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Neville Goddard: A Cosmic Philosopher

Wikipedia recently took down its page for Neville Goddard (1905-1972), one of the most important and influential New Thought voices of the past century. I felt it important that there be a reliable biography of Neville online. The following article focuses only partially on the linear details of Neville’s life and more on the growth and meaning of his message. This essay will be available in print in Fall 2016 in TarcherPerigee’s reissue of Neville’s first book, At Your Command. 

The words of spiritual writer and lecturer Neville Goddard retain their power to electrify more than forty years after his death. In a sonorous, clipped tone that was preserved on thousands of tape recordings made during his lifetime, and now widely circulated online, Neville asserted with complete ease what many would find fantastical: The human imagination is God – and our thoughts create our world, in the most literal sense.

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Neville from the frontispiece of The Search, 1946.

Neville Goddard was perhaps the last century’s most intellectually substantive and charismatic purveyor of the philosophy generally called New Thought. He wrote more than ten books under the solitary pen name Neville, and was a popular speaker on metaphysical themes from the late 1930s until his death in 1972.

Possessed of a self-educated and uncommonly sharp intellect, Neville espoused a spiritual vision that was bold and total: Everything you see and experience, including other people, is the result of your own thoughts and emotional states. Each of us dreams into existence an infinitude of realities and outcomes. When you realize this, Neville taught, you will discover yourself to be a slumbering branch of the Creator clothed in human form, and at the helm of limitless possibilities.

Neville’s thought system influenced a wide range of spiritual thinkers and writers, from bestselling author Joseph Murphy to mystical iconoclast Carlos Castaneda. He now has an ardent online following, connected by the proliferation of his digitized lectures and books. More still, Neville’s reputation is growing as his mystical teachings are found to comport with key issues in today’s quantum physics debate.

Yet little is known about this spiritual teacher who exerted so unusual a pull on the American spiritual scene of latter twentieth century. Neville cultivated an air of mystery, which has contributed to the intrigue and questions around his ideas – and where they came from.

 A Philosopher Born

Neville Lancelot Goddard was born on February 19, 1905 on the then British-protectorate of Barbados in the town of St. Michael to an Anglican family of nine sons and one daughter. A 1950s gossip column described the young Neville as “enormously wealthy,” his family possessing “a whole island in the West Indies.”

The truth was far more modest. Neville depicted his own English childhood home as happy, but threadbare. There was constant jostling among his brothers for clothes and second-helpings at the dinner table. Neville came to New York City at the age of seventeen to study theater – a move that led to a successful career as a vaudeville dancer and Broadway actor. He toured America and England with dance troupes. But Neville’s theater life was hand-to-mouth; he supplemented his income by working as an elevator operator and shipping clerk.

The young performer’s ambition for the stage began to fade as he encountered an alluring range of spiritual ideas – first with self-styled occult groups, and later with the help of a life-transforming mentor. In his lectures, Neville described studying with a turbaned, Ethiopian-born rabbi named Abdullah. Their initial meeting, Neville said, had an air of kismet:

When I first met my friend Abdullah back in 1931 I entered a room where he was speaking and when the speech was ended he came over, extended his hand and said: “Neville, you are six months late.” I had never seen the man before, so I said: “I am six months late? How do you know me?” and he replied: “The brothers told me that you were coming and you are six months late.”

According to Neville, the two studied Hebrew, Scripture, and Kabbalah together for five years – planting the seeds of Neville’s philosophy of mental creativity.

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Neville in Barbados by Tim Botta.

Neville said that his first understanding of the power of creative thought came while he was living in a rented room on Manhattan’s Upper West Side during the winter of 1933. The young man was depressed: his theatrical career had stalled and his pockets were empty. “After twelve years in America, I was a failure in my own eyes,” he later said. “I was in the theater and made money one year and spent it the next month.” The 28-year-old ached to spend Christmas with his family in Barbados; but he couldn’t afford to travel.

“Live as though you are there,” Abdullah told him, “and that you shall be.” Wandering the streets of New York City, Neville thought from his aim – as he would later urge his listeners – and adopted the feeling that he was really and truly at home on his native island. “Abdullah taught me the importance of remaining faithful to an idea and not compromising,” he recalled. “I wavered, but he remained faithful to the assumption that I was in Barbados and had traveled first class.”

One December morning before the last ship was to depart New York that year for Barbados, Neville received a letter from a long out-of-touch brother: In it was $50 and a ticket to sail. His experiment, it seemed, had worked.

Neville discovered what eventually became the hallmark of his philosophy: It is imperative to assume the feeling that one’s goal has already been attained. “It is not what you want that you attract,” he wrote. “You attract what you believe to be true.”

 Feeling is the Secret

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Neville’s Greenwich Village home overlooking Washington Square Park.

Neville grew convinced that Scripture was rife with this idea that man had to think from the end. He called it the state of “I AM” – this being a mystical translation of the name of God. Man could attain any goal, he reasoned, provided he adopted the feeling of it in the present. Neville reinterpreted each episode in Scripture as a psychological parable of this truth. In an example from his 1941 book Your Faith Is Your Fortune he took a fresh sounding of the tale of Lot’s wife, who turns into a pillar of salt after looking back upon the city of Sodom: “Not knowing that consciousness is ever out-picturing itself in conditions round about you, like Lot’s wife you continually look back upon your problem and again become hypnotized by its seeming naturalness.”

