Neville Goddard books in order
Neville Goddard published ten main books between 1939 and 1961, beginning with At Your Command and ending with The Law and the Promise. They range from a 5,000-word booklet to a 33,000-word collection of letters, and seven are free to download here. Every number on this page comes from counting the books themselves.
The reading machine
Five ways through the shelf
Each bar stands at the year a book came out, and its height shows the length. Choose a reason for reading him, then follow the numbers.
As published
The ten in the order they came out. Do this if you want to watch his thinking change.
Start with the sermon that started it. Eighty-five hundred words, and imagination is not one of them. Get the PDF
His first long book. About a thousand words from 1939 come back here, lightly edited. Get the PDF
A shorter run at the same Bible, this time with feeling as the working part. Read the scan
He strips everything down and tells you to mind your mood at bedtime. Get the PDF
Same period, new vocabulary. Imagination starts to overtake consciousness here. Read the scan
The war is over, the imprint is now Los Angeles, and the subject is the fourth dimension. Get the PDF
The law of assumption, stated at full length for the first time. Get the PDF
Revision arrives, and consciousness starts dropping out of his speech. Get the PDF
The Bible returns as a game with rules, seen through Blake. Read the scan
The Law, proven by letters. Then the Promise, and nothing after it sounds the same. Get the PDF
Start here
Our pick if you’re new. Short and practical first, with the heavy Bible reading saved for later.
Under half an hour, and it holds the whole method. If nothing here moves you, the rest probably won’t. Get the PDF
Adds the three-step formula and the idea that the future already exists to be stepped into. Get the PDF
Comes at the same act from the side of prayer, and shows you the imagined conversation. Read the scan
Now you’re ready for revision, which he uses 30 times here against once apiece in 1949 and 1952. Get the PDF
Read the case histories at the end first if you want proof before theory. Get the PDF
Go back to 1939. It reads differently once you know where he ended up. Get the PDF
The start of the long Bible work, and short enough to finish in an evening. Read the scan
Skim what you met in At Your Command and slow down for the chapters on the disciples. Get the PDF
Save this for when Blake starts to interest you. Read the scan
Last, because its final chapter asks more of you than anything before it. Get the PDF
The method
Four books that hold nearly every exercise. Our seven-exercise guide pulls from these first.
Learn the state and the bedtime habit. Get the PDF
Get the formula: know what you want, build a scene, feel it from the inside. Get the PDF
Learn to hold an assumption and persist in it while the facts argue back. Get the PDF
Finish with revision, the exercise that cleans up each day after it happens. Get the PDF
The Bible
For readers who came to him through scripture. Bible names are densest in these four.
Old Testament stories read as psychology, and the shortest way in. Read the scan
Moses, Jesus and the I AM, argued in one sitting. Get the PDF
The long version, with symbol after symbol decoded. Get the PDF
Parables and prophets, read for what he calls the level of meaning. Read the scan
The Promise
For readers who want the mystic he became. Follow the books toward 1959 and then keep going.
His words about Christ and imagination begin to lean this way. Get the PDF
The golden string, and The Water and the Blood. Read the scan
The last chapter is the first account he published. After it, go to the 1960s lectures. Get the PDF
What he reused
Neville recycled his own pages
We ran every book against every other book, eight words at a time, after taking the King James Bible out so shared scripture wouldn’t count. Most pairs barely touch. One doesn’t: about 11 percent of At Your Command returns in Your Faith Is Your Fortune, so you can skim those stretches the second time. Out of This World has a twin outside the ten, the 1948 lessons.
Tap an arc to read its number.
He edits as he goes, 1939 to 1941
The 1939 text“Not one thing has ever appeared in man’s world but what man decreed that it should. This you may deny, but try as you will you cannot disprove it, for this decreeing is based upon a changeless principle. You do not command things to appear by your words or loud affirmations.”
