A short life, 1905–1972
Neville Goddard
A Barbados-born dancer who became one of the century's most singular teachers, reading the Bible as psychology and insisting, across more than thirty years of lectures, that imagination creates reality.
How did Neville Goddard die?
Neville Goddard died on October 1, 1972, at his home in West Hollywood, California, at the age of 67. His death certificate gives the cause as an esophageal rupture. The Los Angeles Times obituary of October 4, 1972 reported that he “collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack”, the account the historian Mitch Horowitz corrected in 2022 from the death certificate. Source: Wikipedia.
Was Neville Goddard married?
Yes, twice. He married Mildred Mary Hughes in New York in 1923, and they divorced in 1938. In 1942 he married Catherine Willa Van Schmus. Sources: Wikipedia, and the New York marriage and divorce records transcribed in these research notes (Wikipedia spells the first name “Mildrid”; the divorce record has “Mildred”).
Did Neville Goddard have children?
Yes, two. A son, Joseph Neville Goddard, was born in New York in 1924 to his first wife, Mildred, and a daughter, Victoria, was born on June 28, 1942 to his second wife, Catherine. Sources: Wikipedia and these research notes.
Barbados to New York
Neville Lancelot Goddard was born on February 19, 1905 in St. Michael, Barbados, one of ten children in a merchant family. At seventeen he sailed to New York City to study drama, and through the 1920s he worked as a dancer and actor on stage and in touring companies. His lectures often turn to stories from his early years. The one he retold most is his 1933 trip home to Barbados, which he said he imagined first and then lived.
Abdullah and the turn
By his own account, a fellow performer led him to Abdullah, an Ethiopian-born teacher of Hebrew and scripture in New York. Neville described studying with him for years: Hebrew, Kabbalah, and a way of reading the Bible in which every character is a state of consciousness rather than a person in history. Dancing fell away; the teaching remained.
The lectures
From 1938 until his death he taught continuously, first in New York, then for his last twenty years or so from Los Angeles, with long seasons in San Francisco and New York. He spoke without notes, took questions, and let attendees record him; those recordings circulated hand to hand for decades and are the recordings this library restores. In 1951 he read nine short talks over station KECA in Los Angeles, and for a time he had a weekly television program there.
The Law and the Promise
His teaching has two movements. The first he called the Law: his claim that an assumption, felt as present fact and persisted in, becomes fact. He asked his listeners to test it in imagination, above all in the drowsy state he called “a state akin to sleep.” The second, after a series of mystical experiences beginning in 1959, he called the Promise: his account of scripture's story unfolding in the individual. The late books and lectures center on it.
Common questions
How old was Neville Goddard when he died?
He was 67. He was born on February 19, 1905 and died on October 1, 1972. Source: Wikipedia.
Who was Abdullah?
Abdullah was the teacher Neville studied with in New York from 1929 to 1936. He taught him Hebrew, Kabbalah and a symbolic reading of the Bible. Source: Wikipedia. Neville tells how he went to “my old friend Abdullah” in All Imagination. More in Neville’s own words: who was Abdullah, Neville Goddard’s teacher.
What is Neville Goddard’s most famous quote?
The line quoted most often is “an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.” He wrote it in Awakened Imagination and says it in I Am Reality Called Imagination. Where else he said it, and the lines that travel with it: his most famous quote.
Did Neville Goddard believe in Jesus?
Yes, though not as a figure of history. He read the gospel as a psychological drama in which Jesus Christ stands for the human imagination. Source: Wikipedia. In Live in the End he puts it in one line: “That Christ in man. Man is all imagination. And God is man.”
What was his background?
He was born in Fontabelle, St. Michael, Barbados, the fourth of ten children of Joseph Nathaniel Goddard, a merchant, and Wilhelmina Goddard. In 1922, at seventeen, he moved to New York City to study drama. Source: Wikipedia.
More questions about Neville, answered in his own words, including who Abdullah was and his most famous quote.
In his own words
He left seventeen works, dated 1939 to 1966, all now in the public domain and complete in this library, from At Your Command (1939) through the 1948 class and The Power of Awareness (1952) to Resurrection (1966). He died in Los Angeles on October 1, 1972, at the age of 67.
All 119 restored lectures, his teaching, topic by topic, and his best-known lines, each quoted with its source.
We owe the practice to Neville Goddard (1905–1972). Feelingfield is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by his estate.