“Be Still” from the book ASK! by Walter Lanyon

This chapter, from the book ASK! by Walter Lanyon, came to me right when I needed to read it. I’m posting it here in hopes that it inspires you, too!

For a reading of this chapter on my YouTube channel, click here.

To the best of my knowledge, this work is in the public domain.

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BE STILL
by Walter Lanyon
from his book ASK!

“Be Still, and Know That I Am God.”

Suddenly, for the first time I began to see or hear what BE STILL meant. It is a letting go of every desire–every wish or idea–a blankness. When this is established, the Power of God has the unobstructed way of expression and comes through into manifestation. Manifestation is the last stage.

It is action in non-action–when there is no “THINK” action in this inactivity of the personal, the Divine comes into manifestation. Not to fulfill the wishes and desires and ideas I had treasured for a lifetime, but to bring out the things that “eye hath not seen.” It is a discovery that reality, which has been trying to come through for so long, is about to express itself with ease and naturalness.

It is not a mental stillness– not trying to be still. It is a sudden letting go of everything– a complete surrender into a place of “Divine Indifference”– sudden recognition that this is what “Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity” must be– but it is God’s opportunity only when there is a “stillness.” As the non-action of thought finally becomes apparent then, “Let come what may” floods into your universe with LIGHT such as you have not yet known– and the veils of human belief are rent.

The glory (that indefinable substance) fills the house, the consciousness, and reveals that which is and always has been.

When you are still, all the mad human thought, desire, craving dies. The breath is quiet, flowing in and out of the temple automatically. You are imbreathed. Something happens that you have not yet known. Something starts pulsating. Life is manifested.

“Ye have not chosen me,but I have chosen you.”

At first it may be a mere platitude, a poetic thought. Eventually it must reveal a basic law– more accurate and unchangeable than mathematics. Awakening begins. Deep, deep in the heart something stirs. It is recognition. It is remembrance– “and he remembered” while he was yet Prodigal. “And He remembered.” He had gone through thousands of attempts to change and make something happen by man-made ideas and learning. He had sought the world over for a “teacher,” a Guru– and had finally landed in the “pigsty” with the husks of personal teaching around him, and the veils of human thought and belief still “grunting” ideas of how to “Get” things and change the face of the universe. He had discovered it was only a sort of “rooting” in the mud of ancestor teaching so filled with futility and frustration in the torrid currents of evil.

That which awakened him sounded remote and far away at first– impossible of attainment– yet there it was echoing in the inner recesses of his being: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” He could hear it with great longing and desire. That would do nothing. Finally he must HEAR it–discover IT. Not as something that had to be put on, or practiced, or made true, but as something which had to be RECOGNIZED as true. The Choosing of ME brought inaction of the human mind and provided a wide-open channel for the action of God. Action in inaction took place. “I can of mine own self do nothing” — “but with God all things are possible” cleared the way for a glorious revelation. A discovery that Jesus, unimpeded by the hypnosis of human belief, passed through closed doors into expression, even as the wind passes through the screen. Suddenly he DISCOVERS “that his father had enough and to spare.”

Somehow at the moment of NO thought, he was STILL and could HEAR for the first time the “Lord in the midst of THEE”– and it had something to say and do which had nothing in common with the gauche words of man’s wisdom; it began to extend all the senses into a place where revelation took place, and the “Look again” brought out that which had been impossible before. The miracle ceased to be the miracle and became the natural normal order and action of God in the Kingdom of heaven and he began to understand how it was that He had “twice as much as he had before” and how it was possible to “Look again” and see the hypnotic ignorance of man and ancestor teaching telescoped into nothingness. A thousand years are as a day.

He who chooses ME is chosen by ME– “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.” The legitimate question would be “What for”? For the purpose of earning my living by the sweat of my brow? The answer could only come when the “still” state had taken place, and there was no question or answer, opinions or personal ideas in the mind of man, only a STILL-ness; a blankness of human thought. Then could the “NAME” be whispered to him– then could he hear, and for the first time hear “Be still and know”– and he could hear also the authority for this new dimension: “Call no man your Father.” If he heard this SECRET word and stopped trying to make it so, and let it come into being, he would drop the great weight of ancestor teaching. The avid desire to do something is suddenly spent.

