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Esau and Jacob

[The Neville Goddard 1959 Lecture Series]

As I promised last Tuesday, I now want to give you my personal technique [I use] when I pray for myself or for others, but for the benefit of those who are here for the first time, I want to say that we believe here that Imagination creates Reality. And because only God creates Reality, your Imagining and my Imagining are one with the Supreme Power men call God.

In order to tell you of my technique I must go back and give you the reasons. I will go back to my personal experiences and tie them together with the Bible. It speaks of the birth of a child in Genesis 25, the child of Isaac and Rebecca. Rebecca, desiring to conceive after twenty years of barrenness, prayed unto the Lord and the Lord responded to her prayer, and she felt this strange struggle going on within her and she wondered why, and the Lord said: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other; the elder shall serve the younger.” And then at the moment of delivery out came first a red, hairy being, and then came another whose hand was holding the heel of the first and he was smooth-skinned and hairless. The first was called Esau and the second was called Jacob. Now the story is, “Bring me Jacob!” If you remember it, Jacob took Esau’s birthright and then he took his blessing, and Esau said to his father, Isaac, “Have you no blessing for me?” And Isaac his father said, “You shall live by the sword; you shall serve your brother, but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.” That was the only blessing he could give to his first-born son, for he had given it all to Jacob, which means “the supplanter”. It makes no sense if you take it literally. It has nothing to do with persons called Rebecca or Esau or Jacob. It is all within you that this drama is unfolding.

I was seven years old when it happened to me, and I found myself an infinite stormy ocean. I was the ocean, and yet I was Neville. It seemed unconcerned as to what it did to Neville, and it tossed Neville like a wave and Neville was scared almost to death. The ocean did not care, yet I, Neville, was also the ocean. This happened once a month from my seventh to twelfth year, and I could tell from the strange sense of expectancy I felt during the day when it was going to happen. I dreaded to go sleep for when I began to go to sleep then I became one with this immensity, and it was all this great ocean, and then a separation took place between the ocean and its wave, but I was still the ocean. Month after month this division took place until my twelfth year. Then it vanished.

When I was twenty-one, it returned on a different key. One night I was contemplating Samadhi and as I was reading this book on the life of Buddha (The Light of Asia). I fell into an involuntary trance. When I awoke the sun was up and I had not moved for ten hours, but during that interval I became infinite liquid light. I was not then divided; there was nothing but light. I was the One Reality, and I was Infinite Light. That was the second experience. Then came others of a secondary state of this division. I was projected with a certain intensity out of my body. I became aware for the first time of this division and that I was more than just this being of flesh and blood. I was out, and this Reality was in the room looking at this body on the bed. Then I desired to get back into the body, integrating as a unit, and do it consciously. I did it, and then with a deliberate conscious intention I intensified this power and I felt myself moving out again. I desired to come down into the room, and I made a sort of loop. A cloud formation was over the head, but everything was in detail. I could see through the breaks in the cloud the face that I see every day in the mirror – my face. I tried to go through the wall, and I could not, and then I made a great leap at the wall and knocked myself back into the body again.

Man thinks that when he looks into a mirror that that is all he is. Burn him up and he is gone! It is not so at all. Man, that appears from the womb is this picture of the twin that comes into the world. Every child that comes from woman is Esau. You may be quite hairless by normal standards, but you are still Esau. He changes his name from Esau to Edom, which means “redness” or “red blood.” This being always comes first into the world, and after him comes one to supplant him and that is Jacob. You do not see Jacob. He is hidden. So, it said that he had no hair. He lived in a tent. That tent was Esau. Then comes the separation, for God and only God brings about that separation and God is that infinite ocean that will take this being and toss him over and over to bring about this separation. There is something in man that brings about this separation and separates Jacob from Esau. “Have you no blessing for me, Father? You asked me to bring you venison and now I discover my brother has deceived you.” Surely, he is well named “the supplanter”. “He took my birthright and then my blessing, but surely, Father, you have a blessing left for me.” This is it: “You shall live by the sword; you shall serve your brother, but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.”

There is something in this body that can break loose from this commanding power, and then it dies. That is all Esau can do. So, this garment – the body – is under command to obey Jacob. Jacob is all Imagination. There is a being in man that divides this garment that moves by compulsion, and when he breaks loose, there is no Esau. Isaiah 49: “He who forged me from the womb formed me to bring Jacob again unto him.” All He wants is Jacob. He wants to awaken in every being a Center of Imagining and that Center is called Jacob, the little one. “How will he stand, for he is so little?” I scare him to death, but I do it to make him alive, and a Center that can create. In the later gospels it is called Jesus, the Supreme Being that rules the world.

