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What does living in the end mean?

Living in the end means taking the fulfilled wish as the place you stand and looking out from there, so that you think from the end instead of thinking of it. Neville Goddard put the definition in two questions on July 19, 1968: “What would you feel like if now you were the man that you want to be? How would you see the world if things were as you desire them to be? Now, this is what I mean by “living in the end.””

Try the difference The 1968 talk

The core distinction

Thinking of it, thinking from it

The test is the same in every example he gave: what you can see tells you where you are standing. Pick one of his four and switch between the two positions.

Backdrop Stage Seats Balcony Your body

From the stage, wishing for the seat

You can name every detail of the seat you want and you are still describing the room from the stage.

“The average man defines his dreams but he remains back here looking at them”

Assumed into the seat

Your body has not moved. In imagination you now face the other way, so the stage is in front of you and the wall that was behind you comes into view.

“I would then have to see the stage, not the auditorium; I would see the thing behind me”

His test “If I am still seeing what I saw when I was insecure, I have not succeeded in occupying that desirable end; I am still only thinking of it.”

Sound Investments, 1953. A woman in his audience told him this picture of the balcony and the stage was what finally made it clear.

July 19, 1968

Inside the talk “Live in the End”

The talk runs 8,244 words in the transcript, and the phrase comes up just twice, once in the title. The second half of the evening moves to Scripture and the Promise, and the first half is one of his clearest statements of the Law. The marks below show how far into the talk each moment falls.

  1. 13%
    The definition. His two questions, quoted at the top of this page, come soon after he asks you to picture a friend who would rejoice and to see the news “reflected on the face of a friend.”
  2. 14%
    Robert Frost. He credits Frost, writing in Life magazine, with the line that the Founding Fathers “believed it in,” and with “We are always imagining ahead of our evidence.”
  3. 25%
    The ring. For anyone who wants a marriage and sees no candidate: “Don’t wear a physical ring. Put it on just as though he had placed it there”
  4. 28%
    The mood. “Now catch the mood, and try to give that mood all the sensory vividness of reality”
  5. 30%
    The bridge. Others will point at the steps that led up to it. He says to expect that and not to join them: “don’t give causation to any physical step that you took”
  6. 35%
    The marquee. The longest story in the talk. His brother Victor looks at a building every day and sees the family name on the marquee in his mind’s eye, twice a day for two years. A man then offers to buy it for him. Neville gives the price as $50,000 and says the Bank of Nova Scotia paid $840,000 for the property three years before this talk. The Power of Awareness tells the same story with the family unnamed. Here he drops the disguise: “I am speaking of my own family.”
  7. 49%
    The instruction. “So, here, I say: dwell in the end. The end is where we begin”
  8. 50%
    On behalf of someone else. You skip the recovery and go straight to the last line of it. You say “I’ve never seen you look better,” and you hear “Well, I have never felt better.”
  9. 60%
    Do it for a friend, in secret. “Take a friend, without the friend’s consent”
  10. 76%
    Questions from the floor. They turn to Scripture, death and what comes after.

From the same talk

How to live in the end

  1. Name what you want.

    “Ask no one’s permission.”

  2. Go to the last moment.

    Pick the scene that could only exist after it is done. He wants no steps on the way: “I don’t wait for the incident to take place”

  3. Find the witness.

    Look at a friend’s face, or hear a friend’s voice, and let it tell you the thing is true.

  4. Catch the mood until it has weight.

    He asks what it would be like, then asks you to stay there. If the mood will not come, the method on the state akin to sleep page is the way in.

  5. Sleep there.

    After which: “And then await the inevitable.”

  6. When the world objects, go back.

    Assume a better job tonight, he says, and “you may be fired tomorrow. Don’t be concerned!”

Questions

Living in the end

How do I know if I am thinking from the end or only of it?

Neville's test is what you see. In the 1953 theatre illustration, if you are still seeing what you saw from the old position, you have not moved, and you are still only thinking of it. In the 1967 New York example, friends in Los Angeles should feel three thousand miles away.

Do you have to act it out physically?

No. In Live in the End he tells a woman who wants to marry to feel a ring on her finger and says plainly not to wear a physical one. The action is inner. His advice about outer steps is to take the ones that come and give them no credit as the cause.

What does Neville mean by the end?

The last moment, after the wish has come true, with everything that led up to it skipped. In the 1968 talk the end is seeing the family name on the marquee of a building. For a sick friend it is hearing them say they have never felt better.

Where did the idea come from?

Neville traces it to Abdullah. In Awakened Imagination he says Abdullah told him in 1933 to view the world from Barbados instead of thinking of Barbados. In the texts we hold, the words think from first appear in The Power of Awareness in 1952, so we have the 1933 instruction only through his later telling.

Is living in the end the same as positive thinking?

Not as he describes it. Thinking of a good outcome leaves you where you are, looking at it, however cheerful you feel. He asks for a change of position, so that you look back at your old circumstances from the new one.

Sources

Quoted on this page

  1. Neville, “Live In The End,” July 19, 1968, transcript. Percentages are our measure of how far through the transcript text each passage sits.
  2. Neville, “Sound Investments,” 1953, and “Release Barabbas And Crucify Jesus,” October 17, 1957.
  3. Neville, “The Secret Of Prayer,” October 6, 1967.
  4. Neville, Awakened Imagination, 1954; Out of This World, 1949; The Power of Awareness, 1952.
  5. Neville, 1964 question and answer on Abdullah, in the merged archive.
  6. Frost’s line is given as Neville reports it. We did not trace the Life magazine piece, and the dollar figures are his telling from the platform. Diagrams are ours, drawn from his descriptions. All Neville text remains his own.