For five months I have been teaching a once-a-week class called “The Mad Mysticism of Neville Goddard” at Unity Lincoln in Nebraska.
Neville Goddard (public domain)
On October 2, 2022 I also gave a brief talk during Sunday morning services where I shared some of what I have learned from Neville. Here is a modified version.
The Power of Imagination
Neville Goddard was born in Barbados in 1905. When he was 17 he moved to New York City and became a dancer in theater and vaudeville. Some years later he became interested in metaphysics and studied Biblical languages and the Kabbalah under an Ethiopian rabbi named Abdullah. By the late 1930s he was an author and speaker. He was drawing an audience of over a thousand twice a week in New York City in the 1940s. He once passed by two women talking in front of a bookshop where his books were displayed in the window. The one woman said to the other: "You should go listen to him sometime. He's as mad as a hatter."
Neville later moved to California and had a tv show, did radio commentaries, and kept speaking and writing books. He passed away on October 1, 1972. In recent years, we’ve seen a revival of his ideas in Facebook groups, Reddit boards, Youtube channels, and websites where you can read or listen to his lectures and writings.
The core message of Neville, the "mad mysticism" of Neville, is that YOUR consciousness is the only reality, and you create your universe by the assumptions YOU make.
If you are dissatisfied with yourself or with the world you are living in, you can imagine the world you want to live in, and then change your assumptions to create that world. When you change your assumptions, when you assume you are who you want to be or you assume you already have what you want to have, these new assumptions will harden into fact.
So what Neville wants you to do is use "your own wonderful human imagination." Life is constant creation, and creation comes from the imagination. The more abundant life is the whole purpose of creation.
Neville says that The Spirit of God in you is your imagination. Your imagination is your Savior and Lord. Jesus Christ represents your imagination.
But how is my imagination my Savior? Well, think of Neville as being a very practical teacher. In At Your Command (1938) he wrote,
"If you are hungry, your savior is food. If you are poor, your savior is riches. If you are imprisoned, your savior is freedom. If you are diseased, it will not be a man called Jesus who will save you, but health will become your savior."
If you are hungry, you will first imagine being fed. If you are poor, you will first imagine being rich. If you are imprisoned, you will first imagine being free. If you are diseased, you first will imagine feeling good.
Neville says that if you persist in imagining your desire and you assume it is fact, it will become fact. Those are the two hard parts, persistence and changing your assumptions. But it is possible.
In Christ anything is possible. In the imagination anything is possible.
I'm going to intersperse this article with some Bible verses that may or may not sound familiar, but I will change some words to illustrate Neville's meaning.
Genesis 1-3:
In the beginning, Imagination created the heaven and the earth.And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God - your imagination - moved upon the face of the waters; And your imagination said, Let there be the light: and there was light.
In other words, YOUR imagination brings the light of consciousness to a dark, chaotic world.
John 1:1-4
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with your imagination, and the Word WAS your imagination. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by your imagination; and without your imagination was not any thing made that was made. In imagination is life; and the life is the light of consciousness in everyone.
You might say, "But, I didn't build this building, I didn't create the person sitting next to me. I didn't even make the chair I'm sitting on!" But, in fact, your imagination created your perceptions of these things. So yes, you ARE God, you ARE the creator.
This still might sound abstract to you. But Neville has story after story of how YOU create your world through your imagination. I'll limit myself to three.
This first story is going to be more detailed, so that you may learn the process that Neville taught.
From Chapter 3 of Awakened Imagination (1954). These are mostly Neville’s words with a few modifications.
