The Power of Awareness

This is an unabridged and quality-formatted version of The Power of Awareness by Neville Goddard. It is checked for typos and line breaks, with an interactive Table of Contents. The Power of Awareness is a classic of New Thought and Metaphysics by Neville Lancelot Goddard. In it, Neville gives readers the necessary tools to understand and manifest desires. Goddard does this without dogma; instead of relying on doctrine or abstract theory, he shows how we can be our own masters, working with the God-power within us.

Neville Goddard was an author and speaker on self-empowerment and spiritual topics. He was most active during the 40′s and 50′s, and is a profound influence on the modern New Thought and Law of Attraction movements. Neville Goddard conveyed the underlying meaning of Biblical allegory through his lectures and books; as well as the power of focused imagination. 

Neville Goddard was born on February 19, 1905 in St. Michael, Barbados in the British West Indies. His father was Joseph Nathaniel Goddard, a merchant, and mother was Wilhelmina Nee Hinkinson. Neville was the fourth child in a family of nine boys and one girl.

In 1922, at age seventeen, Neville Goddard came to the United States on board the S.S. Vasari to study drama. He became a performer, and during this time he married his first wife, with whom he had a son named Joseph Neville Goddard. While touring with his troupe in England, he developed an interest in metaphysics after reading books on the power of mind. Upon his return to New York, he gave up the entertainment industry to devote his full attention to the study of spiritual and mystical matters.

Neville Goddard’s first marriage was short, and he remained single for several years until he met his second wife in the 1930s. The couple soon had a daughter named Victoria or “Vicky.” In 1943, Neville was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 38. He did not want this, especially since he felt he was too old to become a soldier and had a wife and daughter at home to take care of. Through the power of imagination, as Neville told it in his March 24, 1972 lecture, he was honorably discharged after just a few weeks of training. One consequence of his brief Army training was that he received full United States citizenship, having been a British citizen up to this point.

After traveling extensively throughout the United States, Neville eventually made his home in Los Angeles. In the 1950s, he gave a series of talks on television and radio, and for many years lectured regularly to capacity audiences at the Wilshire Ebell Theater. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he confined most of his lectures to Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

In his early lectures and books, Neville dealt solely with what he called The Law: the technique of creating one’s physical reality through visualization and directed emotion. It is this portion of his expression that most closely accords with the teachings of the New Thought movement.

In describing The Law, Neville related many personal experiences of his successful use of imaginal power. He also gave his audiences in San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s accounts of how others had made use of The Law. He discussed it on television in the Los Angeles area, saying, “Learn how to use your imaginal power, lovingly, on behalf of others, for Man is moving into a world where everything is subject to his imaginal power.”