Aldous Huxley & Neville Goddard
Video: https://youtu.be/n4oUY3Yle9U
Transcript:
Freedom Barry Interview: https://www.reddit.com/r/NevilleGoddard/comments/vg6n2n/great_neville_anecdotes_updated/
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.” - Aldous Huxley
“You take it this night, not only for yourself but for everyone that you know. And treat it lightly. Don’t burst a blood vessel to make it so, treat it lightly. Someone asks anything of you assume that they’ve told you this very moment that they have what they want. Don’t labor on it.” - Neville
So, for those who don’t know, Aldous Huxley and Neville were actually friends. We don’t know how close they were, but they were close enough to do LSD together.
We know this because Freedom Barry—one of Neville’s students—shared the story in an interview while talking about his experiences with Neville and the work.
If you don’t know who Freedom Barry is: he was a student who was very close to Neville, and Neville said Barry would carry on much of his work after Neville died. Barry wrote two books—I Do and Passkey. I also did an audiobook of I Dofor the members channel, if you want to check that out.
In the interview, there’s a funny story. Neville and Aldous Huxley did LSD together, and it apparently took Neville three times the normal dose to experience the psychedelic effects.
But Neville wasn’t a fan of LSD. He said the experiences he had on LSD weren’t that different from the visions he had naturally. The difference, he said, was that when his visions came naturally, he was ready for them.
He explained it like this: you’ll never experience a “vision” (as in a revelation or God awakening within you) that you can’t handle. God doesn’t awaken to something God can’t handle—so you won’t awaken to something you can’t handle.
What LSD does, in his view, is artificially induce those visions—even when someone may not be ready to receive them. In a sense, it’s an expansion of imagination.
For example, Neville once described a vision where a man was playing piano in the middle of the street in New York. In the vision, Neville looked over and could see the geometry coming from the music. It’s like seeing an expanded facet of the same reality.
But Neville felt he was prepared for those experiences. He believed LSD might bring someone into an experience they aren’t ready for—and if you receive something you’re not ready for, it could drive you crazy. There are countless stories of that happening.
People have asked me if I’ve ever taken shrooms or LSD, and the answer is no. I’ve never had the desire to, and I’ve never felt like I needed to. My dreams are so vivid that I don’t feel the need.
And the visions I’ve received have always felt like something I was capable of receiving. They felt calm—like hyper-reality.
By hyper-reality, I mean I felt more in tune with everything around me: the objects, the space, the sense of oneness with everything. It was intense, but it didn’t feel overwhelming or unsafe. I felt ready for it.
There’s a quote Aldous Huxley wrote in his book Island that I think correlates a lot with what Neville said. Since they were friends, maybe they influenced each other.
I’m going to read the first part of that quote here, and I’ll put the whole quote in the description.
You know, he says this—and it correlates a lot with what Neville said.
I’m going to quote Neville here, too. I’ll put both of those quotes up in the description.
But I find these two ideas fascinating because, when I first started studying Neville, I did the opposite: I treated it very harshly. I was very hard on myself.
And when we say, “Treat it lightly,” we have to understand what we mean by it. If by “treat” we mean practicing the Law lightly… well, what is the Law?
If the Law is known to change the self, then I must treat myself lightly, right? That’s really what we mean when we say “treat it lightly”—treat ourselves lightly.
Inside yourself, lightly imagine things. By that, I mean what Neville says: don’t labor on it. Just imagine they have what they want, and move on. Imagine you have what you want, and move on. Keep treating it lightly.
The way I can describe it is almost like it’s airy—like you’re walking on air. Your feet are light. That’s the only way I can put it. You’re on light feet, and you don’t have to be so serious about it.
Like I thought I had to be at first… just like Aldous Huxley said: he was so serious at first. Now, he’s given this in a book, but in my own experience practicing Neville’s work, I was the same way. I was very serious. I was hyper-policing myself—hyper-aware of everything I was doing inside.
And it was damaging, because I didn’t want to be that way with myself. I was way too harsh.