In his eyes, all of Scripture was nothing other than a blueprint for man’s development. “The Bible has no reference at all to any person who ever existed, or any event that ever occurred upon earth,” Neville told audiences. “All the stories of the Bible unfold in the minds of the individual man.” Neville depicted Christ not as a living figure but, rather, as a mythical master psychologist whose miracles and parables demonstrate the power of creative thought.

 Real Magic

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Neville’s draft card signed Neville Lancelot Goddard.

In public talks, Neville often made extravagant claims – such as his use of mental visualizations to win an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army after being drafted at the height of World War II. In actuality, such a sudden discharge did occur.

Neville entered the army on November 12, 1942, obligated to serve for the duration of the war. But military records show that four months later, in March 1943, the mystic was “discharged from service to accept employment in an essential wartime industry.”

Neville resumed his “essential wartime” job as a metaphysical lecturer in New York’s Greenwich Village. A profile in The New Yorker of September 11, 1943, described the handsome speaker back at the lectern before swooning (and often female) New York audiences.

It is unclear why Neville, a lithe man in perfect health, would have been released from the military at the peak of the war. “Unfortunately,” an Army public affairs officer said. “Mr. Goddard’s records were destroyed in the 1973 fire at the National Personnel Records Center.”

Neville also made bold claims about the eventual – and highly prosperous – rise of his family’s food service and retail businesses in Barbados. These claims likewise conform to public records.

Even Neville’s tales about the mysterious teacher Abdullah are far from dismissible.

Hidden Masters

 Neville’s description of training under a turbaned spiritual adept had a certain pedigree in America’s alternative spiritual culture. It was a concept that the Russian mystic Madame H.P. Blavatsky ignited in the minds of Western seekers with her late-nineteenth century accounts of her mentorship to unseen Mahatmas, or Great Souls. Blavatsky aroused a hope that invisible help was out there; that guidance could be sought from a difficult-to-place master of wisdom, someone who might arrive from an exotic land, or another plane of existence, and who could dispense illumined knowledge.

Indeed, the Abdullah story as told by Neville might be brushed aside as a tale borrowed and retouched from Blavatsky – except for another, better-known figure in the positive-thinking tradition who, toward the end of his life, made his own claims of mentorship under Abdullah.

The Irish emigrant writer Joseph Murphy arrived in New York City in the early 1920s with a degree in chemistry and a passion to study metaphysics. Murphy is widely remembered for his 1963 mega-seller The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. The book remains one of the most engaging and popular works of positive-mind metaphysics. Shortly before his death in 1981, Murphy, in a little-known series of interviews published by a French press in Quebec, described his own encounter with the mysterious Abdullah. Interviewer Bernard Cantin recounted the tale in his 1987 book of dialogues with Murphy:

It was in New York that Joseph Murphy also met the professor Abdullah, a Jewish man of black ancestry, a native of Israel, who knew, in every detail, all the symbolism of each of the verses of the Old and the New Testaments. This meeting was one of the most significant in Dr. Murphy’s spiritual evolution. In fact, Abdullah, who had never seen nor known the Murphy family, said flatly that Murphy came from a family of six children, and not five, as Murphy himself had believed. Later on, Murphy, intrigued, questioned his mother and learned that, indeed, he had had another brother who had died a few hours after his birth, and was never spoken of again.

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Neville in Los Angeles in 1951.

By the mid-1950s Neville’s story of tutelage under a secretive teacher exerted a pull on a budding writer whose own memoirs of mystic discovery later made him a near-household name: Carlos Castaneda.

Castaneda wove his own tales of mentorship to shadowy instructor, in his case a Native American sorcerer named Don Juan. Castaneda first discovered Neville through an early love interest in Los Angeles, Margaret Runyon, who was among Neville’s most dedicated students. A cousin of American storyteller Damon Runyon, Margaret wooed the Latin art student at a friend’s house, slipping Carlos a slender Neville volume called The Search, in which she had inscribed her name and phone number. The two became lovers and later husband and wife.

Runyon spoke frequently to Castaneda about her mystical teacher Neville, but he responded with little more than mild interest – with one exception. In her memoirs, Runyon recalled Castaneda growing fascinated when the conversation turned to Neville’s discipleship under an exotic teacher:

…it was more than the message that attracted Carlos, it was Neville himself. He was so mysterious. Nobody was really sure who he was or where he had come from. There were vague references to Barbados in the West Indies and his being the son of an ultra-rich plantation family, but nobody knew for sure. They couldn’t even be sure about this Abdullah business, his Indian teacher, who was always way back there in the jungle, or someplace. The only thing you really knew was that Neville was here and that he might be back next week, but then again…

“There was,” she concluded, “a certain power in that position, an appealing kind of freedom in the lack of past and Carlos knew it.”

The Master Revealed?

Was there a real esoteric teacher named Abdullah who taught Neville and Joseph Murphy? A plausible candidate exists. He is found in the figure of a 1920s and 30s-era black-nationalist mystic named Arnold Josiah Ford. Like Neville, Ford was born in Barbados, in 1877, the son of an itinerant preacher. Ford arrived in Harlem around 1910 and established himself as a leading voice in the Ethiopianism movement, a precursor to Jamaican Rastafarianism.

Neville Josiah Ford

Neville’s Abdullah? Mystic Arthur Josiah Ford

Both movements held that the East African nation of Ethiopia was home to a lost Israelite tribe that had preserved the teachings of a mystical African belief system. Ford considered himself an original Israelite, and a man of authentic Judaic descent. Like Abdullah, Ford was considered an “Ethiopian rabbi.” Surviving photographs show Ford as a dignified, somewhat severe-looking man with a set jaw and penetrating gaze, wearing a turban, just like Neville’s Abdullah. Ford himself cultivated an air of mystery, attracting “much apocryphal and often contradictory speculation,” noted Randall K. Burkett, a historian of black-nationalist movements.