He who is chosen by God finds suddenly that he is only discovering that which is. He is motivated by the ONE and accomplishes whatsoever he sets his hand unto, in way not possible to the labored human thought, even Praxiteles changed a piece of marble into the appearance of chiffon covering a Goddess. A Thousand systems “technique” will not produce it. The action of God through the inaction of man causes man to release a thing of beauty, to reveal that which is.

Be STILL — very STILL — yes, even stiller than STILL.

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I’ve created a PDF e-book of another Lanyon book, The Laughter of God. It’s edited from several online sources and formatted for optimal reading on most phones and tablets. For more information on that, including a link to the download page, click here.

“The Twins Turn 21” – ebook collection of adult comics

The first e-book of my TWINS comics, The Twins Turn 21, is a 61-page collection of full-color uncensored adult comics, some of them published originally in tamer black and white versions in my ‘zine Metanoia, and some of them never before published. It’s a full-color PDF e-book, readable on any device without loss of formatting.

Click here to see some sample comics!

THE TWINS TURN 21 will be available for purchase again in spring 2023.

“Distilled Neville”

(This article originally appeared in issue #16 of my newsletter Metanoia)

With Neville Goddard’s teachings, I find myself often trying to distill the message he put across into the simplest terms possible, so that when I feel “stuck,” I can find a quick and easy way out.

See what you think of this:

Our unconditioned awareness of being is God.

Neville: “When you say ‘I am,’ that’s God.”

Athanasius: “God became man that man might become God.” We are God, the Elohim: “a compound unity, one made up of many.”

This is why the two greatest commandments are said to be “Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

If we are all God, then there is no “other,” and the Golden Rule becomes not prescriptive (“Thou shalt do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), but DEscriptive (“When you do unto others, you are doing unto yourself.”)

When we condition our awareness of being (I AM) with feeling, it is a creative act.

We have been using this principle of creative imagining– bringing forth reality via our assumptions– our whole lives, only we weren’t aware of it.

Neville: “A man does not attract what he wants. He attracts what he is,” or what he feels to be true.

All things bring forth after their kind.

If I feel “I am rich, I am poor, I am healthy, I am ill, I am loved, I am unloved, I am worthy, I am unworthy,” or other things to be true, then they bring forth after their kind; they reproduce in my world.

Few people want to be poor, ill, unloved, or unworthy, but if they feel that they are, then their world will reflect this.

To quote William Blake: “What seems to be is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences, to those to whom it seems to be. But divine mercy steps beyond and redeems us in the body of Jesus.”

The “body of Jesus” is our capacity to create and redeem using our imaginative faculty, or, as the Apostle Paul said, “Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

The acts that Jesus performed in the Bible were more than just stories of one-off “miracles;” they were intructive parables meant to show us how to use our imaginative powers creatively to bring forth desired ends.

The “good news” of the Gospel is that this principle can be used deliberately. We don’t have to settle for “what seems to be.” We can create a better reality for ourselves and for others by imagining deliberately.

Quoting Blake again, “All that we behold, though it appears without, it is within, in our imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”

Neville: “An assumption– though false, though reason denies it and the evidence of my senses denies it– if persisted in will harden into fact.”

If my reality has come forth based on my assumptions –what I feel to be true– then it follows that if I assume (feel) that something is true– even though it’s denied by my senses– and I persist in that assumption, it should come forth in my world.

This is the test that the Apostle Paul called us to.

“Come test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course, you fail to meet the test.”  (2 Corinthians 13:5)

The method of testing and bringing forth a desired reality is via prayer.

Prayer is not supplication, wishing, or begging.

Prayer is the act of assuming that your desired end is already an accomplished fact.

Neville: “Go to the end. The end is where we begin.”

No matter what we desire, the end is always: How would I feel if my desire was an accomplished fact?

