The Power Of Your Imagination, by Neville Goddard
The Power Of Imagination, by Neville Goddard
I cannot believe that I used to live in New York City and had never heard about Neville Goddard’s teachings until this summer.
Neville Goddard was an American author who wrote about mysticism and self-help.
He also gave weekly lectures, explaining that the Bible was not to be read as a historical document, but that the whole drama occurs and unfolds within us.
In 1931, Neville began studying under an Ethiopian Rabbi called Abdullah, who introduced him to the Kabbalah, the Mystical teachings of Judaism and their application to Christianity.
In his books and public talks during the 1930’s-1970’s, Neville explained that the Bible is the story of us, as the Sons and Daughters of God, who are living in ignorance of our divinity, struggling to discover the powers that we use and often misuse, learning from experience how to harness these mystical powers to create a meaningful life, worthy of our divinity.
The biggest message that Neville taught is that our IMAGINATION is our doorway to the Divine.
In other words, if you can imagine something you want, in a vivid and very real way, it MUST manifest in your reality.
Neville spoke of many examples of how this Universal Truth manifested in people’s lives, in his lectures and books.
I will share here one story from his book, ‘The Law And The Promise.’
The story tells of a doctor and his wife, who lay in bed, dreaming what they wanted into becoming a reality.
To the un-enlightened mind, it seems foolish to spend time dreaming of our future, while clearly not seeing it manifested in our reality.
But that imagination-activity, of living in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, leads man across a bridge of incident to the fulfillment of the dream.
If we actually LIVE INSIDE our dream, thinking FROM it, and not OF it, then the creative power of our imagination will answer our adventurous fancy, and the wish fulfilled will manifest in our reality.
Neville wrote:
“Man is all imagination; therefore, man must be where he is in imagination, for his imagination is himself.
To realize that imagination is not something tied to the senses or enclosed within the spatial boundary of the body is most important.
Although man moves about in space by movement of his physical body, he need not be so restricted.
He can move by a change in what he is aware of. However real the scene upon which sight rests, man can gaze on one never before witnessed.
He can always remove the mountain if it upsets his concept of what life ought to be. This ability to mentally move from things as they are, to things as they ought to be, is one of the most important discoveries that man can make.
It reveals man as a center of imagining with powers of intervention which enable him to alter the course of observed events, moving from success to success through a series of mental transformations of nature, of others, and himself.
For many years a doctor and his wife "dreamed" about their "stately habitation," but it was not until they imaginatively lived in it, did they manifest it.
Here is their letter to me and story: "Some fifteen years ago, Mrs. M. and I purchased a lot on which we built a two-story building housing our office and living area.
We left ample space on the lot for an apartment building—if and when our finances would permit.
All those years we were busy paying off our mortgage, and at the end of that time had no money for the additional building we still desired so much.
It was true that we had an ample savings account which meant security for our business, but to use any part of it for a new building would be to jeopardize that security.
But now your teaching awakened a new concept, boldly telling us we could have what we most desired through the controlled use of our imagination and that realizing a desire was made more convincing 'without money.'
We decided to put it to a test, to forget about 'money' and concentrate our attention on the thing we desired most in this world—the new apartment building.
With this principle in mind, we mentally constructed the new building as we wanted it, actually drawing physical plans so we could better formulate our mental picture of the completed structure.
Never forgetting to think from the end (in our case, the completed, occupied building,) we took many imaginative trips through our apartment house, renting the units to imaginary tenants, examining in detail every room and enjoying the feeling of pride as friends offered congratulations on the unique planning.
We brought into our imaginal scene one friend in particular (I shall call her Mrs. X), a lady we had not seen for some time as she had 'given us up' socially, believing us a bit peculiar in our new way of thinking.
In our imaginal scene we took her through the building and asked how she liked it.
Hearing her voice distinctly, we had her reply, 'Doctor, I think it is beautiful.'
One day while talking together of our building, my wife mentioned a contractor who had constructed several apartment houses in our neighborhood.
