Neville Goddard Quotes
- There is only one cause for the phenomena of life. That cause is God. Housed in you, God is a person in the most literal sense of the word. Believe me, for I know this from experience. God, the only creator, is pure imagination working in the depth of your soul. God began a good work in you and He will bring it to completion on the day God’s creative power is unveiled in you! God’s creative power and wisdom is defined in scripture as Christ. When Christ unveils himself in you, you will know you are God’s power and God’s wisdom. God, your own wonderful human imagination, underlies all of your faculties, including perception, and streams into your surface mind least disguised in the form of creative, productive fantasy. When you ask yourself what you can do to transcend your present limitation of life, you are dwelling upon the means. God does not ask you to consider the means, but to define the end. Speaking to you through the medium of desire, God asks the question: “What wantest thou of me?” Then he tells you not to be concerned with the ways and means, for his ways are unsearchable. They are inscrutable and past finding out. This statement you will find in the 11th chapter of the Book of Romans. So don’t be concerned as to how God will fulfill the end, only know that He will. Can you believe your desire is fulfilled? Can you believe it is true? If you can, it is yours for the taking, for nothing is impossible to one who believes.
- If you have a genuine desire, voice it then move mentally. You can move on the outside many times and not change. You must move within and view the world from already being the person you want to be. If you do, you have moved from where you were to your desire’s fulfillment. The motion is mental, all in your imagination. Now, if the desire is genuine, regardless of what the world will do, remain in that state and you will bring it into visibility. It is impossible, however, without motion, to bring anything from an invisible state into an outer, visible one. Everyone can do it because everyone has an imagination which is God, and without him not a thing is created, and whatever is created is done by God whether it be good, indifferent, or evil. Take me at my word. I have introduced you to the creator of your life. Now that you know him don’t be like the Romans Paul spoke of, who knew God yet did not honor him as God, but exchanged the immortal God for an image resembling Him, and the true knowledge of God for a lie therein, serving the creature rather than the creator, who is the imagination.
- There are infinite number of states. The state of health, the state of sickness, the state of wealth, the state of poverty, the state of being known, the state of being unknown . . all are only states and everyone is always in a state. We all have one state in which we are very comfortable, so we return to it moment after moment. That state constitutes our dwelling place. If it is not a pleasant state, we can always get out of it. How this is done is the secret I will now share with you. All states are mental. You cannot remove yourself from your present state by pulling strings on the outside. You must mentally adjust your thoughts to proceed from the desired state, all within yourself. You fell into your present state either deliberately or unwittingly; and because you are its life, the state became alive and grew like a tree, bearing its fruit which you do not like. Its fruit may be that of poverty, or distress, heartache, or pain.There are all kinds of unlovely fruit. But you can detach yourself from your unlovely harvest by making an adjustment in your human imagination. Ask yourself what you would like to harvest. When you know what it is, ask yourself how you would feel if your desire was ready to harvest right now. When you know the feeling, try to catch it. In my own case I find it easier to catch the feeling by imagining I am with people I know well and they are seeing me as they would if my desire were now a fact. And when the feeling of reality possesses me, I fall asleep in that assumption. At that moment I have entered a state. Now, I must make that state as natural as I have made my present state. I must consciously return to my new state constantly. I must feel its naturalness, like my own bed at night. At first the new state seems unnatural, like wearing a new suit or hat. Although no one knows your suit is new, you are so conscious of it you think everyone is looking at you. You are aware of its fit and its feeling until it becomes comfortable. So it is with your new state. At first you are conscious of its strangeness; but with regular wearing, the new state becomes comfortable, and its naturalness causes you to constantly return to it, thereby making it real.
Now most of us, knowing what we want, construct it in our minds eye, but never occupy it. We never move into the state and remain there. I call this perpetual construction, deferred occupancy. I could dream of owning a lovely home and hope to go there one day; but if I do not occupy it now, in my imagination, I postpone it to another day. I may wish my friend had a better job. I may have imagined him having it; but if I don’t occupy that state by believing he is already there, I have merely constructed the state for him but not occupied it. All day long I can wish he or she were different; but if I don’t go into the state and view him from it, I don’t occupy the state, so he remains in the unlovely state relative to me. This is the world in which we live.
You can’t conceive of a thing that is not part of a state, but the life of any state is in the individual who occupies it. Life cannot be given to a state from without, because God’s name is “I AM.” It is not “You are” or “They are.” God’s eternal name is I AM! That is the life of the world. If you would make a state alive, you must be in it. If you are in a lovely, gentle, kind state, you are seeing another as lovely, living graciously, and enjoying life to the utmost.
Now, to make that state natural, you must see everyone in your world as lovely, kind, and gentle. Others may not see them in that light, but it doesn’t really matter what they think. I am quite sure if I took a survey of what people think of me, no two would agree. Some would say I am a deceiver, while others I am the nearest thing to God. I would find a range stretching from the devil to God, all based upon the state in which the person is in when called upon to define me.
