Neville recalls meeting a New York City friend named Abdullah in 1929 -- an old man, then in his late eighties, who ate, drank, and smoked freely, in stark contrast to Neville's own strict vegetarian, teetotal, celibate regime of the time. He recalls that later, in 1933, this same Abdullah, on hearing that Neville wanted to go to Barbados, simply told him 'you are now in Barbados,' the seed of the imaginal technique Neville would spend the following months learning to live by.