“When you pray, whatsoever you desire, believe that you have already received it and you will.” (Mark 11:24)

And: “But as for you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber and lock your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret shall himself reward you openly.” (Matthew 6:6)

In order to bring forth a desired end, it’s not only necessary to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, but also to turn away completely from any undesired fact or reality.

Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt when she looked back. (Genesis 19:26) Salt is a preservative. By looking back at undesired facts, we “preserve” them in our world.

Neville: “Don’t accept it as permanent. Don’t even accept it as temporary. Use the law to get out of it.”

Finally: “When Job prayed for his friends, his captivity was lifted, and the Lord gave him twice as much as before.” (Job 42:10)

Since “there is no other,” since “the Lord our God is one,” and since the Golden Rule is descriptive and not prescriptive, the highest use of prayer and imaginative principles is to use them lovingly on behalf of others.

How’s that for a start?

This article originally appeared in issue #16 of my biweekly print-only ‘zine Metanoia.

Metanoia is my biweekly print-only ‘zine, usually two, sometimes four, pages.

To receive the latest issue of it, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to
Max Shenk
39 South Main St, rm 138
White River Junction, VT 05001

OR
You can go to my shop at Ko-fi.com, where you can get either a subscription or back issues. Or both!

Perverse frowardness

“To understand (the Bible) you need a little intelligence and much intuition– intelligence enough to enable you to read the book, and intuition enough to interpret and understand what you read.” ~ Neville Goddard, from his book Freedom For All

I’ve bookmarked a “random bible verse” website on my laptop, phone and tablet, and any time I feel like I need a shot of inspiration, I refresh the page, and more often than not, what I get is germane to whatever my needs are at the moment.

This morning, when I logged on, the verse on the page was Proverbs 10:32. By default, the site shows the translation from the New International Version (NIV), with alternate translations below that. Here is the NIV translation:

The lips of the righteous know what finds favor,
but the mouth of the wicked only what is perverse.

One of the things I learned from the most astute biblical scholar I’ve yet read, Neville Goddard, is that I need to read it critically. The Bible, he wrote in Freedom For All, was “written in an Eastern symbolism… by the Eastern mind and therefore cannot be taken literally by those of the west…. Why was it not written in a clear, simple style so that all who read it might understand it?… All men speak symbolically to that part of the world that differs from their own. The language of the West is clear to us of the West, but it is symbolic to the East, and vice versa.”

Goddard cites as an example the phrase “on the rocks.” “The man of the West would unintentionally mislead the man of the East by saying ‘This bank is on the rocks,’ for the expression ‘on the rocks’ to the Westerner is equivalent to bankruptcy, while a rock to an Easterner is a symbol of faith and security.”

This made me aware that I needed to look beyond the surface to glean meaning from the Bible, but then confounding the issue further is the fact that there is not one “Bible,” but numerous (dare I say “countless”) translations of “the same” work. That’s another thing I learned from Neville: I need to both consult multiple translations of the Bible and use a concordance. If a word or passage doesn’t “feel right,” he said, don’t accept it: cross-reference it in multiple editions and look it up in a concordance or another exhaustive scholarly work (The Interpreter’s Bible and The Encyclopedia Biblica are two such works that he mentioned frequently).

The “random bible verse” website presented six translations of the “same verse” quoted above, and I also consulted my own varied translations. Depending on which translation you consulted, Proverbs 10:32 tells you the following:

The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable:
But the mouth of the wicked speaketh frowardness.
(King James Version)

The lips of the godly speak helpful words,
but the mouth of the wicked speaks perverse words.
(New Living Translation)

The mouth of the good utters wisdom
but the perverted tongue destruction.
(Ferrar Fenton)

The speech of good men is a breath of pleasure
but bad men talking breathe out malice.
(James Moffatt)

The lips of the righteous know what is good;
but the mouth of the wicked speaks perverse things.
(George Lamsa)

Finally, perhaps the most reliable translation was in The Amplified Old Testament, a work which endeavored, in the editors’ words, “to reveal, together with the single-word English equivalent to each key Hebrew word, any other clarifying shades of meaning that may have been concealed by the traditional word-for-word method of translation.” The translators used parentheses for those “additional phrases of meaning included in the original word, phrase or clause,” and brackets for “clarifying words or comments… which are not actually expressed in the original text.”

