Neville Goddard Quotes

Truth depends upon the intensity of imagination, not upon facts.

The great secret is a controlled imagination and a well-sustained attention, firmly and repeatedly focused on the object to be accomplished.

I AM (your true self) is not interested in man's opinion. All its interest lies in your conviction of yourself. What do you say of the I AM within you? Can you answer and say, "I AM Christ"? Your answer or degree of understanding will determine the place you will occupy in life. Do you say or believe yourself to be a man of a certain family, race, nation, etc.? Do you honestly believe this of yourself? Then life, your true self, will cause these conceptions to appear in your world and you will live with them as though they are real.

Man, in his blindness, is quite satisfied with himself, but heartily dislikes the circumstances and situations of his life. He feels this way, not knowing that the cause of his displeasure lies not in the condition nor the person with whom he is displeased, but in his very self he likes so much. Not realizing that "he surrounds himself with the true image of himself" and that" what he is, that only he can see," he is shocked when he discovers that it has always been his own deceitfulness that made him suspicious of others…

Fools exploit the world; the wise transfigure it.

Man must learn to believe in that which he does not, at the moment, see in order to grant himself that which he desires to have. Man's prayers are always answered, for he always receives that which he believes. The law that governs prayer is impersonal. Belief is the condition necessary to realize the desire. No amount of pleas or ritual will bring about the fulfillment of your desires other than the belief that you are or have that which you want.

Learn to shake yourself loose from what the world believes is the only reality.

The journey of life is a mental one, which is taking place in the sea of illusion.

So, Blake said, 'Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.' I tell you, do not let anyone ever convince you that because of your past accomplishments or your present state in the world that you cannot change your position by rising within yourself, and then see the whole world respond. And I mean NOW!

All is yours. Do not go seeking for that which you are. Appropriate it, claim it, assume it. Everything depends upon your concept of yourself. That which you do not claim as true of yourself, cannot be realized by you. The promise is

When the imagination is not controlled and the attention not steadied on the feeling of the wish fulfilled, then no amount of prayer or piety or invocation will produce the desired effect. When you can call up at will whatsoever image you please, when the forms of your imagination are as vivid to you as the forms of nature, you are master of your fate.

Man's chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes other than his own state of consciousness.

The sixth disciple is called Bartholomew. This quality is the imaginative faculty, which quality of the mind when once awake distinguishes one from the masses. An awakened imagination places the one so awakened head and shoulders above the average man, giving him the appearance of a beacon light in a world of darkness. No quality so separates man from man. as does the disciplined imagination This is the separation of the wheat from the chaff. Those who have given most to society are our artists, scientists, inventors and others with vivid imaginations.

Your reactions, whether positive or negative, are creative of future circumstances. In your imagination, you can hear words congratulating you on getting a wonderful new job. That imaginal act now goes forward and you will encounter this pleasant experience in the future.

Command any idea to clothe itself in form.

Therefore, when you know what you want, you must deliberately focus your attention on the feeling of your wish fulfilled until that feeling fills the mind and crowds all other ideas out of consciousness.

Pray fIor my soul, more things are wrought bX prayer than this world dreams of
-- Tennyson

Capture the feeling associated with your realized wish by assuming the feeling that would be yours were you already in possession of the thing you desire, and your wish will objectify itself.

Sleep conceals the creative act while the objective world reveals it. In sleep man impresses the subconscious with his conception of himself.

This is a world of educated darkness where you and I - infinite beings as we are - entered for a purpose, and only a very small part of the immortal Self entered. That's what we see here. You are an infinite Being, for you are God. Everyone is God but here on earth, we are just a spark of the immensity of our own fiery Being.

The whole of creation exists in you, and it is your destiny to become increasingly aware of its infinite wonders and to experience ever greater and grander portions of it. If creation is finished, and all events are taking place now, the question that springs naturally to the mind is "what determines your time track?" That is, what determines the events which you encounter? And the answer is your concept of yourself. Concepts determine the route that attention follows. Here is a good test to prove this fact. Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention follows. You will observe that as long as you remain faithful to your assumption, so long will your attention be confronted with images clearly related to that assumption.