Now, from these experiences I saw the Bible differently. I would read the Book and see it differently. I have had only one real beating in my life and that was by a man who blew out his brains six months later. He asked me about a Bible passage. “What does it say?” I said, “Take up your bed and walk.” He said, “Bring me the book! I said, “My brother has it.” There were nine of us, and we did not have nine Bibles; my brother Cecil had it and I could not get it. This teacher brought out a cane, a long supple thing, and then I had to get over a bench and then he simply took out on my body what it took to explode a sexual expression in him. Then he stopped, and I was bleeding. Six months later he shot himself. It was all because of that passage in the Bible that he beat me. But maybe that was part of the pattern when I misquoted, according to his standard, for his version said, “take up your couch,” and mine said “bed.” But it only means that on which one was resting. It was only a part of the pattern, so I was being tossed by that ocean. But it seemed not to care about this which it tossed. But still, though it was scared, it knew it could not cease to be, and so it was part of a plan to separate it so that it could become a Center for creation.

So, I saw the Bible differently. What is the technique? In my 21^styear when I meditated, I became identified with the bliss I contemplated as a sea of golden liquid light. Then I understood. Absorption! That was the secret. If I became completely identified with a state – and named it – to the degree that I became absorbed – it worked. What became absorbed? Not the garment – Esau. It was Jacob, which is all Imagining. Jacob had to be separated from Esau. “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other; the elder shall serve the younger.” I discovered that the thing divided from this which I washed and fed, was my Imagination. And then I found I could put my Imagination any place in space. I put it into my own nephew, and when my sister looked at her son, who was about to make his exit, she saw not his face, but mine. For I laid down Esau and became Jacob, and became Billie, and determined to be seen by my sister, and my sister saw, not her son lying on the bed, but her brother Neville. That night she wrote to me that she had seen my face and not Billie’s.

When I wanted to go to Barbados and did not have a penny, I slept in my Imagination in Barbados and saw the world from Barbados, and I went there through the efforts of my family, who thought they had initiated the trip. When I identified myself with a state, others responded. They moved like automatons. And then I wondered if I should do it, and then I went back to that passage in Genesis: “You shall serve your brother.” And every man in the world you shall serve. And then you feel right about it. This one was imagining and every being in the world is serving him. You do not have to ask anyone in the world to help you, no matter what “they” say. Esau can only live while you have your yoke upon his neck; and when he breaks that yoke off his neck, Esau dies. Yet he perpetuates himself constantly before he dies, that Jacob may put his yoke on another neck. And Jacob is called in the New Testament, Jesus Christ.

Here is an exercise that I have found very helpful. At home, where I know what every part of a given room looks like, I sit in a chair facing one wall, and with my eyes closed, I “look” ahead and see not the wall that is in front of me, but the one that is behind me. I see that wall in my mind’s eye and it is now in front of me. Then the room has reversed itself, or I have reversed myself. Throughout the whole Bible there is this tone of reversibility. I discovered as I read it that it means this. So, I see what is behind me as if it were in front of me.

Here is another exercise. I would sit physically in my living room in New York City and assume that I was actually standing on the street in front of my apartment house, and standing there on the street I would see details on the marquee of the building. Physically I was in my living room on the sixteenth floor but in my Imagination, I was on the street and I was seeing it. Then, still in Imagination, I would walk back into the building, come upstairs, and sit down where Esau was. And the next time I actually did go out and took Esau, when I reached the street and looked at the marquee I saw on it what I had not noticed the last time I looked at it physically. Luckily for me when this began to appear when I was seven, there were no psychoanalysts in the little island of Barbados, and if there had been, my father could not have afforded them. They would not have known what was happening to me. Luckily for the work I was to do, I was born there on this little island that had no importance in the world – and no psychoanalysts! So, no one could disturb what my Father was doing to bring about this separation. It went on for five years, from seven to twelve, and then I was torn apart, but I did not lift that being out until I was twenty-one and saw it differently. There were not two of us, but I was “It”, and I could say “I and my Father…” but in the beginning I could only call it a stormy ocean. I was “It” and I was also Neville. When I was twenty-one, I saw it and became absorbed in it – or else there was no Neville.

There came this separation on different levels to show how you can pray. You can be anything in this world. I would take a piece of wood, or a flower, or an animal and try to feel myself as it, and I finally could feel what it would be like to be a glass of water. For everything emanates from Divine Imagining, and I am “It”, so then I am everything. There is nothing but Divine Imagining, and “It” and human Imagination are one.