The “Amplified” translation of Proverbs 10:32 is…

The lips of the (uncompromisingly) righteous know [and therefore utter] what is acceptable, but the mouth of the wicked knows [and therefore speaks only] what is obstinately willful and contrary.

That might be the translation that “feels” correct, but I had to go through six others to find it!

The amplified translation pointed me to a word that I found troubling in the other translations: perverse and its forms. At least six editions presented that word choice translated from the original Hebrew word (transliteration) tahpûkâh, which, according to Strong’s concordance, means “a perversity or fraud:— (very) froward (-ness, thing), perverse thing.”

Only the King James (ironically the first English translation of the batch, from 1611) opted for frowardness. That word intrigued me, so I went to Merriam Webster’s online dictionary (even though I have a compact OED at hand; sometimes, though, I don’t feel like using the magnifier!) to get its meaning: “habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition.” That word, although archaic, “feels right,” especially given the Amplified translation.

For as right as froward felt, perverse and perversity felt wrong. It’s not that perverse is not one of the shades of meaning of the original Hebrew word; rather, it’s that to my 21^st century mind, perverse and its derivatives have connotations which probably weren’t in the original text.

Merriam-Webster defines the primary meaning of the root word perverse as “turned away from what is right or good,” followed by “improper, incorrect,” “obstinate in opposing what is right, reasonable or accepted,” or “arising from or indicative of stubbornness or obstinancy.” Those all seem to be the traditional senses of the word’s meaning, and I’d guess that those senses are what the translators were attempting to convey in choosing perverse.

It was with the fourth sense of meaning, which cross references the derivative perversion, where my problem with the word comes in: “a perverted form especially an aberrant sexual practice or interest”(their emphasis).

That was my gut level response to the word “perverse” in those multiple translations: that it conveys a sense of sexual deviancy.

While that may be the limited modern use of the word, I don’t think that that’s what the original Hebrew text was attempting to convey. “Fraud” (from the Hebrew) seems closer, and “habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition” (from “froward”) really hits home. The Amplified translation seems to capture both of those, without the limited, commonly-held, modern implications of “perversity.”

Interesting: according to Merriam Webster’s website, the original use of “froward” was as an antonym for “forward.” “Froward meant ‘moving or facing away from something or someone,’” which may have led to its other original early meaning: “difficult to deal with, perverse.” The King James Bible was published in 1611, so both of those shades of meaning probably influenced the translators.

Of all the translations, again, the Amplified version not only felt like it resonated with my current situation (that was, after all, the original point of the exercise), but, objectively, it seems to capture the depth and dimensions of the original text’s meaning best, without using words which our modern sensibilities might shade with limited understanding. If I hadn’t read that, I’d go with the King James choice of “frowardness,” which, again, conveys shades and dimensions of meaning that include but are not limited to the most common choice, “perverse.”

It’s a cautionary tale to translators: in translating ancient texts to make them “more accessible to modern readers,” be sure that your word choices are as close to all senses of the original meaning as possible.

Lest the original meanings of the texts get perverted.

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To support my blog, buy me a cuppo coffee, why don’tcha?

Walter Lanyon e-book THE LAUGHTER OF GOD

“‘To be absent from the body’ is not some fantastic experience: it is recognizing the presence (of God)… There is just God, and you are the point through which this power comes into manifestation. Once you discover this, you begin to understand why Jesus went to the Father every time he came into an area of unsolvable thought.” ~ from THE LAUGHTER OF GOD by Walter Lanyon

Next to Neville Goddard, Walter Lanyon is the most powerful mystical writer I’ve read. Lanyon delves deeply into what Neville called “the first principle:” BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM. Like Neville’s, his books are grounded in a deep understanding of scripture as both deeply personal and profoundly practical, detailing how to navigate the pitfalls of habitual thought and rely solely on I AM.