I imagine that people see me as they would see me if I were the man that I want to be.

I AM wealthy, poor, healthy, sick, free, confined were first of all impressions or conditions felt before they became visible expressions. Your world is your consciousness objectified. Waste no time trying to change the outside; change the within or the impression; and the without or expression will take care of itself. When the truth of this statement dawns upon you, you will know that you have found the lost word or the key to every door. I AM (your consciousness) is the magical lost word which was made flesh in the likeness of that which you are conscious of being.

Your Imagination is YOU yourself, and the world as your Imagination sees it is the real world.

The man who is not prepared for the conscious plunge into the assumption of the wish fulfilled in the faith that it is the only way to the realization of his dream is not yet ready to live consciously by the law of assumption, although there is no doubt that he does live by the law of assumption unconsciously.

The drama of life is a psychological one in which all the conditions, circumstances, and events of your life are brought to pass by your assumptions. Since your life is determined by your assumptions, you are forced to recognize the fact that you are either a slave to your assumptions or their master. To become the master of your assumptions is the key to undreamed of freedom and happiness.

It is not what you want that you attract, you attract what you believe to be true.

Somewhere within this realm of imagination there is a mood, a feeling of the wish fulfilled which, if appropriated, means success to you.

You rise to a higher level of consciousness by taking your attention away from your present limitations and placing it upon that which you desire to be. Do not attempt this in day-dreaming or wishful thinking but in a positive manner. Claim yourself to be the thing desired. I AM that; no sacrifice, no diet, no human tricks. All that is asked of you is to accept your desire. If you dare claim it, you will express it.

Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change.

With your desire defined, quietly go within and shut the door behind you. Lose yourself in your desire; feel yourself to be one with it; remain in this fixation until you have absorbed the life and name by claiming and feeling yourself to be and to have that which you desired. When you emerge from the hour of prayer you must do so conscious of being and possessing that which you heretofore desired.

There is no limit to your creative power.

You determine your assumptions in this way: Form a mental image, a picture of the state desired, of the person you want to be. Concentrate your attention upon the feeling that you are already that person. First, visualize the picture in your consciousness. Then feel yourself to be in that state as though it actually formed your surrounding world. By your imagination that which was a mere mental image is changed into a seemingly solid reality. The great secret is a controlled imagination and a well-sustained attention firmly and repeatedly focused on the object to be accomplished. It cannot be emphasized too much that, by creating an ideal within your mental sphere, by assuming that you are already that ideal, you identify yourself with it and

Listen closely to your invisible thoughts. What do you hear? What are your words implying? That is their potency. What do you want? Name it and rearrange the structure of your mind to imply you no longer desire it, because you already have it!

You are already that which you want to be, and your refusal to believe it is the only reason you do not see it.

If you will assume your desire and live there as though it were true, no power on earth can stop it from becoming a fact.

Chance or accident is not responsible for the things that happen to you, nor is predestined fate the author of your fortune or misfortune. Your subconscious impressions determine the conditions of your world. The subconscious is not selective; it is impersonal and no respecter of persons. The subconscious is not concerned with the truth or falsity of your feeling. It always accepts as true that which you feel to be true. Feeling is the assent of the subconscious to the truth of that which is declared to be true. Because of this quality of the subconscious there is nothing impossible to man. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and feel as true, the subconscious can and must objectify. Your feelings create the pattern from which your world is fashioned, and a change of feeling is a change of pattern.

Most of us think that we are kind and loving, generous and tolerant, forgiving and noble; but an uncritical observation of our reactions to life will reveal a self that is not all kind and loving, generous and tolerant, forgiving and noble. And it is is this self that we must first accept and then set about to change…

For the Lord seeth not as a man seeth, for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." The heart is the primary organ of sense, hence the first cause of experience. When you look "on the heart" you are looking at your assumptions: assumptions determine your experience. Watch your assumption with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. Assumptions have the power of objective realization.

