This is the story that Neville tells in his ‘Change your mental diet‘ lecture The entire transcript can be found here..
Notice how the psychologist reconstructed a sentence for a lady to be ‘I am perfectly normal’ and notice how it is not the words he used, rather was simply a change in the pattern of speech that goes on silently through the imagination.
Now as you are seated here. That’s all about you. Your own wonderful human imagination is the God of the universe. That is the one spoken of as the Lord Jesus. That’s the one.
Is it really true?
Well you’re called upon to test it test – test it and see if it’s true.
Now have a letter on me tonight. I really should read it but I’m not going to read it, I should read it just as you wrote it, but I’ll tell you the contents of the letter.
This gentleman hasn’t been here in years. The last time I saw him with the Ebell Well you know who had been coming since the Ebell know how long that has been.
He said, I must tell you this story. It may not make sense, but I must tell it. For the first time that I have ever used my training, according to the things that I have heard you say.
I am a psychologist and I wasted years trying to talk people out of their mental problems. When I could easily have imagined them whole and unhappy.
Now here is the story.
He said:
A friend of mine, this lady, claimed that she was in many ways abnormal.She and her husband adopted a little baby girl and something very strange went wrong – with the child.
The child was four years old and still could not speak and the few words were muttered, it garbled so it simply not intelligible.
But in the four years talking to her there was progress.
Then one day she said to me, I do not feel any longer that I am abnormal So now I say to myself I am not abnormal.
He tried to explain to her that that’s not quite the approach. and then he broke the thought and he told me this story:
For instance in my own case. I find a home that I want. I begin to imagine that I’m living in that home. And then. Doubt sets in.
With the result that that doubt materializes into a person. And that person has more money than I have, and he buys the home, leaving me out in the cold.
I know from that experience that every person in my world only reflects a mood in me. Everyone that I meet whether I know them or a stranger who buys a home that I wanted.
When the doubt set in, the doubt materialized into a person. I did know him . But he only reflects that mood of doubt in me. So he has brought money and he buys a home and I am out in the cold.
So I reconstructed a sentence for this lady and I said no longer must you say, I am not abnormal. You must now begin to say, I am perfectly normal.
She said, I do not feel that – he said, I do not care whether you feel it or not. You must begin to persuade yourself that you are perfectly normal by repeating what in yourself. I am perfectly normal.
The day she began it the child went into a coma. So profound was the sleep that it was difficult to rouse her – she could not be awakened.
She asked me to examine the child. I said, no take her to a medical clinic and have them examine the child.
But as she began from his suggestion to assume I am perfectly normal. Within 24 hours the child awoke. They made the test in the medical center and found her alert and bright.
She was only the out pictured statement of that mother who adopted her.
The mother began to feel, ‘I am abnormal’… So she adopts a little child – a girl and a girl of 4 years couldn’t talk.
And when she began, it was all garbled – it made no sense. She only bore witness to that strange peculiar claim of the mother who adopted her.
and when she changed the pattern of speech within her and said I am perfectly normal. The child – by the medical clinic found her not only alert but perfectly healthy and returning to a normal state in this world.
The whole vast world is yourself pushed out. All that you behold though appears without, it is within – in your own wonderful human imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.