Let us come back now to the practical side in dollars and cents. A good friend of mine here got a letter from another friend who is a professor and whom I admire very much, but professors are so pedantic. They are so filled with knowing and with data already outdated in view of present findings, that they are actually, you might say, full of ignorance! Man is unfolding so rapidly that you are learning from books known to be inaccurate and mistaken. You take unrevised books and commit things to memory, and you get your degree in a university. This professor (Raynor Johnson???) wrote my friend regarding the title of my book, Your Faith Is YourFortune. He wrote, “You would like me to comment? I presume he took the statement ‘Your face is your fortune’ and just changed the one word.” He did not read the book, yet it says in the Book of Proverbs, “He who answers before he hears, it is shame and folly to him.” Did you dare to answer before you heard the question? And yet you are not only a professor but also the master of a college in the University.

This professor is coming to our land and I will recommend that you go to hear him. He completely disapproves of the words “Faith” and “Fortune,” yet his motive in coming here is still to take back to his own country – m-o-n-e-y! There is no other reason for his coming, for he is from a department using books already outdated, so what can he give us? So, I said to my friend: “He has, like so many wise people, mechanical talents, and anyone can take from the inspired work of mystics and write many books and collect money on them.” He is coming here only to make some money. But I talk not about a book, but about the book – the Bible. I went through all these experiences and I know that the secret is identification with the ideal, no matter what it is. If you want money – what is wrong with that? This one who is coming here will not refuse the check when it is offered to him! Who is fooling whom in this world? But you are told “Thank you, Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and pious and revealed them unto babes.” So, keep company with the babes and shun the so-called wise and holy people.

When this division takes place in you, that is God, and you do not need the help of anyone. For everything came upon Jacob, and only the sword was given to Esau. So, this Esau (the body) takes food into his stomach and it must be transformed into bone and blood. It is a stormy process. And the very moment that he breaks loose from the yoke Jacob has placed on his neck, Esau is dead. It does not matter, for the immortal you is Jacob and you cannot cease to be. Let no one tell you that money or anything else is wrong if Jacob wants to exercise his talent for that. Every Esau has to serve Jacob. If you find Jacob and you dwell in the state and become completely absorbed in it, all the Esau’s have to serve you to fulfill that state, and no power in the world can stop it. Read it carefully. “You shall live by the sword, and you shall serve your brother.” Esau had to marry the Canaanite, and the word means, “that which would humiliate,” but whom did Jacob marry - that which came out of Laban – the ideal of the world. The “garments” marry the Canaanite. If my old teacher, Ab, were here, he would frighten you to death. He used to say, “If anyone stands before you, and you think him so important, strip him and let him perform the normal functions of life – and you will turn your back on him.” Jacob commands the world and Jacob is Imagination. No one has ever seen Jacob because he is like his Father, completely invisible, and then you arrive at the point where you discover your own invisibility.

J.W. Dunne, whose books are known to you, asks, “How can you see something that has no edges?” He asked the angel who appeared to him, “Why can they not see the shadow God is casting over the world?” And the angel replied, “Because it has no edges.” He thought that was right, for it is impossible to see a “this” without a “not this” to make comparison. But that is not true, for when man discovers Jacob, he has no edges, but he is more real than all the Esau’s of the world. He is everything, and all things at all times. Here is a statement made by Aldous Huxley regarding D. H. Lawrence. “He was a strange man, but he seemed to know what he was talking about. He knew what it was to be a cow or a daisy. He knew the emotions of his favorite cow, and he knew what it was like to be a daisy. He knew what it was to be the moon!” Huxley did not understand; he had mechanical talents and he could describe these things as they were described to him by D. H. Lawrence. Something is taking place in you and God is doing it, for the depth of your being is God, and when this is done then Jacob is divided from Esau. Everything is given to Jacob, and “never shall the scepter fall from his hand.”

So, I have given you my technique in praying. I do not assume the responsibility for making anything so after I have identified myself with the state that I desire, I let it be so. It may take a day or a week or a month, and sometimes I never hear about it, but I know it must come true, for my word cannot return unto me void. I see what I want to see, and then I let it be true. I do not lift a finger to make it true, for how can I discuss it when it is already so. Whenever you have imagined yourself as you want to be and you have felt the thrill of it, that is Jacob’s command and the outer being has to move through all these states to fulfill it. The greatest visions in the world are in the Bible. Let this one or that one justifies their little comments on the words “Faith” or “Fortune.” The act of faith is the power of God working in man to justify the way of man in need.