Ford lived in New York City at the same time that Neville began his discipleship with Abdullah. Neville recalled his and Abdullah’s first meeting in 1931; and U.S. Census records show Ford was living in Harlem on West 131st Street in 1930. (He was also at the same address in 1920, shortly before Joseph Murphy arrived.) Historian Howard Brotz, in a study of the Black Jewish movement in Harlem, wrote of Ford: “It is certain that he studied Hebrew with some immigrant teacher and was a key link” in communicating “approximations of Talmudic Judaism” from within the Ethiopianism movement.  This would fit Neville’s depiction of Abdullah tutoring him in Hebrew and Kabbalah. (It should be noted that early twentieth-century occultists often loosely used the term Kabbalah to denote any kind of Judaic study.)

More still, Ford’s philosophy of Ethiopianism possessed a mental metaphysics. “The philosophy,” noted historian Jill Watts, “…contained an element of mind-power, for many adherents of Ethiopianism subscribed to mental healing and believed that material circumstances could be altered through God’s power. Such notions closely paralleled tenets of New Thought…” Ford was also an early supporter of black-nationalist pioneer Marcus Garvey and served as the musical director of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey had also suffused his movement with New Thought metaphysics and phraseology.

The commonalities between Ford and Abdullah are striking: the black rabbi, the turban, the study of Hebrew, mind-power metaphysics, the Barbados connection, and the time frame. All suggest Ford as a viable candidate for the elusive Abdullah.

Yet there are too many gaps in both Neville’s and Ford’s backgrounds to allow for a conclusive leap. Records of Ford’s life grow thinner after 1931, the year he departed New York and migrated to Ethiopia. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, after his coronation in 1930, offered land grants to any African-American willing to relocate to the East African nation. Ford accepted the offer. The timing of Ford’s departure is the biggest single blow to the Abdullah-Ford theory. Neville said that he and his teacher had studied together for five years. This obviously would not have been possible with Ford, who had apparently left New York in 1931, the same year Neville said that he and Abdullah first met.

In a coda to Ford’s career, he journeyed to Africa, along with several other American followers of Ethiopianism, to accept the land grants offered by Haile Selassie. Yet Ford’s life in the Ethiopian countryside, a period so sadly sparse of records, could only have been a difficult existence for the urbane musician.  Here was a man uprooted from metropolitan surroundings at an advanced age to settle into a new and unfamiliar agricultural landscape. All the while, Ethiopia was facing the threat of invasion by fascist Italy. Ford died in Ethiopia in September 1935, a few weeks before Mussolini’s troops crossed the border.

While Ford’s migration runs counter to Neville’s timeline, there are other ways in which Ford may fit into the Abdullah mythos. Neville could have extrapolated Abdullah from Ford’s character after spending a briefer time with Ford. Or Abdullah may have been a metaphorical composite of several contemporaneous figures, perhaps including Ford.* Or, finally, Abdullah may have been Neville’s invention, though this scenario doesn’t account for Joseph Murphy’s record.

The full story may never be knowable, but the notion of two young metaphysical seekers, Neville and Murphy, living in pre-war New York and studying under an African-American esoteric teacher, whether Ford or another, is wholly plausible. The crisscrossing currents of the mind-power movement in the first half of the twentieth century produced collaborations among a wide range of spiritual travelers, who traversed the metaphysical landscape with a passion for personal development and self-reinvention.

Does it Work?  

If one considers Neville’s philosophy, what emerges seems almost too good to be true: Believe that you already possess your goal, and so you will. “Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified,” he concluded. If that’s true, one might ask, why has this principle been discovered by so relatively few?

In a little-known book from 1946, the occult philosopher Israel Regardie took measure of the burgeoning creative-mind movements, including Unity, Christian Science, and Science of Mind. Regardie paid special attention to the case of Neville, whose teaching, he felt, reflected both the hopes and pitfalls of New Thought philosophy. Regardie believed that Neville possessed profound and truthful ideas; yet he felt these ideas were proffered without sufficient attention to training or practice. Could the everyday person really control his thoughts and moods in the way Neville prescribed? In The Romance of Metaphysics, Regardie wrote:

Neville’s method is sound enough. But the difficulty is that few people are able to muster up this emotional exaltation or this intellectual concentration which are the royal approaches to the citadel of the Unconscious. As a result of this definite lack of training or technique, the mind wanders all over the place, and a thousand and one things totally unrelated to ‘I AM’ are ever before their attention.

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Neville circa early 1960s.

Neville offered his listeners and readers simple meditative techniques, such as using the practice of visualization before going to sleep, or the repeat reenactment of a small, idealized imaginal drama symbolizing one’s success, like receiving an award or a congratulatory handshake. But Regardie reasoned that, as a dancer and actor, Neville possessed a unique control over his mind and body which his audience did not share: “Neville knows the art of relaxation instinctively. He is a dancer, and a dancer must, of necessity, relax. Hence I believe he does not fully and consciously realize that the average person in his audience does not know the mechanism of relaxation, does know how to ‘let go.’”

“Of all the metaphysical systems with which I am acquainted,” Regardie concluded, “Neville’s is the most evidently magical. But being the most magical, it requires for that very reason, a systematized training on the part of those who would approach and enter its portals.” Absent this training, Regardie wrote, “His system is in reality strictly personal.” It may work for him, the journalist suspected, but not others.