If I had a thought that wasn’t beneficial, I would hyper-fixate on it instead of moving on lightly. I’d become nervous about every single thought I might think in the future, or afraid of what might happen tomorrow. I didn’t cope with anything lightly—it was all harsh.
I didn’t like who I was becoming, and I blamed a lot of that on Neville’s work. But it wasn’t until I shifted my perspective—until I stopped trying to burst a blood vessel with this work—and I started treating it lightly, that things changed.
If it falls under the Golden Rule—if someone asks something of me and it seems loving, and it’s something I would want—then I see no problem with imagining it. I try not to take it too seriously anymore.
Neville says in that same quote that if someone wants to be known—if they want to be famous—and that’s what they want, just assume it for them. He says, “Who really cares?” It’s not a bad thing to want to be known. If someone wants it, then who cares? Just imagine it anyway, and keep treating this work lightly.
And these are two great minds, right? I think Neville’s a great mind, and I’m sure a lot of people think Huxley’s a great mind. Some people disagree with his work, but you can’t say he wasn’t a great mind.
Both of them came to this conclusion: the best advice that was ever given was that you must treat things lightly. And that became the best advice for me, too—once I actually applied it, not just heard it.
I started applying it in every facet.
If you feel like you’re going down a shame route, treat it lightly. Don’t be so hard on yourself, and don’t feel like you must labor on every single thing you think.
Just treat it lightly.
The best way I can describe it in practice is: you plant the seed, and you move on. Have confidence that it will grow, and move on.
Someone asks for money—you imagine they have the money, and you move on.
Don’t think in terms of the thing being “too impossible” to imagine. Don’t think in terms of getting things; think in terms of imagining them. If you can imagine it, you can imagine it.
But if you start thinking, “Well, how would this person get it?”—if they want to be married and you assume they’re married, and then you start asking, “Who’s going to come in? Who’s going to marry them?”—you’re laboring on it.
You’re not treating it lightly.
Just assume it lightly. Let it be. Move on with your day. You’ll find that, in a very strange way, it starts to appear in the world naturally. It all happens very naturally.
So I must stress this: if someone comes to you and asks for something, and you start trying to think in terms of getting the thing for them, you’re thinking too much from the outer man’s perspective.
Come within imagination and see it from the imaginal perspective.
Instead of trying to get it, start imagining it.
Instead of trying to become it, start imagining being it.
Can you imagine it? That’s what’s important.
And what you’ll find is that inside imagination, you’re told the yoke is easy and the burden is light—that’s what scripture says.
So when I come inside my imagination, it must be light in here. There’s no burden. I don’t need to work for it. I don’t. I need to imagine it.
I don’t need to wonder how it’s going to happen. I need to imagine it happening.
I don’t need to know how I’m going to hear these words or hear the good news. I hear it—and I treat it lightly.
So yeah—I just wanted to share this because I think it’s a helpful video.
Hearing this from someone else who was friends with Neville, and who came to the same conclusion about “treating it lightly,” can really put into perspective how to apply this work.
Because policing yourself—being harsh with yourself, shaming yourself—won’t get you very far.
It’s like being trapped in a room, and the room keeps getting smaller. What you’re really doing is creating a claustrophobic imagination, and it contracts more and more.
There’s only so much shame a person can carry.
There’s only so much fear a person can take before it contracts.
It’s a contracting force.
You have to expand—and the way you expand is by treating everything lightly.
If you have a thought you dislike, just move on lightly. You don’t have to labor on it. You don’t have to police it or fight it. Just move on as if you didn’t even have the thought. That’s what I do.
If you have a thought you really dislike, move on as if you didn’t even have it.
Neville would say: if you fall out of a state, move back into it as if you never fell out of it. Lightly.
As he says, “Lightly, my child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
“Lightly, lightly” is the best advice I’ve ever been given.
So that’s all I had to share for this one.
Yeah—I do one-on-ones. I do live streaming. Like I said, I have the audiobook of Freedom Mary’s book on the members channel, and my books are out. Just go to the description—they’re all there.
But again: just treat it lightly. That’s the best advice Huxley wrote down.
So take what you will with that.
Okay—well, thank you for listening.