So, I sit down in my chair and I see before me what is not physically before me, and then I am turned around. This outer garment – Neville – was put through all the paces from seven to twenty-one, and then came this fulfillment of July 21^stof this year (the birth of the Babe out of my own being) and I saw the complete separation of that little one called Jesus Christ from that which is Esau. Out of Esau came Jacob, and out of Mary comes Jesus Christ, and both come from a separation or a tearing away. It has nothing to do with dogma. Do you want it to be? Well, you name it, identify yourself with it; completely absorb yourself with it. The outer man cannot do it, so the inner man has done it, for he has commanded that “you shall serve your brother.” This hairy garment comes first and then comes the one you cannot see, and that is Jacob. So, no matter who you are, this is the plan of God to awaken sons. This outer world seems to come first, but it comes to awaken God who created it. When he individualizes himself, what he wants most is Jacob. The whole of the physical world is completed, and we are told it is now melting in radiation, and then when the yoke is taken from Esau’s neck, he is dead.

Let no one tell you that you are some little worm. You are here because there is that child of God to be separated from the outer form by which you are recognized when you walk the street. Exercise this power for everyone in the world and not only wish them well but identify yourself with your wish for them. Then it is done, and you do not need to raise a finger to make it so, you let it be so. They will conform to what you have done. It does not matter who they are, whether they are simple people or if they have degrees: these degrees are given by Esau to Esau, and you are only concerned with Jacob. Isaiah 49: “He who formed me from the womb to be his servant and to bring Jacob to him again.” There in your Bible you will read it. “How can you find him? He is so small. How can Jacob stand?” He will stand all right! How small he is I know, for the infinite ocean tossed me on its back and I know it did not care. It was doing it for a purpose; I was tossed all over its infinity. I was afraid to go to sleep when I sensed the approach of these nights, and then when I closed my eyes this separation took place. He was pulling me out of Himself. That was the great ocean of life. When you understand this, you will know what the Flood means, and the true meaning of the story of the Ark.

So tonight, if I could give you my technique in essence, it is this: I sit quietly in a chair; I do not lie down for that position is associated with sleep. I sit in a chair and I imagine and become absorbed and identified with whatever another asks of me as if it were already realized. To me it is then real, and they are standing before me and telling me the exciting news of having realized their dream. If physically they were in tears it would make no difference, for that is only Esau and I know that he must go through something to bring Jacob; I am not interested. Esau must serve Jacob. If they call me next day and tell me the most awful story it does not matter, for they started when Jacob gave the command, and all the blessings of the universe were given to Jacob and everyone has to serve him. If they call me to say they have been fired, I say, “Good!” When they had been fired, they became the fulfillment of what I had heard for them, and they will find that it was the turning point to take them to what they desired. Afterward they may forget how it happened, but you, do not forget that it was Jacob who gave the command. Now call him by a new name and call him Christ Jesus. Read the genealogy and you will see Esau came first, then Jacob; John came first and then Jesus. They both came in a miraculous way. Isaac’s wife was barren for twenty years, and then he prayed. Jesus was born of a virgin; it has nothing to do with a man or a woman. I am every character in the Bible and these are only imaginal activity, and this was an imaginal activity that could pull out of itself what it desired.

Everyone that comes from below (by physical birth) has to come first, and that is Esau, and he will be torn apart so that he will be separated and then the Child is born, and then there is no limit to the translucency or expansion of the son of God. Let us go into the silence.

QUESTION: Will you explain further about seeing another part of the room?

ANSWER: Practice bilocation. This is the tearing apart of Jacob from Esau. Sit in one room of your home and view another room and see what you would see if you were physically there, and you tear yourself apart. Do not walk completely integrated, as a being that is only a garment of flesh: that is Esau. For man is all Imagining, and he is always where he is in his Imagination. If you desire security let no one tell you it is not spiritual. Those who say it is not spiritual are the first who will ask you for a handout! Let no one tell you that you should not have what you want in this world. It is yours if you know who Jacob is and who Esau is. Be ready to go through anything. Esau has to go through it; Esau is the slave of his brother. Jacob is the master. When you break loose from his yoke upon your neck, you are dead. Do not be embarrassed at what you lose. The best thing you can lose is false pride. You may have to go through the furnaces to lose false pride, for it is Jacob’s command.

QUESTION: How do you see this golden light?

ANSWER: I sit quietly and turn my eyes inward as if I am looking into my skull. In a moment, a golden light begins to glow. Light begins to appear and it looks like golden liquid light and it comes before my eyes and then it goes out in circle after circle, like smoke rings, and these increase in rate and then they become like a funnel with the big end at my face.