The 1941 text“Nothing has ever appeared in man’s world but what man decreed that it should. This you may deny; but try as you will you cannot disprove it for this decreeing is based upon a changeless principle. Man does not command things to appear by his words which are, more often than not, a confession of his doubts”
One word changed, 1946 to 1949
About two thirds of Out of This World matches his 1948 lessons word for word. One passage goes back further, to The Search in 1946, and there he swapped the physics in:
The Search“the deep, hidden One within us”
Out of This World“the dimensionally greater One within us”
| Earlier book | Comes back in | Share repeated | Longest run |
|---|---|---|---|
| At Your Command | Your Faith | 11.3% | 41 words |
| Awakened Imagination | Law and the Promise | 1.7% | 38 words |
| Feeling Is the Secret | Out of This World | 1.6% | 10 words |
| Feeling Is the Secret | Power of Awareness | 1.2% | 16 words |
| Feeling Is the Secret | Prayer | 1.1% | 19 words |
| Out of This World | Power of Awareness | 1.1% | 10 words |
| Power of Awareness | Law and the Promise | 1.1% | 32 words |
| Your Faith | Freedom for All | 1.0% | 16 words |
Eight words, ten books
Watch his vocabulary turn over
Each cell counts a word per 10,000, so a short book and a long one compare fairly, and the shading runs column by column. Read it top to bottom and the career shows up.
The first book doesn’t contain the word imagination in any form. His last one uses it about 155 times per 10,000 words. Consciousness goes the other way, from 93 down to under 1, and the capitalized I AM peaks at 68 in 1941 and is gone by 1961. If you only want the bedtime exercises, the sleep column points straight at Feeling Is the Secret.
| Book | consciousness | I AM | feeling | assumption | imagination | prayer | sleep | revision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1939 At Your CommandCommand | 93 | 57 | 32 | 3.6 | 0 | 12 | 0 | 0 |
| 1941 Your FaithYour Faith | 83 | 68 | 31 | 7.6 | 4.8 | 8.6 | 1.4 | 0 |
| 1942 Freedom for AllFreedom | 83 | 24 | 64 | 9.4 | 14 | 0 | 0.9 | 0 |
| 1944 Feeling Is the SecretFeeling | 43 | 0 | 239 | 38 | 21 | 36 | 88 | 0 |
| 1945 PrayerPrayer | 52 | 2.6 | 42 | 33 | 58 | 61 | 16 | 0 |
| 1949 Out of This WorldThis World | 25 | 0 | 33 | 37 | 79 | 0 | 23 | 1.3 |
| 1952 Power of AwarenessAwareness | 50 | 14 | 46 | 104 | 61 | 2.5 | 7.1 | 0 |
| 1954 Awakened ImaginationAwakened | 13 | 0 | 20 | 9.9 | 139 | 0.7 | 7.0 | 21 |
| 1956 Seedtime and HarvestSeedtime | 23 | 1.8 | 13 | 9.7 | 65 | 0 | 16 | 0.9 |
| 1961 Law and the PromisePromise | 0.6 | 0 | 15 | 2.1 | 155 | 0.3 | 8.0 | 12 |
One at a time
What each book actually does
The “leans on” list shows what each one uses far more than the other nine, picked by a log-likelihood test. Reading time assumes 230 words a minute.
1939
At Your Command
About 36 minutes to read
He opens by asking whether a man can decree a thing and have it come to pass, and the whole sermon says yes. Snellgrove Publications of New York brought it out when he was 34. You get consciousness on nearly every page and the word imagination on none of them.
Words it leans on consciousness, awareness, claim, door, imprisoned
Get the PDF1941
Your Faith Is Your Fortune
About 126 minutes to read
A run of short chapters, each turning one Bible story inward: Fishing, Circumcision, the Twelve Disciples, Daniel in the lions’ den. The capitalized I AM shows up here more than in any other book of his, and you’ll recognize parts of At Your Command as you go.
Words it leans on fortune, disciplined, quality, Gethsemane, resurrection
Get the PDF1942
Freedom for All
About 51 minutes to read
Nine chapters from The Oneness of God to The Annunciation. Noah, Shem, Isaac, Jacob and Esau all get decoded as states of mind, and Bible names turn up here more often than in anything else he published.
Words it leans on Jacob, Esau, Sabbath, mustard, unconditioned
Read the scan1944
Feeling Is the Secret
About 23 minutes to read
Four chapters, and the one to hand a friend. Words built on feel run almost four times denser here than in any other book of his, because the argument comes down to the mood you carry into sleep.
Words it leans on subconscious, sleep, wish, impressions, lover
Get the PDF1945
Prayer: The Art of Believing
About 33 minutes to read
Seven chapters that begin with a claim from the first page: “PRAYER is an art and requires practice.” He builds it on what he calls the law of reversibility, then moves through controlled reverie and thought transmission.