“Can you see now, you who read this page, that a thousand years being a day and a day as a thousand years, you can make the hypnotism of a thousand years old and out of your way?” ~ from THE LAUGHTER OF GOD

Unfortunately, also like Neville’s books and lectures, Lanyon’s work is widely available online, but often in less-than-authoritative editions.

In an attempt to partially rectify this, I’m making available a newly-edited PDF e-book of his 1932 work THE LAUGHTER OF GOD.

The text is culled from several different online sources, carefully edited (typos corrected, missing passages and chapters restored, etc), and is formatted for easy display and reading on most mobile devices (16×9 aspect ratio).

I am offering the beta edition of this ebook as a PDF download via my Ko-fi page. Click here for more information and the item page.

I’m hoping that this e-book of THE LAUGHTER OF GOD will be a blessing and practical guide for people who not only want to feel the first principle, but apply it in their lives. At the least, may it serve as your introduction to the work of one of the most profound Christian mystics of the past century.

“Stand and see– don’t help or assist in the Birth of the Child– ‘LET the child be born.’ The action of God is automatic, unlabored, untrammeled and instant. It is the revelation of that which IS. ‘The former things,’ created by thought, have passed away. Sunk deep in ancestor teachings and beliefs, man fights appearances instead of devitalizing them by taking away the thought which supports them. The moment thought is taken away, appearances fall into their native dust. ‘My Father worketh hitherto’– Then it is really done– ‘and I work’– or let the manifestation come through. The mechanics take care of themselves automatically; they are revealed.” ~ from THE LAUGHTER OF GOD

SAMPLE PAGES below

Facebook Flash Drama

For the past decade and a half (Good gawd, it’s been that long!), I’ve been working on an open-ended fiction project that I like to refer to as Facebook Flash Fiction. I gave the characters in my stories social media pages and write through their posts. Originally, I was only writing through the four core characters in my books (Margo, Brian, Christy, and Kathy), 30+ years after the stories in the books, as adults, but as time passed, I worked other characters into the storyline, namely Christy’s grown daughter Maura and Maura’s family (wife Tanya and kids Eva and Mikey), and, most recently, Christy’s college-aged daughter Maggie, along with other spouses, inlaws, friends, and coworkers.

While I call these works “flash fiction,” that term probably doesn’t fit. “Flash Fiction” implies to me a compressed short story; these character posts are less stories than they are rough drafts for some currently-indeterminate larger work, which means that, eventually, I need to compile, cull, and assemble these short pieces into a larger work of some kind.

But not now.

I realized recently that a lot of these character posts are actually “flash drama:” little scenes comprised largely (and sometimes only) of dialogue between two or more characters. I guess it reflects my love of dialogue. It certainly doesn’t reflect the way most people post on social media. Oh, well.

Below is a gallery of screenshots of some of the “dialogue” Flash Fiction pieces I’ve written just over the past year or so.

And click these links for…
… more Facebook Flash Fiction pieces;
… excerpts from my books;
… other stories featuring these characters;
… a chronological timeline of my fiction; and
… just posts about my writing and my books in general.

The Twins In Color: “Ethics, shmethics…”

Full color version of the comic featured in METANOIA issue no. 38.

To see more of The Twins (literally and figuratively), click here!

“Uncle Max Radio Show” is now on Archive!

Going forward, all of my new UNCLE MAX RADIO SHOWs will be available (free) for listening and download on Archive.org

Call me slow, but… ever since I started doing the show again, I’ve sought a platform where I could provide not only downloadable versions of the show, but shows that are easy to stream with an online player.

I’ve been putting them on my google drive account (which is how the station gets them: I upload the mp3 file to my drive; the engineer at the station processes them and cleans them up and then puts them in the system so that it airs at 7 on Thursdays) but wanted to find another platform without jumping through hoops or paying licensing fees. It didn’t seem like I SHOULD have to pay licensing fees– I mean, whether it’s a podcast or not, it’s derived from a weekly show on a non-commercial college station, right?