 Living in the Material World

Is Regardie’s a fair criticism? Certainly testimony exists to the contrary. In his 1961 book The Law and the Promise Neville supplied a plethora of letters from people who said they achieved success using his methods. As one reads these passages, however, another impression emerges. Student after student is concerned with ardently material goals: a new house, a new car, a new suit, cash in the pocket. But this was not Neville’s ultimate aim.

In a lecture from 1967, Neville drew an intriguing contrast:

What would be good for you? Tell me, because in the end every conflict will resolve itself as the world is simply mirroring the being you are assuming that you are. One day you will be so saturated with wealth, so saturated with power in the world of Caesar, you will turn your back on it all and go in search of the word of God … I do believe that one must completely saturate himself with the things of Caesar before he is hungry for the word of God.This passage sounds a note that resonates through various esoteric traditions: One cannot renounce what one has not attained. To move beyond the material world, or its wealth, one must know that wealth. But to Neville – and this became the cornerstone of his philosophy – material attainment was merely a step toward the realization of a much greater and ultimate truth.

In the last twelve years of his life, the teacher took his philosophy in a radically new direction – one that cost him some of his popularity on the positive-thinking circuit. Neville told of a jarring mystical experience he had in 1959 in which he was reborn as a child from within his skull, which opened as a womb. (In the Bible, Golgotha translates as skull). In a complex interweaving of Scripture and personal experience, Neville told of “the Promise:” that each of us is Christ waiting to be liberated through metaphysical rebirth; this is the true symbolic meaning of the crucifixion in which God became man so that man could one day know himself as God. Our imagination, Neville taught, is the God-seed. He saw literal and final truth in Psalm 82:6, “Ye are gods.”

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Neville later in life with student Margaret Ruth Broome.

Neville’s lecture audiences, however, seemed to prefer the earlier message of affirmative-mind success, or what he called “Imaginism.” Many listeners, the mystic lamented, “are not at all interested in its framework of faith, a faith leading to the fulfillment of God’s promise,” as experienced in his vision of rebirth. Audiences drifted away. Urged by his speaking agent to abandon this theme, “or you’ll have no audience at all,” a student recalled Neville replying, “Then I’ll tell it to the bare walls.”

When the teacher died of heart failure at his West Hollywood home on October 1, 1972, his passing was marked only by a short obituary in The Los Angeles Times and a hastily arranged memorial service. The Age of Aquarius, it seemed, had limited interest in this silver-haired seer who spoke of the human imagination as God.

Resurrection

In the early twenty-first century Neville’s name would seem to be a relic.  But the mystical philosopher has instead experienced a renaissance of attention.

Neville’s work is extolled by some of today’s bestselling New Age writers, such as Wayne Dyer and Rhonda Byrne. As a result, his books have ridden a new wave of popularity. What’s more, Neville’s message, perhaps more than that of any other New Thought writer, has prefigured and coalesced with current debates in quantum physics.

Physics journals today routinely discuss what is called the “quantum measurement problem.” Many people have heard of some version of it. In essence, more than eighty years of laboratory experiments show that atomic-scale particles appear in a given place only when a measurement is made. Quantum theory holds that no measurement means no precise and localized object, at least on the atomic scale.

In a challenge to our deepest conceptions of reality, quantum data shows that a subatomic particle literally occupies an infinite number of places (a state called “superposition”) until observation manifests it in one place. In quantum mechanics, an observer’s conscious decision to look or not look actually determines what will be there.

For example, quantum experiments demonstrate that if you project an atom at a pair of boxes interference patterns prove that the atom was at one point in both boxes. The particle existed in a wave-state, which means that the location of the particle in space-time is known only probabilistically; it has no properties in this state, just potentialities. The wave became localized in one box only after someone looked. Neville described man’s power of creation similarly: Thought, he said, does not so much manifest the outcome as select it from an infinite universe of already-existing possibilities.

Quantum theory grows still closer to Neville’s outlook when dealing with the thought experiment called “Schrodinger’s cat.” In 1935 the physicist Erwin Schrodinger sought to impel his colleagues to deal with the logical conclusions of their own data – through a purposely absurdist thought experiment. A version goes like this:

A cat is placed into one of a pair of boxes. Along with the cat is what Schrodinger called a “diabolical device.” The device, if exposed to an atom, releases a deadly poison. An observer then fires an atom at the boxes. The observer subsequently uses some form of measurement to check on which box the atom is in: the empty one, or the one with the cat and the poisoning device. When the observer goes to check, the wave function of the atom – i.e., the state in which it exists in both boxes – collapses into a particle function – i.e., the state in which it is localized to one box. Once the observer takes his measurement, convention says that the cat will be discovered to be dead or alive. But Schrodinger reasoned that quantum physics describes an outcome in which the cat is both dead and alive. This is because the atom, in its wave function, was, at one time, in either box, and either outcome is real.

Neville likewise taught that the mind creates multiple and coexistent realities. Everything already exists in potential, he said, and through our thoughts and feelings we select which outcome we ultimately experience. Indeed, Neville saw man as some quantum theorists see the observer taking measurements in the particle lab, effectively determining where a subatomic particle will actually appear as a localized object. Moreover, Neville wrote that everything and everyone that we experience is rooted in us, as we are ultimately rooted in God. Man exists in an infinite cosmic interweaving of endless dreams of reality – until the ultimate realization of one’s identity as Christ.

In an almost prophetic observation in 1948, he told listeners: “Scientists will one day explain why there is a serial universe. But in practice, how you use this serial universe to change the future is more important.” More than any other spiritual teacher, Neville created a mystical correlate to quantum physics.