Feeling is the secret.

Everything in the world bears witness of the use or misuse of man's inner talking. Negative inner talking, particularly evil and envious inner talking, are the breeding ground of the future battlefields and penitentiaries of the world. Through habit man has developed the secret affection for these negative inner conversations. Through them he justifies failure, criticizes his neighbors, gloats over the distress of others, and in general pours out his venom on all. Such misuse of the Word perpetuates the violence of the world.

The Truth that sets you free is that you can experience in imagination what you desire to experience in reality, and by maintaining this experience in imagination your desire will become an actuality.

Praying, is recognizing yourself to be that which you desire to be, rather than begging God for that which you desire.

When you attain the control of the internal direction of your attention, you will no longer stand in shallow water but will launch out into the deep of life.

Imagination and faith are the secrets of creation.

You cannot persist in wanting what you already have. If you assume you are what you desire to be to the point of ecstasy, you no longer want it. Your imaginal act is as much a creative act as a physical one wherein man halts, shrinks and is blessed, for as man creates his own likeness, so does your imaginal act transform itself into the likeness of your assumption. If, however, you do not reach the point of satisfaction, repeat the action over and over again until you feel as though you touched it and virtue went out of you.

If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet. For man, we are told, lives not by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And having discovered the mouth of God to be the mind of man, a mind which lives on Words or inner talking, we should feed into our minds only loving, noble thoughts. For with Words or inner talking we build our world. Let love's lordly hand raise your hunger and thirst to all that is noble and of good report, and let your mind starve e'er you raise your hand to a cup love did not fill or a bowl love did not bless. That you may never again have to say, What have I said? What have I done, O All Powerful Human Word?

Self-surrender is essential and by that is meant the confession of personal impotence. "I can of mine own self do nothing." Since creation is finished it is impossible to force anything into being. The example of magnetism previously given is a good illustration. You cannot make magnetism, it can only be displayed. You cannot make the law of magnetism. If you want to build a magnet, you can do so only by conforming to the law of magnetism. In other words, you surrender yourself or yield to the law.

Faith is being loyal to you unseen reality within

For life makes no mistakes and always gives man that which man first gives himself.

The cornerstone on which all things are based is man's concept of himself.

On Sunday morning, April 12th, my wife woke from what was really a deep, profound sleep and as she was waking a voice distinctly spoke to her; and the voice spoke to her; and the voice spoke with great authority and it said to her: "You must stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money; everything in life must be an investment." So she quickly wrote it down and went straight to the dictionary to look up the two important words in the sentence, 'spending' and 'investing': the dictionary defines 'spending' as "to waste, to squander, to layout without return." To 'invest' is to "layout for a purpose, for which a profit is expected".

This is why you are told "Let the weak man say, 'I am strong'." (Joel 3:10), for by his assumption, the cause-substance - 'I AM' - is rearranged and must, therefore, manifest that which its rearrangement affirms. This principle governs every aspect of your life, be it social, financial, intellectual, or spiritual. 'I AM' is that reality to which, whatever happens, we must turn for an explanation of the phenomena of life. It is I AM's concept of itself that determines the form and scenery of its existence. Everything depends upon its attitude towards itself; that which it will not affirm as true of itself cannot awaken in its world.

Now you will understand how wise the ancient was when he told us in the Hermetica, There are two gifts which God has bestowed upon man alone and on no other mortal creature. These two are Mind and Speech, and the gift of Mind and Speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man uses these two gifts rightly, he will differ in nothing from the Immortals. And when he quits his body, Mind and Speech will be his guides, and by them he will be brought into the troop of the gods and the souls that have attained to bliss.

Be careful of your moods and feelings, for there is an unbroken connection between your feelings and your visible world.

The world is a mirror, forever reflecting what you are doing, within yourself.

Through your ability to think and feel, you have dominion over all creation.

Consciousness follows vision, and I step into the vision and explore a world just as real as this.