A blind woman living in San Francisco had a problem. A rerouting of buses forced her to make three transfers between her home and her office. This lengthened her trip from fifteen minutes to two hours and fifteen minutes. She thought seriously about this and came to the decision that she could be driven in car. Sitting in her living room, she began to imagine herself seated in a car. She felt the rhythm of the motor. She imagined that she smelled the odor of gasoline, felt the motion of the car, touched the sleeve of the driver and felt that the driver was a man. She felt the car stop, and turning to her companion, said, "Thank you very much, sir." To which he replied, "The pleasure is all mine." Then she stepped from the car and heard the door snap shut as she closed it. She told Neville that she centered her imagination on being in a car and although blind viewed the city from her imaginary ride. She did not think of the ride. She thought from the ride and all that it implied. On two successive days the blind woman took her imaginary ride, giving it all the joy and sensory vividness of reality. A few hours after her second imaginary ride, a friend told her of a man who was interested in helping the blind. The blind woman phoned him and stated her problem. He didn’t know what to do to help her. The next day he stopped in at a bar and told the bartender the story of the blind woman. A total stranger, overhearing the story, volunteered to drive the blind woman home every day. The man who told the story then said, "If you will take her home, I will take her to work." So this woman was driven to and from her office by these two gentlemen, which took under fifteen minutes. And on that first ride to her office she turned to her good Samaritan and said, "Thank you very much, sir"; and he replied, "The pleasure is all mine."
Mark 11:24:
Whatever you ask for in prayer - in your imagination - believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
From Chapter 3 of Seedtime and Harvest (1954), again with some modifications.
In Sacramento, a wife had given her husband a very valuable wristwatch. The gift doubled its value because of the sentiment he attached to it. They had a little ritual. Every night as he removed the watch he gave it to her and she put it away in a special box in the bureau. Every morning she took the watch and gave it to him to put on. One morning the watch was missing. They both remembered playing their usual parts the night before, therefore the watch was not lost or misplaced, but stolen. Then and there, they determined not to accept the fact that it was really gone. They said to each other, "This is an opportunity to practice what we believe." They decided that, in their imagination, they would enact their customary ritual as though the watch were actually there. And so they did faithfully for two weeks. Then a man went into the one and only jewelry store in Sacramento where the watch would be recognized. As he offered a gem for appraisal, the owner of the store noticed the wristwatch he was wearing. Under the pretext of needing a closer examination of the stone, he went into an inner office and called the police. After the police arrested the man, they found in his apartment over ten thousand dollars’ worth of stolen jewelry. In walking "by faith, not by sight", this couple attained their desire - the watch - and also aided many others in regaining what had seemed to be lost forever.
Mark 10: 14-15
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me; - meaning, let the little children use their imagination - do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
The following story isn't from Neville, but is a favorite example. The words are my own summary.
In the Introduction of the 1948 book Talk Yourself Into It! Robert A. Russell tells the story of 8-year-old Carolyn, as told to him by a live-in family nurse. They lived some distance from town, and one Saturday groceries were delivered. Carolyn and the nurse were putting them away when Carolyn asked if there were bananas. The nurse said no, but she would order some on Tuesday. Carolyn said she wanted, and was going to have, bananas that very day. The nurse said that's unlikely as it's rainy and the roads will be bad.
Later, the nurse saw Carolyn in her bedroom on her knees, praying with confidence that the bananas would come that day. At supper she reiterated her confidence in the arrival of bananas. She even rose from sleep at a quarter to ten to inquire if the bananas had come. All along the nurse tried to prepare her for disappointment.
Shortly before midnight, the family's pastor and his wife knocked at the door and the nurse answered. The pastor explained that after they had gone to bed, he woke up feeling there was a crisis and they came to check on them. The nurse said there was nothing wrong. Then the pastor's wife mentioned they had purchased some nice bananas that day and brought some. The nurse invited them in, told the story, and they awakened Carolyn who, unsurprised, thanked Jesus and enjoyed a banana before the day was over, just as she had prayed.
May we all learn to use our imagination to bring about a better world for ourselves and others.
I'll end with one more verse.
Psalm 82:6.
"Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High."
James Leroy Wilson writes Daily Miracles, The Daily Bible Chapter, JL Cells, and The MVP Chase. Thanks for your subscriptions and support! You may contact him for your writing, editing, and research needs: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.