During his lifetime, Neville never achieved the fame or reputation of his better-known contemporaries, such as Ernest Holmes and Joseph Murphy. Some of his more radical theories cost him segments of his audience. But it was his intellectual bravery, and the elegant congruity of his ideas, that has resulted in his recognition today as one of modern spirituality’s most pioneering and foresightful theorists.

This self-taught, unfettered journeyer into the cosmic is likely to emerge as the positive-mind movement’s most enduring voice.

* Neville may have hinted as much, especially in light of his love for Hebrew symbolism. He affectionately called Abdullah “Ab” for short – a variant of the Hebrew abba for “father.” Neville may have fashioned a mythical “father mentor” from various teachers.

ARTICLE  BY MITCH HOROWITZ

________________

A PEN-Awarding winning historian, Mitch Horowitz is the author of Occult America and One Simple Idea, a history and analysis of the positive-mind movement. He has written on alternative spirituality for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. Vice-president and executive editor at TarcherPerigee, Mitch is also the voice of popular audio books, including Alcoholics Anonymous. Visit him at MitchHorowitz.com

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Law of Attraction Conundrum: “Beware the Double-Minded Person”

In the past two years, I have read and re-read several of Neville Goddard’s thought-provoking books about manifestation and mind-mastery. With each re-reading a portion stands out to me, grabbing my attention by illuminating a concept that I had not previously considered or noticed. I remember learning that Edgar Cayce used to read the Bible every year from start to finish, always finding fresh parts to amaze and instruct him.

Goddard generously scattered bible verses throughout most of his writings. He referred to the Bible as “the greatest psychological text ever written”, explaining how every story represents a psychological drama taking place in the consciousness of man. In his many widely-available books and lectures, Neville interprets specific biblical verses and tales as to how they relate to the tenets of Law of Attraction.

The essence of Law of Attraction is that we are capable of deliberately creating all that we wish to manifest, once we understand how the principles of this law unfold. According to LOA, the process of manifestation begins once you ask the Universe for something. From this point, one is meant to remain receptive, believing that one’s wish — or something better — is on its way. My favorite modern writer on LOA, Richard Dotts, depicted this brilliantly by likening it to placing an order on Amazon; How, when we do that, we just know it’s on its way.

The Secret Behind the Secret

Law of Attraction principles also state that, so long as one doesn’t “muddy the waters” by constantly worrying about the when’s and how’s of the manifestation, providing one does not micro-manage Spirit with fears, dis-beliefs or doubts-about-one’s-deservedness — the dream, wish or intention will certainly be realized.

If you’ve watched “The Secret” or follow any of the popular Law of Attraction teachers like Abraham (via Esther Hicks) you may have learned the formula for deliberately creating what you desire: Ask, Believe, Receive.

Evidently this Believe step is the hardest one to sustain, because so many books, courses, and sold-out appearances etc. wouldn’t be as wildly successful as they are if it were that easy-peasy to manifest. How does one just trust and let go, knowing that it’s all just going to unfold in the divine right timing?

The Double-Minded Person

I had seen this quote about “the double-minded man” in at least 3 of Neville’s books, all of which I have re-read multiple times, but only recently these words stood out to me, a quote from James 1:5-8

You should ask God…and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt…that person should not expect to receive anything…Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

I don’t believe that double-minded in this reference was meant to be a judgment call on hypocrisy, insincerity, or being two-faced. Or to liken “unstable” to being unreliable or untrustworthy. It’s more about someone who has not mastered his/her doubts, or may be inadvertently sabotaging or neutralizing his/her best intentions. Belief wavers because there exists a kind of duality or struggle going on inside of them. This could be occurring even inadvertently or subconsciously.

Breaking down the meaning of double-mindedness (as it relates to doubt and the “Belief” phase of the LOA Formula) into 3 categories makes Neville’s admonition much clearer:

1. Conscious

I know now that the double-minded phrase suddenly jumped out because of my own struggles between asking the Universe for things and then “hedging my bets” by having Plan B in place. This denotes a duality of faith vs. mistrust. And maintaining that mindset will most certainly sabotage or neutralize my best intentions. As I penetrate deeper into my own resistance to spiritual surrender, I need to be consciously aware of how I need to trust more and embrace the unknown, as this will surely bolster Belief.

2. Unconscious

Beneath consciousness there is always a rumbling; It is the running commentary, often negative or critical, that was formed as a result of deeply-rooted belief systems and upbringing. The double mind can be described as: the undercurrent, the drumbeat, the incessant babble, the soundtrack, the inner voice that is always judging, nagging, comparing unfavorably, knocking down, criticizing, belittling, demeaning, blocking, impeding, distorting. Even while the intention of the inner critic may be to protect us, it’s usually running a program that undermines our Belief that having/doing/being something different is possible. Sabotage can be going on deep below the surface of consciousness, like a subterranean river.

3. Ambivalence (a little bit of both)

Defined as having opposing views or feelings, the state of ambivalence sometimes gives us a vision of the potential world where we have achieved that which we deeply desire, while at the same time providing a glimpse of how much of a dramatic shift in responsibility or accountability will be required. And we’re not sure we are up to that task. Ambivalence creates in inner struggle because, on the one hand you desperately want change, but on the other hand, a part (or parts) of you may be resisting. Again, a mixed message to the Universe is not going to allow for an effortless manifestation of our desires.