Meanwhile, as I downloaded track after track from the audio section of Archive. org, the answer was right in front of my face and I didn’t even realize it.

Going forward, I’ll be uploading my new shows onto Archive. These will be available not only as mp3, but in lossless (flac and wav) formats… AND you can also listen easily via their embedded online player.

I’ve uploaded all of the 2023 shows and am going to work backwards to download the rest of them. Hopefully I might even eventually upload some of the old two-hour WDCV shows as well.

Going forward, new mp3 versions of the current week’s show (plus the current “bonus shows”) will still be in that tinyurl.com/uncle-max-this-week folder, but I’ll also upload the shows to this Archive page, where you’ll find their streaming player and links to downloadable mp3/ flac/ wav files, rich text files of playlists, the show’s meme for you who are into that, etc.

Archive.org is FREE, although your donations to their site are appreciated. But that’s between you and them.

HERE ARE ALL THE LINKS:

My uploads page on Archive: https://archive.org/details/@maxshenkwrites

An mp3 of the current week’s show is always available for download here: https://tinyurl.com/uncle-max-this-week

You can livestream the show on Thursdays at 7 am eastern time here: https://us2.internet-radio.com/proxy/wdcvfm?mp=/live

The Uncle Max Radio Show group on Facebook is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/unclemaxradioshow

…AND IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT THE SHOW FINANCIALLY…

…click here to become a one-time sponsor of my show (one-time sponsor shoutout on the show).

…click here to become a sustaining sponsor (monthly donation) of my show (weekly sponsor shoutout on the show).

…click here if you want to sponsor my show via WDCV FM (your underwriting script will be read during my show) or sponsor another show on the station or just become a general underwriter of the station (the station will create an underwriting announcement for you which will be aired throughout their broadcasting day).

Citing Neville – “The gifts of mind and speech”

A series of occasional posts about the sources which Neville Goddard mined for his lectures and writings

“There are two gifts given to man; those gifts are mind and speech.”

Neville not only quoted this frequently, but used it as the basis of several lectures and writings, and as he so often did, sometimes he cited the source work, while other times he didn’t.

For example, in his 1954 lecture “The Coin Of Heaven” (one of several different lectures to which Neville gave the same title), he introduces the quote with “We are told,” as he would a passage from the Bible:

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.

In other lectures, Neville gave the quote’s source as The Hermetica, as translated by Walter Scott– not the poet, as Neville may have implied or as some might believe, but a late 19th century English classical scholar.

The Hermetica is a broad term used for works ascribed to the legendary Greek figure Hermes Trismegistus, some of them composed as early as the second century AD (CE) and to which new sections were added as late as the middle ages. The specific work from which Neville quoted is called the Corpus Hermeticum, and dates from the third or fourth century AD (CE). Scott completed three volumes of translation before his death in 1925; one of them was published in 1924, the second two were published posthumously, and the fourth volume, completed by A.S. Ferguson, was published later.

The passage that Neville quoted is from a dialogue between Hermes and his student Tat, and appears in book XII, section 12 (Volume 1, page 231 of Scott’s translation):

Hermes. There is another thing to be considered, my son. There are two gifts which God has bestowed on man alone, and on no other mortal creature. These two are mind and speech; and the gift of mind and speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man uses these gifts rightly, he will differ in nothing from the immortals; or rather, he will differ from them only in this, that he is embodied upon earth; and when he quits the body, mind and speech will be his guides, and by them he will be brought into the troop of the gods and the souls that have attained to bliss.

Tat. But do not the other living creatures use speech, father?

Hermes. No, my son; they have voice, but not speech; and speech is very different from voice. All men have speech in common; but each kind of living creature has its special sort of voice.

Tat. But among men also, father, each nation has a different speech.

