The Promise and The Law

What Are The Promise and The Law?

The Promise and The Law represent the complete framework of Neville Goddard's teaching, divided into two distinct but interconnected parts. Understanding this division is essential for grasping the full scope of what Neville taught and why his later lectures took on a markedly different character from his earlier ones.

The Law is the practical, applicable teaching: your imagination creates your reality. Whatever you assume to be true, if persisted in, will harden into fact. You are the operant power in your world. By changing your inner assumptions, you change your outer circumstances. The Law is what most people come to Neville for — it is the manifestation teaching.

The Promise is the spiritual, mystical teaching: you will eventually awaken to the realization that you are God. Not a god, not god-like, but the actual creative power of the universe experiencing itself in human form. The Promise describes a series of specific mystical experiences that Neville said every person will eventually undergo, culminating in the knowledge of your true divine identity.

Neville considered The Promise to be infinitely more important than The Law. However, he taught The Law freely because it demonstrates the power of imagination in practical terms, which builds the foundation for accepting The Promise.

The Law Explained

The Law is Neville's practical teaching and the focus of most of his books and earlier lectures. Its core principles are:

Consciousness is the only reality. The physical world is a projection of your inner state. There is no external cause — all causation flows from within.

Assumption creates fact. Whatever you assume to be true will eventually manifest as your experience. This works for both positive and negative assumptions. Your world is always reflecting your dominant state of consciousness back to you.

Imagination is God. The creative power that religious traditions call God is actually your own imagination. When you imagine vividly with feeling, you are using the same power that creates worlds.

Everyone is you pushed out. The people in your life behave according to your assumptions about them. Change your assumptions, and their behavior changes.

The Law gives you practical tools: SATS (State Akin to Sleep), revision, living in the end, and persistent assumption. These are the techniques for consciously directing the creative power of imagination.

The Promise Explained

The Promise is Neville's spiritual teaching, which became the dominant focus of his lectures from the early 1960s onward. Neville described a series of mystical experiences that he personally underwent, beginning in 1959, which he interpreted through biblical symbolism.

The core elements of The Promise, as Neville described them:

The Birth: You experience a spiritual birth from within yourself. Neville described this as emerging from your own skull, symbolizing the birth of your awakened consciousness from the confines of your physical identity.

The Discovery of the Child: After the birth, you find a child — specifically, an infant — who calls you father. Neville interpreted this as David from the Bible and as confirmation of your identity as the Father (God).

The Splitting of the Temple: The veil of the temple (your physical body and limited self-concept) splits from top to bottom, revealing the spiritual reality that was always hidden behind the physical appearance.

The Ascent: A serpentine ascent of spiritual energy, which Neville related to the ascending dove or the serpent of Moses, representing the full awakening of divine consciousness.

Neville taught that these experiences are not metaphorical. They will happen literally, in the inner experience of every human being, though the timing cannot be predicted or forced.

How The Law and The Promise Relate

Neville described The Law as the means and The Promise as the end. The Law teaches you to use your imagination consciously, which gradually awakens you to the truth that your imagination is the creative power of the universe. As you practice The Law and see your assumptions manifest as fact, you begin to realize that you are not merely using a power — you are the power.

The Promise, then, is the full flowering of this realization. It is the moment when the practitioner of The Law wakes up completely and knows, beyond any doubt, that they are the God who creates all reality.

Neville said: "The Law is given to you to use while you are here in this world. It proves to you that imagining creates reality. But The Promise is given to free you from this world entirely."

Practical Implications

For most practitioners, The Law is where the focus naturally falls. It addresses immediate concerns — finances, relationships, health, career. There is nothing wrong with using The Law for practical purposes. Neville encouraged it and spent decades teaching people how to do so.

However, understanding The Promise adds depth and context to the practice of The Law. It reveals that manifestation is not the final goal — it is a training ground. Each successful manifestation is evidence that consciousness creates reality, and this evidence builds toward the ultimate realization of The Promise.

Common Questions

Do I need to believe in The Promise to use The Law?

No. Neville was clear that The Law works regardless of your spiritual beliefs. You do not need to accept the mystical aspects of his teaching to benefit from the practical ones. Many practitioners focus exclusively on The Law and achieve excellent results.

When does The Promise happen?

Neville taught that The Promise unfolds according to a divine timetable that cannot be predicted or accelerated. It is not a reward for good behavior or successful manifestation. It happens when the individual soul has completed its journey through the human experience. Neville experienced his Promise in 1959 and continued teaching until his death in 1972.

Is The Promise the same as enlightenment?

There are similarities. Both describe an awakening to a deeper truth about the nature of self and reality. However, Neville's Promise is specifically described through biblical imagery and includes specific experiences (the birth, the child, the splitting, the ascent) that may differ from descriptions of enlightenment in other traditions. Neville believed all spiritual traditions point toward the same truth but expressed through different symbolic languages.