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? (II Corinthians 13:5)

Live your life in a sublime spirit of confidence and determination.

If a man looks upon any other man and estimates that man as less than himself, then he is stealing from the other. He is stealing the other's birthright - that of equality.

You must assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled until your assumption has all the sensory vividness of reality. You must imagine that you are already experiencing what you desire. That is, you must assume the feeling of the fulfillment of your desire until you are possessed by it and this feeling crowds all other ideas out of your consciousness.

THE FIRST STEP in changing the future is Desire, that is, define your objective - know definitely what you want. SECOND: construct an event which you believe you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire - an event which implies fulfillment of your desire - something which will have the action of Self predominant.

Lord. As Blake brought out so beautifully in his poem "Jerusalem": ". . . Babel mocks, saying there is no God or Son of God; That Thou, O Human Imagination, O Divine Body of the Lord Jesus Christ art all A delusion; but I know Thee, O Lord, when Thou arisest upon My weary eyes, even in this dungeon and this iron mill. . . For Thou also sufferest with me, although I behold Thee not. . ." . . .And the Divine Voice answers: ". . . Fear not! Lo, I am with you always. Only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death Thy Brother who sleepeth in Albion.

NOTHING is impossible to you.

Your assumption, to be effective, cannot be a single isolated act, it must be a maintained attitude of the wish fulfilled.

If you judge after appearances, you will continue to be enslaved by the evidence of your senses.

blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." Malachi 3:10 The windows of heaven may not be opened and the treasures seized by a strong will, but they open of themselves and present their treasures as a free gift - a gift that comes when absorption reaches such a degree that it results in a feeling of complete acceptance. The passage from your present state to the feeling of your wish fulfilled is not across a gap. There is continuity between the so-called real and unreal. To cross from one state to the other, you simply extend your feelers, trust your touch, and enter fully into the spirit of what you are

Today were Wednesday and you decided that it would be quite possible for your desire to embody a new realization of yourself by Sunday, then Sunday becomes the point in time that you would visit. To make this visit you shut out Wednesday and let in Sunday. This is accomplished by simply feeling that it is Sunday, Begin to hear the church bells; begin to feel the quietness of the day and all that Sunday means to you; actually feel that it is Sunday.

The man who at will can assume whatever state he pleases has found the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. The keys are desire, imagination, and a steadily focused attention on the feeling of the wish fulfilled. To such a man any undesirable objective fact is no longer a reality and the ardent wish no longer a dream. "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a

Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention follows.

Dream better than the best you know.

Whosoever hath, to him it shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that

All you can possibly need or desire is already yours.Call your desires into being by imagining and feeling your wish fulfilled.

Use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another.

Because creation is finished, what you desire already exists. It is excluded from view because you can see only the contents of your own consciousness. It is the function of an assumption to call back the excluded view and restore full vision. It is not the world but your assumptions that change. An assumption brings the invisible into sight. It is nothing more nor less than seeing with the eye of God, i.e.,

The world was constructed in the mind's eye, out of things unseen by the mortal eye, and made alive by faith.

Whenever your feeling is in conflict with your wish, feeling will be the victor.

If you do not feel natural about what you want to be, you will not be it.

Disregard appearances, conditions, in fact all evidence of your senses that deny the fulfillment of your desire. Rest in the assumption that you are already what you want to be, for in that determined assumption you and your Infinite Being are merged in creative unity, and with your Infinite Being all things are possible.

Nothing comes from without; all things come from within - from the subconscious

Love is not love if there is no beloved.

He who rises from his prayer a better man, his prayer has been granted.

God only acts and is in existing beings or men. Embracing the fires of experience, God was consumed by the flames, rose from their ashes, and continues to rise as Jesus Christ, or Divine Imagination. Good and evil are not conditions imposed by some benevolent deity, but states the soul must experience in order to surpass them and awaken as God Himself.

All conceptions are limitations of the conceiver.

I have a lavish, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit.

Only as one is willing to give up his present limitations and identity can he become that which he desires to be.