Who he was
Neville Goddard was born in Barbados in 1905 and came to New York as a young man. From 1929 to 1936 he studied with a teacher he called Abdullah, and from the late 1930s he lectured in New York, then San Francisco and Los Angeles, until his death in 1972.
His teaching rests on one idea: imagination is the creative power in us, the meaning behind the Bible's word for God. His method is to assume the feeling of the wish already fulfilled and to live from that state until the world reflects it. He called this the Law. Later he spoke of the Promise, a mystical rebirth he described from his own experience.
The reading order
Neville wrote short books, and most can be read in an evening. This order starts with the method, moves through its fullest statements, and ends with his mystical teaching.
Feeling Is the Secret
1944Start here. In a few short chapters Neville sets out his whole method: the subconscious accepts what you feel to be true, so assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, especially in the drowsy state before sleep.
Your Faith Is Your Fortune
1941His early book on the Bible as a psychological drama. It introduces “I AM” as the name of God within you and explains why assumption, not effort, changes circumstances.
The Power of Awareness
1952The method in its fullest, clearest form: awareness of being is the creative power, and every state you occupy tends to express itself. Many readers return to this one most.
Out of This World
1949Four short talks on “thinking fourth-dimensionally”: why an assumption, persisted in, hardens into fact, and how to enter the scene of the fulfilled desire.
Awakened Imagination
1954Imagination as “God in man.” Often printed with The Search, Neville's account of a mystical vision. A bridge from technique to his deeper teaching.
Seedtime and Harvest
1956Bible symbolism read as a guide to inner life: whatever is planted in imagination is reaped in experience.
The Law and the Promise
1961Part one gathers stories from his students who applied the Law. Part two describes the Promise: his own mystical experiences of spiritual rebirth.
Resurrection
1966His late collection, centered on the Promise. Read it last, once the Law is familiar.
The lectures
Neville gave hundreds of lectures, and many survive as recordings and transcripts. Once you know the books, the lectures are the best way to go deeper. Two careful archives: RealNeville for audio and text, and Cool Wisdom Books for a year-by-year index and historical research.
Read more about him
Mitch Horowitz's short introduction, Magician of the Beautiful, and his Miracle: The Ideas of Neville Goddard place Neville in the wider New Thought tradition. Before Neville, read Troward, whose ideas about the subjective mind he built on.
About free copies: several sites publish Neville's books and lectures as public domain. We link to them, but we have not checked each title's copyright record ourselves, so we don't host his texts here.