Neville On Drugs Dope Marijuana Lsd Alcohol Vegetarianism Etc

12 Aug Neville Goddard on Drugs, Dope, Marijuana, LSD, Alcohol, Cigarettes, Vegetarianism etc

“Now, let me share with you my own experience of the Call. It was this month back in 1929. I was then a dancer. I was 24 years of age, searching . . searching for an experience of God. If anyone went into blind alleys looking, I did. I tried everything, trying to find Him. No, I didn’t try dope; I didn’t smoke marijuana. No, I didn’t go in for that. First of all, I couldn’t afford liquor, and Prohibition was on in those days, and I wasn’t in the habit of drinking. I couldn’t afford it, and there was no liquor around unless you went to some expensive speak-easy. Well, I couldn’t afford it. But I was searching for God. I thought maybe a certain diet, like a strict vegetarian . . maybe that would do it. I tried that.”

From Predestined Glory

So, they can’t eat this, they can’t eat that. If it disagrees with you, all well and good, but don’t say it is unspiritual. He made everything for the food of man. Someone said, “Why do you take a drink? You are a man, and you are supposed to be a man “born from above” and you take a drink.” I said, “Because I enjoy it.” “But,” he said, “that’s not spiritual.” I said, “Who is to tell me what is spiritual? Didn’t God make it?” Who on earth made alcohol? Didn’t He make it in the grain and then give man the intelligence to extract it? Didn’t He make it in the grape, and then give man the intelligence to take it out? And you tell me not to exercise the palate that He gave me? Oh, I can indulge; I can overdo anything in this world. There isn’t a thing that one eats that is good for him that he cannot go to the extreme and make it unwholesome for him. I suppose that almost everything is good in itself, but not excessively, and see if it is. So that goes for everything in this world. Learn to discriminate. I must become discriminating in all my thoughts in this world; but don’t tell me that there are taboos on things that God made. He made everything for man, and He made man for His own satisfaction.

Abdullah said to me, “You know, Neville, when you return from Barbados, you will have died!” He never explained a statement of that nature. “You will have died.” I am coming back from Barbados, but I will have died!

He spoke in these cryptic manners. Well, I did. I went down to Barbados. I was a strict vegetarian. I had not eaten one piece of meat or fish or fowl in seven years. No smoking, no alcohol, no sex; disillusioned in my first marriage, and the whole thing was simply — I became a celibate. I came back from Barbados – and in Barbados, I was the same being that I was when I arrived, to the annoyance of my family, for they made all their money in groceries – selling meat, fish, alcohol – everything; and I am enjoying a trip based upon their efforts, and yet I am not taking what they are offering. On my way north, I did everything I had not done in seven years.

He was right: I “died.” That state of consciousness died. That’s what died. Neville is the Immortal Being, — that is, the Inner Man is immortal. I was locked in a state. The state I departed from: so, as far as I am concerned, I died to that state.

Now, whatever one has as an objective hope, they must now subjectively appropriate it and sleep in that subjective appropriation. You want to be – and you name it. All right, you simply subjectively appropriate it. And that was the beginning of my transition from a” god” of tradition to a God of experience. And when I came back to New York City, friends of mine who knew me in the days when I never touched alcohol or smoking, — I never acquired smoking. I tried it, and I couldn’t seem to get it. Alcohol I got!