Hermes. Languages differ, my son, but mankind is one; and speech likewise is one. It is translated from tongue to tongue, and we find it to be the same in Egypt, Persia, and Greece… Speech then is an image of mind; and mind is an image of God.
That blessed God, the Agathos Daimon, said ‘soul is in body, mind is in soul, and God is in mind.’ The rarest part of matter then is air; the rarest part of air is soul; the rarest part of soul is mind; and the rarest part of mind is God. And God deals with all things, and permeates all things; mind deals with soul; soul deals with air; and air deals with gross matter.

SOURCES:

Goddard, Neville. The Coin of Heaven. Transcription of a 1954 lecture. Retrieved from https://freeneville.com/the-coin-of-heaven-1954-free-neville-godddard-lectures/ on 7 February 2023.

Scott, Walter (editor and translator). Hermetica Volume One: The ancient Greek and Latin writings which contain religious or philosophic writings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus. London: Oxford, 1924. Retrieved from Archive.org on 7 February 2023: https://archive.org/details/ScottHermeticaVolOne.

A free PDF scan of Scott’s translation of the Hermetica is available from Archive.org, in three volumes:
Volume One: https://archive.org/details/ScottHermeticaVolOne
Volume Two: https://archive.org/details/ScottHermeticaVolTwo
Volume Three: https://archive.org/details/ScottHermeticaVolThree
I was unable to find an ebook copy of Volume Four online, although print editions are available.

More information about the Corpus Hermetica, including the 1906 translation by G.R.S. Mead, is available online here:
http://www.gnosis.org/library/hermet.htm

Biographical information about Walter Scott is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott_(scholar)

My Neville Goddard-themed print journal (as of this writing untitled) will be available sometime in February 2023. It will contain annotated transcripts of several lectures, including this 1954 lecture “The Coin of Heaven,” plus other articles about Neville’s work.
You can preorder a copy (which will be mailed upon publication) at this link: https://ko-fi.com/s/e49ab6aa01 .

I’ve published an annotated e-book edition of Neville’s lecture “Awake O Sleeper,” which is available as a PDF ebook here: https://ko-fi.com/s/59236fe832 .

If you liked this blog post and wish to support me, the author, you can do so with a donation at my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/maxshenkwrites .

The TWINS in color: “‘Take your sister to work’ day”

Full color original rendering of the comic in issue 37 of METANOIA.

To see more of the TWINS (literally and figuratively) click here.

“Neville Trekking” is now live!

NEVILLE TREKKING: An online discussion group devoted to STAR TREK as viewed through the lens of Neville Goddard’s teachings, with a focus on six selected episodes that we’ll parse as a group between now and March.

“Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“The curious question came to me as to how much of the ‘woo-woo’ stuff like the outpicturing of our imagination could be real, and that we’re not experiencing it already? STAR TREK helped me loosen my perspective, and eased me into Neville when I found him.” ~ A Neville Trekking group member

I realized, while watching reruns of STAR TREK recently, that, in many ways, STAR TREK “eased me into” the ideas that Neville discussed.

“Imagining creates reality, time is not linear, consciousness is the only reality”– I first encountered these ideas not via religion or a philosophy class, but from watching STAR TREK episodes like “Shore Leave” or “Spectre of the Gun” or “Elementary, Dear Data” or “The Emissary.”

So I thought it’d be fun to have a six-week online “class” in which we watch these episodes and others as a group and then discuss them in light of Neville’s teachings.

Links to free downloadable videos of the full episodes will be provided, along with clips of key scenes and (when available) scripts and novelizations, so you can “read” the episodes if you want, along with (of course) pertinent Neville writings and quotes, and other material about the show and ideas in the series.

YOU CAN JOIN THE DISCUSSION (effectively) FREE!

The first twelve people who register will “pay what you want IF you want.” The registration fee is set to $0 for the first twelve people. Pay more if you want; that’s up to you.

Here’s the link! https://ko-fi.com/s/3567b9921c

This group is being held on the social media site Mewe. MeWe is a social media site that works the way Facebook used to work when we liked the way Facebook worked: no ads, no data mining. MeWe registration itself is free. All links and info are provided in a document you will receive when you register and “pay whatever” at Ko-fi.