Another exercise I practice I take a table or a rug. I do not look at it, but focus my attention beyond it, and with my eyes partially open; I try to look below its surface. Suddenly the whole thing will become alive. There is nothing dead in this world. This rug at which you are looking seems inanimate, but suddenly in its depths people will appear. Do not be afraid and you will walk into it. You, the real you, are not contained within the spatial boundaries of this body, that is only Esau. But you are an immortal being and you can step through the seeming solid.

If you would like confirmation of this technique, read the life of DaVinci. He said that is how he got all of his paintings. He was the first one to give us the model of the airplane. Before the Wright brothers were thought of, he drew it. He said that when he wanted to paint, he would look into a mottled wall and then all these people came out dressed in costumes, and they were not paid models!

Take a wall in your home or look at the fireplace stones: they will become so familiar, and then the wall will change its face. It changes with your mood. Often it is a little girl; then it changes and is something entirely different. Your senses begin to expand, for there is something in every child born of woman that is immortal. I personally have no experience to confirm reincarnation as commonly taught, but I do have many experiences concerning worlds within worlds. I cannot tell you if the popular conception of reincarnation is true or false. I know I have always been, and I know I was sent, and that world from which I was sent is real to me, yet I had to go through what this world calls birth, but I do not call that reincarnation. That is the awakening of the sons of God and there is only one and that is Jacob or Jesus Christ.

The immortal being in you has never been tarnished; you cannot tarnish Jacob. Esau has to go through all these things and fight all the way. We think there must be some redemption for Esau, but it is Jacob who has been given full control of the whole. We clothe and feed – and even insure – Esau. The being that cannot die is not insured, but we insure Esau. Read it carefully in the new translation, the Nelson edition. They put it like a poem, and it stands out like a gem: “Two nations are in your womb, And two peoples, born of you, Shall be divided; The one shall be stronger than the other; The elder shall serve the younger.” I was seven before I knew about Jacob, Jacob did not like being tossed about by his Father. And then when I was twenty-one, I learned I was nothing but golden liquid light. I became infinite liquid light. I was not then divided; there was nothing but light. I was the One Reality, and I was Infinite Light. That was the second experience.

Then came others of a secondary state of this division. I was projected with a certain intensity out of my body. I became aware for the first time of this division and that I was more than just this being of flesh and blood. I was out, and this Reality was in the room looking at this body on the bed. Then I desired to get back into the body, integrating as a unit, and do it consciously. I did it, and then with a deliberate conscious intention I intensified this power and I felt myself moving out again. I desired to come down into the room, and I made a sort of loop. A cloud formation was over the head, but everything was in detail. I could see through the breaks in the cloud the face that I see every day in the mirror – my face. I tried to go through the wall, and I could not, and then I made a great leap at the wall and knocked myself back into the body again.

Man thinks that when he looks into a mirror that that is all he is. Burn him up and he is gone! It is not so at all. Man, that appears from the womb is this picture of the twin that comes into the world. Every child that comes from woman is Esau. You may be quite hairless by normal standards, but you are still Esau. He changes his name from Esau to Edom, which means “redness” or “red blood.” This being always comes first into the world, and after him comes one to supplant him and that is Jacob. You do not see Jacob. He is hidden. So, it said that he had no hair. He lived in a tent. That tent was Esau.

Then comes the separation, for God and only God brings about that separation and God is that infinite ocean that will take this being and toss him over and over to bring about this separation. There is something in man that brings about this separation and separates Jacob from Esau. “Have you no blessing for me, Father? You asked me to bring you venison and now I discover my brother has deceived you.” Surely, he is well named “the supplanter”. “He took my birthright and then my blessing, but surely, Father, you have a blessing left for me.” This is it: “You shall live by the sword; you shall serve your brother, but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.”

There is something in this body that can break loose from this commanding power, and then it dies. That is all Esau can do. So, this garment – the body – is under command to obey Jacob. Jacob is all Imagination. There is a being in man that divides this garment that moves by compulsion, and when he breaks loose, there is no Esau.

Isaiah 49: “He who forged me from the womb formed me to bring Jacob again unto him.” All He wants is Jacob. He wants to awaken in every being a Center of Imagining and that Center is called Jacob, the little one. “How will he stand, for he is so little?” I scare him to death, but I do it to make him alive, and a Center that can create. In the later gospels it is called Jesus, the Supreme Being that rules the world.

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Esau and Jacob

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Neville Goddard - The 1957 Lectures