How to Use Hypnotic Rhythm

Hypnotic rhythm means the repetitive patterns in life which tend to engender fossilized habits of thought and feeling. This can ruin our mental landscape - or we can use it to power our own regeneration.

References:
Neville Goddard - Your Faith Is Your Fortune (Ch 3)
Napoleon Hill - Interview with the Devil

What is Neville On Fire?

Neville Goddard (1905-1972) offered a compelling explanation of the human condition and an intriguing and empowering path of self-discovery. Join your host Ed to explore from the ground up this most essential mystery: the human imagination.

Announcer: 00:02

Welcome to the Neville on Fire podcast. Neville Goddard was a twentieth century spiritual teacher who offered a profound message. Your creative imagination is the very source of reality. As we learn to use it properly, life becomes intelligible and rewarding. Join your host, Ed, to explore our most valuable asset, the human imagination.

Ed: 00:27

This is season two episode two, how to use hypnotic rhythm. I'll start with the foundational instruction that Neville gives and then discuss the idea of hypnotic rhythm and how we can actually use it. The foundational instruction, the teaching that Neville presents, must awaken in the mind the very creative source itself. Neville says, man must know that his awareness of being is God. Now that's from Your Faith Is Your Fortune chapter three.

Ed: 00:58

Despite the self definition of God given in Exodus, which is I am, conventional thinkers and religious people are obviously going to consider Neville's statement to be audacious to say the least, not to say blasphemous. But the irony is that he's the only one who's adhering carefully to scripture. Consider this. If anyone points to something, whether physically or mentally, and says, lo here, lo there, look here, look there, to define God, to define heaven, according to scripture, well, that's false. And it doesn't matter what the thing is that you're pointing to.

Ed: 01:36

It could be a person like a king or a pope. It could be an image or an icon. It could be the world of nature. That's a very popular one. Or indeed, mentally speaking, it can be any lofty concept or idea or philosophical description.

Ed: 01:51

Anything that man can conceive, invent, name, describe, change, and so on, these cannot be God according to scripture. And that's the definition that Neville is adhering to. So it obviously begs the question, what is the one thing in experience that is immutable, that no one has ever invented, and that no one could ever point to because it cannot be separated from oneself? Well, if you think about it, I mean, once you experience it, the foundational instruction must have been conscious in origin because that's exactly the effect that it activates in oneself. It could not have been invented by people who had no awareness of being.

Ed: 02:32

The logic of this is really irrefutable, but it's psychological in nature. It's experiential in nature. It's not literal. In order to understand awareness of being, you have to experience awareness of being, and it's got nothing to do with words. Well, I want to proceed to the main topic, and that is hypnotic rhythm.

Ed: 02:56

The trouble that we meet with is that when we attempt to consistently put into practice this teaching, it becomes lost in what we could call a sea of mediocrity. That is all the concerns and cares of life that crowd out better ideas. So the fate that awaits us if we're not careful is that we allow the hypnotic rhythm of life to lull us into deeper sleep, whereas we can instead actually use it to our advantage. There's no need to try to do away with hypnotic rhythm. In fact, we we can't destroy it, but it can be turned so that it all of a sudden becomes something that we use to our advantage.

Ed: 03:36

Now this term, hypnotic rhythm, was introduced by Napoleon Hill in Interview with the Devil. It's an ingenious dialogue that he wrote. It signifies all of the repetitive patterns in life which tend to engender fossilized habits of thought and feeling. Anything in the mind that is both repetitive and automatic, this steals valuable time from us. So hypnotic rhythm can easily become the path to destruction of the spirit.

Ed: 04:06

And as far as Napoleon Hill himself is concerned in in this writing, he says, you start to drift. Drifting comes in many forms, but the essence of it is that you give up the capacity to think for yourself. Now, as I said, no one can stop the rhythms of nature, and scarcely, we're able to stop the rhythms of ordinary life. But there's no absolute necessity that hypnotic rhythm must crowd out the important or conscious influences. That's something that we allow to happen, for lack of better ideas on how to conduct life.

Ed: 04:40

So the task then becomes how to counteract this, how to not let hypnotic rhythm calcify and ruin the mind. Now, I like Neville's maxim, he says, that which is the most spiritual turns out to be that which is the most practical. So let's turn our attention now to practicalities. Here's the method. First notice that, as I mentioned, hypnotic rhythm works against us by inducing a petrification of thought.

Ed: 05:08

Now it does this in a hundred different repetitive cycles on many different time scales, going from minutes to years to hours to decades. Now consider first this trial list of common experiences that tend to induce negative habits of thought, very mundane things. Standing in line at the grocery store, sitting in traffic, worrying, entertaining fears about one's health, bad weather, seeming bad weather, I should say. Similarly, a seeming undesirable time of the day or night. A seeming undesirable day of the week, season of the year.