Hope you’ll join the group and boldly go! –Max Shenk, moderator

Trekking with Neville: “The bullets are not real.”

Neville Goddard used to quote Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.”
For me, one of those “lowly doors” was STAR TREK. It was through STAR TREK, not religion or philosophy classes, that I was first really introduced to the ideas that are the foundations of Neville’s teachings.
“Imagining creates reality, consciousness is the only reality, time is not linear, there are worlds within worlds within worlds”– all of these concepts came to me first through STAR TREK. The truth embodied in those tales “entered at lowly doors” and made me receptive to them as spiritual truths.
I first published this article in my ‘zine METANOIA (issue 2). It was one of the first times I really explored and considered the Neville-TREK connection.

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Lately I’ve been filling my days and evenings bingewatching old episodes of Star Trek, and one of the best episodes was one which I hadn’t forgotten about, but, rather, remembered dismissively: “Spectre of the Gun.”

In it, the Enterprise encroaches on an alien race’s territory, and the aliens decide to punish the crew by transporting Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekhov to a shoddy and superficial reproduction of Tombstone, Arizona, circa 1881, with the five crew members as the Clanton Gang, who, of course, died at the hands of Wyatt Earp in a gunfight at the OK Corral. The five try every rational means at their disposal to escape, without success. Finally, Chekhov, who was “Billy Clayborne,” is gunned down and killed by one of the Earp gang…

…except, as Spock points out, in the historical shootout at the OK Corral, Billy Clayborne survived!

The remaining four crew members then concoct a tranquilizer grenade to use against the Earp gang and thus escape their fate… but when they test the device and potion, the presumably failproof concoction doesn’t work.

Finally, the Tombstone clocks chime five PM– the deadline that the Earps imposed for the Clanton gang to leave town– and the four crew members are transported to the OK Corral, and while they await what seems to be their inevitable fate, Spock comes to a realization that he shares with the rest of the crew.

According to physical law, the tranquilizer should have worked, but it didn’t. According to the historical record, Chekhov (Billy Clayborn) should not have been killed, but he was. These inconsistencies, he says, cannot be ignored.

What, he asks his crewmates, killed Chekhov?

“A piece of lead in his body,” Dr. McCoy answers.

“No,” Spock replies. “His mind killed him.

“Physical reality,” Spock continues, “is consistent with universal laws. Where the laws do not operate, there is no reality. We judge reality by the response of our senses. Once we are convinced of the reality of a given situation, we abide by its rules. We judge the bullets to be solid, the guns to be real; therefore, they can kill.”

But since Chekhov should not have died, and the tranquilizer should have worked– “Anywhere else, it would have worked”– then, logically, Spock says, what the crew sees around them must be unreal.

Spock does a mindmeld with his three crewmates to plant in their minds the certainty that he feels– I know the bullets are not real; therefore, they cannot harm me--and when the Earps appear, they all unload their six-shooters and rifles into the Enterprise crewmen, who stand, unaffected, as the bullets blow holes in the wooden fencerails behind them.

Finally, when the bullets are spent, Kirk pummels Wyatt Earp, points his own sixshooter at Earp’s head, and then, remembering that the guns and bullets aren’t real, tosses it aside. With that, first the Earp gang and then the illusion of Tombstone vanish, and the four crewmen are back on the Enterprise…

…along with Chekhov: alive and in perfect health.

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I’m doing a six-week online course/discussion called NEVILLE TREKKING, in which we’ll discuss six episodes of STAR TREK as filtered through the lens of Neville’s teachings.

The group will be conducted in a private group on the social media site MeWe (which is like Facebook used to be when Facebook worked).

The group will be LIVE on Sunday January 22, 2023.

Early registration is $18 until midnight EST Friday January 20, 2023, after which it is $24.

For more information or to register, go to https://ko-fi.com/s/033a6347f3 or email me: maxshenkwrites@gmail.com .

For more information on my ‘zine Metanoia, including sample articles and ordering links, click here.