What Is Time in the Law of Assumption?
Touch your skin, your body. Is it an illusion? Eat your favourite meal. Savour it. Is that an illusion? Have you had a heartbreak? Was it an illusion? Have you had great joy and euphoria? Was that an illusion?
No, they are not illusions. But they are not the reality either! They are a part of reality, properly described, they are the shadow of reality. But that makes them real, not illusions.
Space and objects in space are not illusions. They are actuality, the things that are actual at the point of observation.
Time is many points of diverse observations.
Time is not an illusion, not in the teachings of the law of assumption. When you scan or read through the 300+ lectures of Neville we have today and the 11 books of the teacher, you will not find a single instance where Neville said, "Time is an illusion." Not even by implication.
Yes, you have heard this from many teachers. I had heard it a lot of times, and when I had not experienced what time really is, I bought it and even told it to others. You have read it in other metaphysical books no doubt. I cannot remember them now, but I read that phrase in a number of books: Time is an illusion.
It is not. No more than your birth, your growth and your life is an illusion.
So, what is Time in the law of assumption?
1. Time Is a Facility of Change
This is something Neville definitely said about time. It is a facility of change in experience. Time passes, but you will tell that the passage of time depends on the change of experience going on. The normal 24 hours in a day is your observation of change in the relationship within the solar system. If in a 24-hour period, you went from having $200 as your total balance to having $2,000,000, you know for sure those 24 hours would be shorter than they were the day before. If you had fun with your spouse and it was just a fun day throughout, you would take a breath at the end and wonder where the hours went.
The passage of time doesn't do anything. But that is the same as any other state in this world. They have no power to cause, but only imagination can become.
Neville said,
"Man can change his state of consciousness and therefore man can determine the conditions of his life. But the passage of time will not in itself do anything; time is only a facility for changes in experience but it cannot produce the change. It is simply that which allows changes to take place, but it can’t produce them. Space gives us the facility for experience and time for changes in experience, but of themselves they do nothing. We must operate the power, and so the individual if he doesn’t become the operator then he will wait in vain." (Three Propositions)
I know this from experience. If you want to confirm this, control your inner speech on a single mental diet morning, afternoon and night. You will see.
2. Time is Flexible
The most remarkable feature of man's future is its flexibility, Neville taught. You know, that is quite true for the present and even for the past. Your past is incredibly flexible. It can be changed by Revision. Your future is absolutely flexible. An assumption of a state today will produce its effect in your future, an effect which might be radically different from logical expectations in the order of events. So, times change.
There was once a story Neville shared of a woman who displayed this flexibility of time with her Revision. Her husband phoned her to tell her the terrible news that 50% of their production of a film was bad, and the company who need that production would need the useful film within 24 hours. There was just no way to reproduce it within that time. Well, she said down on her bed after the news. She did not move. Just heard the phone ringing, heard her husband sharing the news of the film being 100% complete and she congratulating him on the successful delivery. She repeated that, and was still on the revision one hour and thirty minutes later when her phone rang and her husband told her they found the complete 100% film and apologised for the error made earlier. She substituted an hour for days of reproduction. That's how flexible time is.
I have said so many times that I have had years happen for me in hours or days, shifted from one time to another vividly and experienced time bending, wrapping or expanding. They are all details of flexibility.
Neville stated it clearly in Out of This World book,
"The most remarkable feature of man's future is its flexibility. It is determined by his attitudes rather than by his acts."
3. Time Is Curved
Yes, it is curved. Not only is it curved, but time is curved into a complete curvature. What this means is that time repeats itself. Observant historians know this from their observations of the rise and fall of civilisations. They realise that mankind repeats the same patterns of events.
When you observe your life a little closer, you will notice that before you began to make a conscious rise up the scales of existence, you repeated the same feelings and circumstances, even when you changed the people in your life, changed the places you lived, changed the work you do, etc. Time is curved, and its curvature means that man experiences the past in the future.
Neville said it this way,
“Now this may seem an insane statement to tell you... that yesterday is today’s future: it seems insane you think it’s not, it’s past: but by the curvature of time you will discover but you will not know it, because you will be asleep unless you begin to awaken, and you will come upon what is yesteryear in your future, for the moment is never receding, it is always advancing into the future to confront us. And so if you don’t change it, you will simply find yourself repeating over and over what luckily in God’s infinite mercy that sleep shuts out the memory of it, so you are doing it and you think you’re doing it for the first time." (The Coin of Heaven Lecture)
Yesterday is today's future until you do something about it. The only way to do something about it is to revise. Time is curved. Think of it this way. Time doesn't have the power to start a thing. Also, it doesn't have the power to stop a thing. Therefore, time does not have the power to stop events that are in the past from happening just as it doesn't have the power to make events that are in the future change from their antecedent in the past. The only power to change either is IN the moment. It is NOT now. Now has no power to change anymore than before or after does. Only that now, the Imagination can change the now, can change the before and can change the after.
4. Time is a Divine Resource
It is a divine resource available for human experimentation. As a resource, it can be wasted or used productively. To put it in clearer terms, you can either spend your time or invest your time. Spending your time is by doing your fun activities. It is not by sleeping when you want to sleep, waking when you want to wake or all the other little things you want to do in time. It is what you assume at a time that determines whether it was invested or spent. To invest your time is not in doing activities that you do not enjoy. It is in assuming that which you want in a moment. When you react to life as is, to things you don't like, it doesn't matter if you have read the whole of Neville Goddard's collections of lectures in ten different languages. It doesn't matter if you have read the whole Bible, read Blake and attended every law of assumption conference there is in this world. You just didn't assume the loving thing and that was a waste of time. Now, when you spend your time criticising yourself for not investing your time, you're still spending your time. Do you see where this is heading?
You invest time by assuming the loving thing. Read all the books you want, but always maintain the goal before you. You are to invest your time by assuming outcomes that you want out of life. Assume thankful experiences. Assume success. Assume excellence. Whether your senses support your assumptions or your reasoning tells you it is impossible doesn't matter. What matters is that you invested the time by assuming your wish is fulfilled.
Neville said this in so many lectures, especially the ones on inner speech. Top of them for this point is Sound Investments, which brings together inner speech and a change of self together. See how to explained it there.
"If you devoted every moment of time to positive thinking, constructive thinking, by not accepting any rumor that does not contribute to the fulfillment of your desire, no matter what it is . . it could be the most obvious fact in the world . . if it does not contribute to the fulfillment of your dreams, do not accept it... I must invest ... time is too precious and because these moments do not recede. they do not pass away; they are always advancing into my future to either confront me with a waste or to show me some wonderful return; if I invest it's for a purpose and, therefore, I hope, not only hope, I expect a reward: I expect a profit on my investment. So a moment invested now, this very day, could tomorrow pay you great dividends." (Sound Investments)
Use your time creatively well. Use it wisely by assuming you are what you want to be now.