Single-Minded Solution

If double-mindedness is the foe of deliberate creation, it would stand to reason that, in order to manifest more of what you desire, you must develop more of a single-minded aim, where you remain focused and goal-oriented, willing to go to battle with any part of your mind/being that disagrees with your intention. You are less likely to be taken off course or distracted when you maintain a single focus.

Single-mindedness can come through asking yourself pointed questions and considering what factors may be limiting or inhibiting your manifestation. Here are some ideas to consider or journal with:
Are you holding onto outdated belief systems that may be holding you back?

Should you pay more attention how the inner commentator operates, and be willing to go to battle in order to gain more ground?

Are you ambivalent about what you may need to accomplish in order to achieve your desire?

May you single-mindedly pursue your precious intentions!

In the past two years, I have read and re-read several of Neville Goddard’s thought-provoking books about manifestation and mind-mastery. With each re-reading a portion stands out to me, grabbing my attention by illuminating a concept that I had not previously considered or noticed. I remember learning that Edgar Cayce used to read the Bible every year from start to finish, always finding fresh parts to amaze and instruct him.

Goddard generously scattered bible verses throughout most of his writings. He referred to the Bible as “the greatest psychological text ever written”, explaining how every story represents a psychological drama taking place in the consciousness of man. In his many widely-available books and lectures, Neville interprets specific biblical verses and tales as to how they relate to the tenets of Law of Attraction.

The essence of Law of Attraction is that we are capable of deliberately creating all that we wish to manifest, once we understand how the principles of this law unfold. According to LOA, the process of manifestation begins once you ask the Universe for something. From this point, one is meant to remain receptive, believing that one’s wish — or something better — is on its way. My favorite modern writer on LOA, Richard Dotts, depicted this brilliantly by likening it to placing an order on Amazon; How, when we do that, we just know it’s on its way.

The Secret Behind the Secret

Law of Attraction principles also state that, so long as one doesn’t “muddy the waters” by constantly worrying about the when’s and how’s of the manifestation, providing one does not micro-manage Spirit with fears, dis-beliefs or doubts-about-one’s-deservedness — the dream, wish or intention will certainly be realized.

If you’ve watched “The Secret” or follow any of the popular Law of Attraction teachers like Abraham (via Esther Hicks) you may have learned the formula for deliberately creating what you desire: Ask, Believe, Receive.

Evidently this Believe step is the hardest one to sustain, because so many books, courses, and sold-out appearances etc. wouldn’t be as wildly successful as they are if it were that easy-peasy to manifest. How does one just trust and let go, knowing that it’s all just going to unfold in the divine right timing?

The Double-Minded Person

I had seen this quote about “the double-minded man” in at least 3 of Neville’s books, all of which I have re-read multiple times, but only recently these words stood out to me, a quote from James 1:5-8

You should ask God…and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt…that person should not expect to receive anything…Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

I don’t believe that double-minded in this reference was meant to be a judgment call on hypocrisy, insincerity, or being two-faced. Or to liken “unstable” to being unreliable or untrustworthy. It’s more about someone who has not mastered his/her doubts, or may be inadvertently sabotaging or neutralizing his/her best intentions. Belief wavers because there exists a kind of duality or struggle going on inside of them. This could be occurring even inadvertently or subconsciously.

Breaking down the meaning of double-mindedness (as it relates to doubt and the  “Belief” phase of the LOA Formula) into 3 categories makes Neville’s admonition much clearer:

1. Conscious

I know now that the double-minded phrase suddenly jumped out because of my own struggles between asking the Universe for things and then “hedging my bets” by having Plan B in place. This denotes a duality of faith vs. mistrust. And maintaining that mindset will most certainly sabotage or neutralize my best intentions. As I penetrate deeper into my own resistance to spiritual surrender, I need to be consciously aware of how I need to trust more and embrace the unknown, as this will surely bolster Belief.

2. Unconscious

Beneath consciousness there is always a rumbling; It is the running commentary, often negative or critical, that was formed as a result of deeply-rooted belief systems and upbringing. The double mind can be described as: the undercurrent, the drumbeat, the incessant babble, the soundtrack, the inner voice that is always judging, nagging, comparing unfavorably, knocking down, criticizing, belittling, demeaning, blocking, impeding, distorting. Even while the intention of the inner critic may be to protect us, it’s usually running a program that undermines our Belief that having/doing/being something different is possible. Sabotage can be going on deep below the surface of consciousness, like a subterranean river.

3. Ambivalence (a little bit of both)

Defined as having opposing views or feelings, the state of ambivalence sometimes gives us a vision of the potential world where we have achieved that which we deeply desire, while at the same time providing a glimpse of how much of a dramatic shift in responsibility or accountability will be required. And we’re not sure we are up to that task. Ambivalence creates in inner struggle because, on the one hand you desperately want change, but on the other hand, a part (or parts) of you may be resisting. Again, a mixed message to the Universe is not going to allow for an effortless manifestation of our desires.

Single-Minded Solution

If double-mindedness is the foe of deliberate creation, it would stand to reason that, in order to manifest more of what you desire, you must develop more of a single-minded aim, where you remain focused and goal-oriented, willing to go to battle with any part of your mind/being that disagrees with your intention. You are less likely to be taken off course or distracted when you maintain a single focus.

Single-mindedness can come through asking yourself pointed questions and considering what factors may be limiting or inhibiting your manifestation. Here are some ideas to consider or journal with: Are you holding onto outdated belief systems that may be holding you back?

Should you pay more attention how the inner commentator operates, and be willing to go to battle in order to gain more ground?

Are you ambivalent about what you may need to accomplish in order to achieve your desire?  

May you single-mindedly pursue your precious intentions!