Words it leans on affirmed, reversibility, mentally, mirror, suggestion
Read the scan1949
Out of This World
About 33 minutes to read
Four chapters on thinking fourth-dimensionally, assumptions, imagination and self. None of the 13 Bible names we track appears in it, and about two thirds of its words come straight from his 1948 lessons. He treats a future event as something you can enter now, which makes it the most physics-minded book he wrote.
Words it leans on dimensionally, larger, future, waking, meditation
Get the PDF1952
The Power of Awareness
About 86 minutes to read
Twenty-seven short chapters ending with case histories. Of the 48 times the phrase law of assumption appears in his surviving text, 44 are in here, so anyone hunting where it came from lands on this book.
Words it leans on assumption, concept, righteousness, attention, persistence
Get the PDF1954
Awakened Imagination
About 62 minutes to read
Consciousness gives way to imagination as his main word. Chapter 4, The Pruning Shears of Revision, sets out the exercise people still use, and his theory of inner speech runs through the rest. It is also the only one of the ten that names Abdullah.
Words it leans on inner, speech, talking, forgiveness, revision
Get the PDF1956
Seedtime and Harvest
About 49 minutes to read
Nine essays that open on Blake’s golden string. The Scale of Being lays out a ladder of states, The Game of Life treats scripture as a set of rules, and the whole book keeps lifting events up to what he calls the level of meaning.
Words it leans on meaning, game, rules, level, serpents
Read the scan1961
The Law and the Promise
About 142 minutes to read
His longest, and the only one that reads like reporting. Most of it is letters from people who tried the Law, with dollar amounts, hospitals and a dancer’s studio. The final chapter gives his first public account of the visions of 1959 and 1960.
Words it leans on imaginal, scene, studio, hospital, dollars
Get the PDF
Our editions
Seven of the ten, ready to download
We set each one fresh and checked the text word for word against a second copy. Freedom for All, Prayer and Seedtime and Harvest are linked above as scans.
Outside the ten
Why the count of books keeps changing
Ten is a convention. A DeVorss reprint of Your Faith Is Your Fortune tells you “His ten books” and then lists a set that leaves out At Your Command and counts Resurrection, so two honest lists of ten can disagree by a title. We use the ten that are full books from 1939 to 1961.
He Breaks the Shell came next, and he named it himself in a 1965 talk: “Take He Breaks the Shell, that’s how this thing takes place.” Resurrection (1966) tells all four events of the Promise in the third person, and DeVorss also sells a volume under that title that bundles the essay with Freedom for All, Feeling Is the Secret, Prayer and Out of This World. We keep quotes from it short, since a 1966 book falls under different copyright rules.
Immortal Man, edited by Margaret Ruth Broome and first published in 1977, is a collection of late lectures, not a book he wrote. The talks themselves are all in the Lecture Finder.
Questions
On the books
How many books did Neville Goddard write?
Ten main books from 1939 to 1961. Add He Breaks the Shell from 1964 and Resurrection from 1966 and you get twelve titles in his lifetime. Lists differ, and collections like Immortal Man came out after his death.
What was his first book and what was his last?
The first was At Your Command, published in New York in 1939. The Law and the Promise from 1961 was his last full book, and Resurrection from 1966 is the last title of any length.
Is The Power of Awareness a good book to read first?
It works if you want the law of assumption stated in full. We still suggest Feeling Is the Secret first, since it takes under half an hour and you can test the method before committing to 27 chapters.
Which of his books can I skip?
None of them is filler, though you can skim one overlap: about 11 percent of At Your Command returns in Your Faith Is Your Fortune. Out of This World also repeats much of his 1948 lessons, which matters only if you read those first.
Are these the original texts?
Our free editions follow the first editions as closely as we could confirm, checked against a second copy. We found no copyright renewal for any of the ten in the New York Public Library's data. Later printings can carry newer editorial changes and terms differ by country.
Where do I go after the books?
To the lectures. Most of what he said about the Promise came after 1961, and those talks are searchable in our Lecture Finder.
Sources
- Book scans by year: archive.org, Neville Goddard Workbooks and Neville Goddard Books.
- We searched 445,000 rows of renewal records kept by the New York Public Library for all ten titles.
- King James Bible used to remove scripture from the overlap test: Project Gutenberg.
- Immortal Man listing: Goodreads.
- Word counts, overlaps and the term table come from our own index of his books.