Ed: 05:47

Now, the important thing to notice is that in each example, definite mental associations are called to mind. A certain feeling tone, which is often oppressive and self reinforcing over time. So all of these feeling tones, these oppressive associations that we have to these various rhythms, they amount to what Gurdjieff referred to as, quote, a thousand useless emotions. Indeed. Think how much time is wasted in all of this.

Ed: 06:16

And now let's go to the method itself. Okay. At each detected occurrence, you must do something radical and original in your mental setup. What it is exactly, well, that has to be your own invention. It's your own thought form of the important instruction.

Ed: 06:34

Let this thing be continually subject to your scrutiny, let it be continually fresh. Otherwise it could also become sort of a sterile habit that really renders nothing. This thing that you think of at the onset of some hypnotic rhythm, it has to be fast and it has to be simple because you're not gonna have time to calm down, relax, and meditate, regroup, and all that stuff. This is meant for for daily life, from hour to hour going through a normal day. And this thing that you do mentally, whatever it is, it invokes the core instruction, the teaching that we get from Neville.

Ed: 07:11

And to this notion, this idea of your very identity, you have to surrender. You yield to it completely in faith, carrying out your normal activity as required in the moment. Now I think what you'll find is this exercise sharpens your powers of vigilance over yourself. There's so much that goes by unnoticed in our mental economy. It brings to your attention something remarkable.

Ed: 07:35

In any given typical situation, a hypnotic rhythm induces a vague affect that has intruded into your mind. So they say in the fourth way that, well, attitudes are not directly observable. You can only observe their downstream results. But here, I would say no, we're sharpening our powers of attention. The attitude is directly perceived.

Ed: 07:57

It is really in the nature of a sort of a backdrop or a wash, like on a canvas of your mind. And it's threatening to render bleak your whole mental life. You're gonna take this feeling tone backdrop that is really intrusive and shatter the whole thing, and replace it with the foundational instruction that Neville gives. So at this point you're probably thinking, well this is all just a bit too vague, I'm not exactly sure what to do at the crucial moment. What I can do is share with you what I do, and I think you'll be able to take that and actually improve upon it with your own original thought.

Ed: 08:37

So at the moment of a typical hypnotic rhythm, that is some sort of negative thought pattern that is habitual, what I do is I try to counteract the negative atmosphere or off color wash that it imposes on the mind, if I can use that image of a a painting canvas, with something that is absolutely clear and wide open. So notice at this point, I'm not really concerned with trying to impose some specific idea. I'm not trying to visualize or appropriate the state of the wish fulfilled with respect to some sort of objective or concrete desire or wish. It's something more general than that. It's just a clearing and an opening in the mind.

Ed: 09:21

And that connects really well with another lecture that Neville gives on the subject of purity. It's actually from the Greek catharsis, and it means a complete clearing and opening, which allows the deeper self to have some sort of effect upon you that you would not have allowed or noticed before. So to recap, this exercise relies on a constant vigilance to see when one or another hypnotic rhythm is impending. At that moment, you invoke the special mental action that you had invented to call to mind the highest ideal. And then you must persist in this with faith in the veracity of the ideal.

Ed: 10:04

It can't just be a mere repetition of words. You really have to believe this thing. And that belief is a sort of investment. So before concluding today's episode, I just wanted to read a short passage from Your Faith is Your Fortune chapter three, the one that I had quoted from at the outset of this episode. It just shows how astute, how brilliant Neville is in his interpretation of biblical passages.

Ed: 10:30

He's talking about I am, the self definition of God. And he says, quote, man has so long worshipped the images of his own making that at first he finds this revelation blasphemous. But the day man discovers and accepts this principle as the basis of his life, that day man slays his belief in a god apart from himself. The story of Jesus' betrayal in the Garden Of Gethsemane is the perfect illustration of man's discovery of this principle. Now here's an interpretation that we've never heard about this passage.

Ed: 11:04

Neville says, we are told the crowds armed with staves and lanterns sought Jesus in the dark of night as they inquired after the whereabouts of Jesus, which is salvation in translation, the voice answered, I am. Whereupon the entire crowd fell to the ground. Okay. So in his interpretation, Neville says, man in the darkness of human ignorance sets out on his search for God, aided by the flickering light of human wisdom. As it is revealed to man that his I am or awareness of being is his savior, the shock is so great he mentally falls to the ground for every belief that he has ever entertained tumbles as he realizes that his consciousness is the one and only savior.

Ed: 11:52

So in conclusion, I could say, notice how the repetitive messages that originate in sleeping humanity inundate our lives. Really, these messages usher people into hopelessness, fear, and ultimately senility, and physical and mental incapacity. But what we're gonna do is turn this whole thing around and use these relentless rhythms to power our own regeneration. So in the past, when studying Neville's methods, we wanted to acquire the state of the wish fulfilled and try to achieve a specific aim. It's one thing to pray for specific results, but it's quite another to yield to the absolute, which, if you think about it, already knows your desires anyway, and to trust in the effect that it will work upon your being.

Announcer: 12:45

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