By LindaJoy Rose, Ph.D.
Author, Speaker, Instructional Design Specialist

Sponsored By Off On Holiday
Web: https://www.offonholiday.com

THE SECRET OF PRAYER

Neville Goddard 10-06-1967

The secret of scriptural prayer, as told in the form of a parable, is to pray and never lose heart. One such parable tells of a widow who kept coming to a judge, asking for vindication. At first he did not respond, then he said to himself: “Although I neither fear God, nor regard man, yet I will exonerate her, because by her much coming, she wearies me.” Parables, like dreams, contain a single jet of truth. This parable urges persistence in mastering the art of prayer. Once you have mastered it you will live in the state of thanksgiving, and all through the day you will say over and over again to yourself: “Thank you, Father.”

A most effective prayer is found in the 11th chapter of the Book of John, as: “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, for thou always hears me.” In this chapter, the story is told of someone who has died and has seemingly gone from this world. But the truth is that no one is dead to you, when you know how to pray. You may no longer touch, see, or hear those you love with your mortal senses; but if you know how to give thanks, you can move from your body of darkness into the world of light and encounter your loved ones there. Therefore, he who would learn how to pray will discover the great secret of a full and happy life.

In the 33rd chapter of the Book of Genesis, Jerusalem is called “Shechem.” It is said that, “Jacob came safely into the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan. There he erected an altar and called it El Elohey Israel, which means “the God of Israel”. Orienting himself toward Shechem (the true direction) Jacob remained in El Elohey Israel, which means “safe in mind, body, or estate”.

We are told that Daniel oriented himself at an open window, where he looked toward Jerusalem. And those in the Mohammedan world pray looking towards what they call Mecca. But because Christianity takes place within, scripture is speaking of the Jerusalem within, and not on the outside at all. When you pray you do not prostrate yourself on the ground and look towards some eastern point in space, but adjust yourself mentally into your fulfilled desire. Although this technique is simple, it takes practice to become its master. Your true direction is to the knowledge of what you want. Knowing your desire, point yourself directly in front of it by thinking from its fulfillment. Silence all thought and allow the doors of your mind to open. Then enter your desire. Stay with your imagination as your companion. Start by thinking of your imagination as something other than yourself, and eventually you will know you are what you formerly called your imagination. It is possible to amputate a hand, leg, or various parts of the body – but imagination cannot be amputated, for it is your eternal Self!

Let me show you what I mean. While standing here in Los Angeles, I may desire to be elsewhere. Time and finances may not allow it, but in my imagination I can assume I am already there. Now, by a mere act of assumption on my part, God departs this body. If I assume I am in New York City, anyone I think of in Los Angeles must be three thousand miles away. No longer can I think of them as just down the street or in the hills west of me. That is my test.

The word “prayer” means “motion towards, accession to, at or in the vicinity of”. Orienting myself towards New York City, I have made a motion, an accession to. As I act in the vicinity of, I see my friends relative to New York City. Having done this, let me have full confidence in my imagination, knowing he is the being who made the motion. Blake’s words are true: “Man is all Imagination, and God is Man and exists in us and we in Him. Man’s Immortal Body is the Imagination, and that is God Himself.”

You can not only move in space but also in time and fulfill your every desire. Prayer does not have to be confined to what a person calls self. You can pray for another by feeling they now have what they formerly wanted, for feeling is a movement. The first creative act recorded in scripture is motion: “God moved upon the face of the water.”

A friend recently had a fantastic vision, during which he asked: “Did I learn anything?” and I answered: “Yes. You learned how to move.” Then everything was transformed, as conflict deceased, a hovel became a castle, the battlefield a sea of ripened wheat, and he was escorted into his eternal home. Prayer is motion. It is learning how to move toward a change in your bank balance, your marital status, or social world. Learn to master the art of motion; for after you move, change begins to rise up out of the deep. The technique of prayer is mastering your inner motion. If you are seeing things you would like to change, move in your imagination to the position you would occupy after the change took place.

Everything and everyone in your world is yourself pushed out. Any request from another – heard by you – should not be ignored; for it is coming from yourself! You came down from a world of light to confine yourself to this body of darkness. Now a spark from an infinite world of light, one day you will remember that world and awaken, but in the meantime you must learn to exercise the power of your mind. Having remembered the infinite world of light, I now know that everything is myself, as all things are contained within me.

Prayer is psychological movement. It is the art of moving from a problem to its solution. When a friend calls, telling of a problem, we hang up, and I move from the problem state to its solution by hearing the same lady tell me the problem is now solved.

A friend recently shared this dream with me: We were in a garden and he told me all of his desires, when I said: “Don’t desire them, live them!” This is true. Desire is thinking of! Living is thinking from! Don’t go through life desiring. Live your desire. Think it is already fulfilled. Believe it is true; for an assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact.

When you are learning the art of prayer, persistence is necessary, as told us in the story of the man who – coming at night – said: “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread.” Although his friend replied: “It is late, the door is closed, my children are in bed, and I cannot come down and serve you,” because of the man’s importunity, his friend gave him what he wanted. The word importunity means brazen impudence. The man repeated and repeated his request, unwilling to take no for an answer. The same is true in the story of the widow. These are all parables told to illustrate prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer teaches the oneness of us all. It begins: “Our Father.” If God is our Father, are we not one? Regardless of our race or color of skin, if we have a common Father, we must have a common brotherhood.

Eventually we are all going to know we are the Father; but in the meanwhile, persistence is the key to a change in life – more income, greater recognition, or whatever the desire may be. If your desire is not fulfilled today, tomorrow, next week or next month – persist, for persistency will pay off. All of your prayers will be answered if you will not give up.

