Who was Neville Goddard?
Neville Lancelot Goddard was born on February 19, 1905, in Barbados. At 17 he moved to New York City to study drama, and in the 1920s he worked as a dancer and performer in New York, London, Berlin and Paris.
From 1938 he lectured in New York and later Los Angeles, where he hosted a television series in the 1950s. He taught for more than 30 years, wrote 14 books and died in West Hollywood on October 1, 1972. Today he's best known as the teacher of the law of assumption.
| Neville Goddard | |
|---|---|
| Born | February 19, 1905, Barbados |
| Died | October 1, 1972, West Hollywood, California |
| Known for | The law of assumption, SATS, revision |
| Teacher | Abdullah (1929–1936) |
| First book | At Your Command (1939) |
| Books | 14 |
Neville Goddard's teacher, Abdullah
From 1929 to 1936, Neville studied with a teacher he called Abdullah, who taught him Kabbalah and a symbolic way of reading the Bible. Neville often spoke of Abdullah as the teacher who shaped his ideas about imagination and assumption.
The law of assumption
The heart of Neville's teaching is that imagination creates reality. His instruction was to “assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled”: picture your desire as already done, feel it, and keep living from that feeling until it shows up in your life. In his words, “an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.”
Today his readers call this the law of assumption. It's close to the law of attraction, with one difference: instead of attracting something toward you, you assume you already have it.
Neville Goddard techniques
- SATS (state akin to sleep): as you drift off, replay a short scene that implies your wish is fulfilled. See the SATS method step by step.
- Revision: each night, replay any moment of your day you didn't like, the way you wish it had gone, until it feels natural.
- Living in the end: think from the wish fulfilled, not about it. Ask how you'd feel, act and talk if it were already true, and do that now.
- Feeling is the secret: the feeling matters more than the picture. A short scene with real emotion works better than a long, flat one.
- Persistence: keep the assumption when things don't change right away. Neville taught that persistence is what turns it into fact.
Neville Goddard books in order
- At Your Command (1939)
- Your Faith Is Your Fortune (1941)
- Freedom for All (1942)
- Feeling Is the Secret (1944)
- Prayer: The Art of Believing (1946)
- Out of This World (1949)
- The Power of Awareness (1952)
- The Creative Use of Imagination (1952)
- Awakened Imagination (1954)
- Seedtime and Harvest (1956)
- I Know My Father (1960)
- The Law and the Promise (1961)
- He Breaks the Shell (1964)
- Resurrection (1966)
Many readers start with Feeling Is the Secret, a short, practical book, or The Power of Awareness, his clearest guide to the law of assumption.
How Neville read the Bible
Neville taught the Bible as a psychological story happening inside each person, not as history. Its characters stood for states of mind, and he saw imagination itself as the divine power within us.
Neville Goddard's influence
Neville's ideas reached millions through later teachers. Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret, and Wayne Dyer both said he shaped their thinking, and today his lectures and books are shared widely online, where the law of assumption has a large following (Wikipedia).
