Manifesting vs. Total Reversal

Neville On Fire

Manifesting -- this is the preferred topic in all the discourse on Neville. It seems to imply two distinct things: my mind, and the external world. Neville’s message is instead a total reversal: the two are one and the same. The Universe is mental in nature (=the psyche). This idea appears in ancient traditions.

SHOW NOTES
1. First episode summary
In Neville’s lecture Fundamentals, he sets out 3 practices:
a. self-observation
b. definition of aim
c. separation, also called detachment or non-identification.

2. There are many these days talking about manifesting our reality. We could easily mislead ourselves by taking this in a materialist sense.
Neville follows on the principle in the Hermetic writings that the Universe is mental in nature. He also quotes Blake, saying: ”all you behold, though it appears without/ It is within, in your imagination”.

3. Neville’s view is good news to those who look for parallels between the mystic philosophies of the East and West.
At the risk of oversimplifying the matter, here are some excerpts from Buddhist and Hinduist texts.

4. There is no qualitative difference between a dream image, a memory image and the sensory image before us.
Why then does the (seeming) external world in the present moment have such a forceful aspect of hard reality? He answers: the imagination is immersed in and acting from the present sensory image.

5. This is difficult to intuitively grasp. For many it will seem nonsense, but consider it carefully.
Already with the practised acquisition of wordless self-consciousness (see Ep 001) objections to new ideas are taking on a relative quality. It is liberating. The external world is not threatening us from the position of an independently existing and malevolent force, but is merely a reflection.

I am convinced that this is the very heart of the secret knowledge in ancient schools and traditions.

To those who might think this is all nonsense from the point of view of science. Material science itself and its seeming quality of absolute truth are nothing more than constructs of the mind.

6. Exercise - let’s put the whole thing into practice.

KEY QUOTE
“The feeling of the wish fulfilled, if assumed and sustained, must objectify the state that would have created it.” (Neville, Prayer, The Art of Believing)

RESOURCES

Prayer, The Art of Believing by Neville; text and audio by Barry Peterson

Please see also Barry Peterson's complete online offering of Neville's material, some paid, some free:
audioenlightenment.com

Wikipedia entry: Solipsism
See sub-sections on Hinduism and Buddhism.

The intent is not to embrace solipsism as an intellectual position, but to contemplate the reality of the unity of mind/world.

The Life and Teaching of Naropa, by Herbert V. Guenther (1963)