My old friend, Abdullah, gave me this exercise. Every day I would sit in my living room where I could not see the telephone in the hall. With my eyes closed, I would assume I was in the chair by the phone. Then I would feel myself back in the living room. This I did over and over again, as I discovered the feeling of changing motion. This exercise was very helpful to me. If you try it, you will discover you become very loose with this exercise.
Practice the art of motion, and one day you will discover that by the very act of imagining, you are detached from your physical body and placed exactly where you are imagining yourself to be – so much so that you are seen by those who are there.

Being all imagination, you must be wherever you are in imagination. Moving in your imagination, you are preparing a place for your desires to be fulfilled. Then you return, to walk through a series of events which will lead you up to where you have placed yourself. In imagination, I can put myself where I desire to be. I move and view the world from there. Then I return here, confident that – in a way unknown to me – this being who can do all things and knows all things, will lead me physically across a bridge of incident up to where I have placed myself. You can move in imagination to any place and any time. Dwell there as though it were true, and you will have learned the secret of prayer.

My wife had a wonderful vision where she found herself in a grove of trees. Walking down a clear passage, she saw people gathered around an altar. A lady approached, carrying a book entitled, The Credence of Faith and the Forgiveness of Sins according to Judaism. Reaching the altar, she began to read it aloud. Shortly, another lady appeared, carrying a book entitled, The Credence of Faith and the Forgiveness of Sins according to Christianity. Approaching the altar, she too opened her book and began to read. As my wife listened, she realized it was infinitely more difficult to be a Christian than to be a Jew. She saw the whole thing was psychological. That nothing is done on the outside, because everything comes from within.

Browning began his wonderful poem, “Easter Day” with the words: “How hard it is to be a Christian.” And Chapman said: “Christianity has not been tried and proved wanting. It has been tried and found difficult and therefore given up.” Why? Because a Christian cannot pass the buck and blame another. Christianity is built upon the foundation that all are one. That man is forever drawing conformation of what he is doing within himself. That your world bears witness to what you are doing to yourself. This is difficult to accept, yet it is Christianity. No man comes unto me, save my Father who sent me calls him. I and my Father are one, therefore I call all those who enter my life to reveal to me what I am doing in my imagination.

Learn how to pray. Master it and make your world conform to the ideal you want to experience. Stop thinking of, and start thinking from. To think from the wish fulfilled is to realize that which you will never experience while you are thinking of it. When you put yourself into the state of the wish fulfilled and think from it, you are praying, and in a way your reasoning mind does not know, your wish will become a fact in your world. You can be the man or woman you want to be, when you know how to pray. All things are possible to him who believes, therefore learn the art of believing and persuade yourself it is true. Then one day, occupying space and time in your imagination, you will be seen by another, who will call or send you a letter verifying your visit. This I know from experience.

The Bible is not just beautiful poetry; it is the inspired word of God. Written by poets, they have given enlarged meaning to normal words. When you put your body on the bed and assume you are elsewhere, are you not all imagination? In the act of imagining, you depart the dark caverns of this body and appear where you imagine yourself to be, because you are God – all imagination – and cannot die. You cannot go to eternal death in that which cannot die, and your immortal being is imagination! You are the central being of scripture – the one called Jesus Christ, who is the Lord God Jehovah – who descended here for a purpose.

While here, you must pay the price of living in the world of Caesar. You may criticize our politicians and protest any raise in taxes, but you will continue to be taxed. All you have to do is learn the art of prayer and make more money.

I am reminded of a story told of the late President Kennedy. It seems his father – who had, in one generation, made something like four-hundred million dollars – complained that his children were spending too much money. At a banquet, President Kennedy said: “The only solution to this problem is for father to make more money.”

One day a friend told me that when she was a child, her father would say: “If you have but a dollar and it was necessary for you to spend it, do so as if it were a dry leaf, and you the owner of a boundless forest.” If one really knows how to pray, he could spend his dollar and then reproduce it again. You see, this world is brought into being by man’s imagination, so it is very important to learn the secret of prayer.

If you are still desiring, stop it right now! Ask yourself what it would be like, were your desire a reality. How would you feel if you were already the one you would like to be? The moment you catch that mood, you are thinking from it. And the great secret of prayer is thinking from, rather than thinking of. Anchored here, you know where you live, your bank balance, job, creditors, friends, and loved ones – as you are thinking from this state. But you can move to another state and give it the same sense of reality, when you find and practice the great secret of prayer.

Take my message to heart and live by it. Practice the art of prayer daily, and then one day you will find the most effective prayer is: “Thank you Father.” You will feel this being within you as your very self. You can speak of it as “thou” yet know it is “I.” You will then have a thou/I relationship, and say to yourself: “Thank you, Father”. If I want something, I know the desire comes from the Father, because all thought springs from Him. Having given me the urge, I thank Him for fulfilling it. Then I walk by faith, in confidence that he who gave it to me through the medium of desire will clothe it in bodily form for me to encounter in the flesh.

Don’t get in the habit of judging and criticizing, seeing only unlovely things. You have a life – live it nobly. It is so much easier to be noble, generous, loving, and kind, than to be judgmental. If others want to do so, let them.
They are an aspect of yourself that you haven’t overcome yet, but don’t fall into that habit. Simply thank your heavenly Father over and over and over again, because in the end, when the curtain comes down on this wonderful drama, the supreme actor will rise from it all and you will know that you are He.

Now let us go into the silence.