death but it takes man so long to die that
his friends never see him rise from the grave.” Can you not see then how it is with your friend
who always tells you the same things, even though you have not seen him for ten years?
Everything is still recurring, nothing is new, but that makes him feel secure. Man does not want
change; it frightens him.
I tell you that your Imagination is God. Believe it. Exercise it. It is keyed low, but as you lift it
up you intensify it and then vision after vision will be yours as you begin to awake. Do not think
you are greedy because you are demanding things or the changing of things. You are here to
create as your Father creates. Want what you want and yield to it and create it. Then you will
want higher and higher things. But nothing blesses a man unless it comes down from its
heavenly state and takes on flesh. You are the only one who can clothe it in reality. But it
remains a state unless you yield to it.
This drama in the Bible is all about you, for the Christ Jesus of the gospels is your own
wonderful Imagination. There is only an infinite God and the creation he loved. And he so loved
it, he wanted to make it alive and then share it and even change it, so God became man that man
may become God. That is the great story of the gospels. Every mystic in the world tells this same
story. Then every man is free. There is no judgment, for no matter what man has done, it is
God’s doing it in a nightmare. There is only complete forgiveness of sin – no judgment and no
argument, but man can change facts. The past can be unmade. So a man has done this or that.
Use your strange Imagination and “turn the great wheel backward until Troy un-burns.” It means
to revise.
I know a lady who burned her hand and then “unburned” it. She poured boiling water on her
hand. She lay on the couch and tried to unto mentally what had been done. It was difficult
because of the pain but she kept trying. She redid the scene and poured the boiling water on the
tea and brewed it and then she drank the tea. She did it over and over and finally in the act of
thus making the tea she fell asleep. When she awoke some hours later, there was no trace of the
burn. She wrote: “You would have thought I should go right to the hospital, but now there is not
even a sign of the burn.”
Comment: The past and present are one in a greater moment.
Now let us go into the silence.