You can be what you want to be if you know and apply this principle, but you are the operant power. It does not operate itself. You may know the law from A to Z, but knowing is not enough. Knowledge must be acted upon. “I AM” is the operant power in you. Put your awareness in the center of your desire. Persist, and your desire will be objectified. Learn to use the law, because there is a long interval between the law and the promise.
- With knowledge of the law of reversibility, the disciplined man transforms his world by imagining and feeling only what is lovely and of good report. The beautiful idea he awakens within himself shall not fail to arouse its affinity in others.
- When you dream tonight of numberless people and awaken in the morning to find them gone, where did they go? Are they not all in you, created by and acted by you? Then are you not protean? You, all Imagination, are God the dreamer, imagining the many parts you are playing. This very moment is a part of your dream, and those around you are there, playing their parts because you are imagining them. You are playing the part of your husband, your wife, your children, your friends, and your enemies. They are all you, for there is nothing but God (Imagination).
- To say: “I AM going to be rich,” will not make it happen; you must believe riches in by claiming within yourself: “I AM rich.” You must believe in the present tense, because the active, creative power that you are, is God. He is your awareness, and God alone acts and is. His name forever and ever is “I AM” therefore, he can’t say: “I will be rich” or “I was rich” but “I AM rich!” Claim what you want to be aware of here and now, and . . although your reasonable mind denies it and your senses deny it . . if you will assume it, with feeling, your inward activity, established and perpetuated, will objectify itself in the outside world . . which is nothing more than your imaginal activity, objectified. To attempt to change the circumstances of your life before you change its imaginal activity, is to labor in vain.
- Start now to use your talent, which is your imagination. Use it consciously every day, for any time you use your imagination you are pleasing God; and when you do not use it God is displeased. You don’t have to sit down and burst a blood vessel pounding out the details of your desire. You can imagine as you walk down the street. A simple assumption is easy and can be lots of fun. A friend called today to thank me for aiding her in the selling of her home. It was an enormous house in Highland Park, which had been empty for some time. She had hired a lady to go to the house and do some cleaning there, when a man came to the door and asked to buy it. Two weeks later the house was sold. What did I do? I imagined hearing her tell me the house was sold. That’s all I did. There was nothing else I needed to do; for all things are possible to God, and he so loves me he abides by any request I make of him.
- Mark tells the parable of the fig tree, which . . having been cursed . . was found withered to its roots. Calling attention to this fact, awakened imagination said: “Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart that what he has said will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you desire, when you pray believe you have received it and you will.” Mark 11. Here is an imaginary act which has no support in fact. The tree was not withered at the time it was cursed, but when they returned the next day the imaginal act had been executed. So you see: this law is not limited to being constructive only. It can be used for good, bad, or indifferent purposes; for there are no limitations placed on the possibilities of prayer. Now when you pray you must immerse yourself in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, for the word “pray” means, “Motion towards; accession to; at or in the vicinity of.” Point yourself towards the wish fulfilled and accept that invisible state as reality. Then go your way knowing the desire is now yours. You did it and you will not be surprised when it comes to pass. When you first practice this technique you will be surprised when it happens; but when you learn how to completely accept the state assumed, you will know you do not have to do a thing to make it come to pass, as the assumption contains its own plan of fulfillment. You will know that this world is imaginal and that an assumption . . with no external object to support its truth . . will harden into fact when its truth is persisted in. If an imaginal act produces an external fact to support it, then is not this world essentially imagined? If you dare to assume what your reason and senses deny and walk faithful to your assumption, believing in its reality . . and its corresponding effect is produced, can this seemingly solid, real world be anything other than imaginal? Everything is imagined, for you are God . . all imagination! God exists in you and you in Him. The world is all that you have imagined it to be, even though you cannot remember when or how you brought it into being.
- My experience revealed to me that I am supreme within the circle of my own state of consciousness and that it is the state with which I am identified that determines what I experience. Therefore it should be shared with all, that imagining creates reality, for to know this is to become free from the world’s greatest tyranny, the belief in a second cause. Blessed are they whose imagination has been so purged of the beliefs in second causes they know that imagination is all, and all is imagination. We, by a series of mental transformations, become aware of increasing portions of that which already is, and by matching our own mental activity to that portion of creation which we desire to experience, we activate it, resurrect it, and give it life.
- I encourage you to control your human imagination; for if you would steer a true course toward a certain goal in life, you must ever be aware of the end that you are shaping by your imaginal activity, and not allow doubt to enter for one moment. When you know what you want, you must think from your belief in its possession, morning, noon, and night. If you do, no power can stop its appearance, because you are the dreamer of your dream, pushing yourself out, shaping your world by your imaginal activities.