We knew of him only by the name that appeared on signs adjacent to buildings under construction.
But realizing that if we were living in the end, we would not be looking for a contractor, we promptly forgot this angle.
Continuing these periods of daily imagining for several weeks, we both felt we were now 'fused' with our desire and had successfully been living in the end.
One day a stranger entered our office and identified himself as the contractor whose name my wife had mentioned weeks before.
In an apologetic manner, he said, “I don't know why I stopped here. I normally don't go to see people, but rather, people come to see me.”
He explained that he passed our office often and had wondered why there wasn't an apartment building on the corner lot.
We assured him we would like very much to have such a building there but that we had no money to put into the project, not even the few hundred dollars it would take for plans.
Our negative response did not faze him and seemingly compelled, he began to figure and devise ways and means to carry out the job, unasked and unencouraged by us.
Forgetting the incident, we were quite startled when a few days later this man called, informing us that plans were completed and that the proposed building would cost us thirty thousand dollars!
We thanked him politely and did absolutely nothing.
We knew we had been 'living imaginatively in the end' of a completed building and that Imagination would assemble that building perfectly without any 'outside' assistance from us.
So, we were not surprised when the contractor called again the next day to say he had found a set of blueprints in his files that fitted our needs perfectly with few alterations.
This, we were informed, would save us the architect's fee for new plans.
We thanked him again and still did nothing.
Logical thinkers would insist that such negative response from prospective customers would completely end the matter.
Instead, two days later the contractor again called with the news that he had located a finance company willing to cover the necessary loan with the exception of a few thousand dollars.
It sounds incredible, but we still did nothing.
For—remember, to us this building was completed and rented, and in our imagination we had not put one penny into its construction.
The balance of this tale reads like a sequel to 'Alice In Wonderland,' for the contractor came to our office the next day and said, as though presenting us with a gift, “You people are going to have that new building anyway. I've decided to finance the balance of the loan myself. If this is agreeable, I'll have my lawyer draw up the papers, and you can pay me back out of net profits from rentals.”
This time we did do something!
We signed the papers, and construction began immediately.
Most of the apartment units were rented before final completion, and all but one occupied the day of completion.
We were so thrilled by the seemingly miraculous events of the past few months that for a while we didn't understand this seeming 'flaw' in our imaginal picture. But knowing what we had already accomplished through the power of imagining, we immediately conceived another imaginal scene and in it, this time, instead of showing the party through the unit and hearing the words 'we'll take it,' we ourselves in imagination visited tenants who had already moved into that apartment.
We allowed them to show us through the rooms and heard their pleased and satisfied comments.
Three days later that apartment was rented.
Our original imaginary drama had objectified itself in every detail save one, and that one became a reality when one month later our friend, Mrs. X, surprised us with a long overdue visit, expressing her desire to see our new building.
Gladly we took her through, and at the end of the tour heard her speak the line we had heard in our imagination so many weeks before, as with emphasis on each word, she said, “Doctor, I think it is beautiful!”
Our dream of fifteen years was realized.
And we know, now, that it could have been realized any time.”
(from Chapter 2 of Neville Goddard’s book ‘The Law And The Promise.’)
This testimonial is just one of many I have read and heard recently.
Neville’s books can be bought in used book stores or on Amazon as Kindle books.
If you like to listen to books and lectures, there are lots of people reading Neville’s books on YouTube and many recordings of his weekly lectures in NYC and LA.
Audible.com also has a collection of his books that you can listen to.
I hope I inspired you to use your wonderful imagination to create what you want, instead of allowing your imagination to ‘image-in’ into your reality what you fear and worry about.
Do not spend time imagining what you do not want to happen.
Instead, day dream vividly the exact details of the reality you want to see happen in your life.
Do not get disheartened by current appearances.
They are ONLY temporary and a reflection of the way you used to think.
You can change anything by simply continuing to imagine and live in the reality you wish to have and to be.
I will share another amazing story soon.
Love and light,
Tali
