Lecture Summary
Every Natural Effect
In Every Natural Effect, Neville Goddard explains that nothing in life happens randomly or without cause. Every event, condition, and experience is a natural effect of an underlying state of consciousness. What appears as coincidence, luck, or external causation is simply the lawful outworking of inner awareness.
Neville emphasizes that causes are psychological, not external. The visible world is an effect, never the origin. To attempt to change effects without changing consciousness is futile, as the same inner cause will continue to reproduce similar outcomes. True change requires addressing the state from which the effect proceeds.
A central theme of the lecture is that effects are inevitable and impersonal. Consciousness does not reward or punish. It expresses. Once a state is occupied, its corresponding effects must appear in the world of experience. This is why persistence in an assumption is so powerful and why unconscious assumptions can feel inescapable until they are recognized.
Neville clarifies that imagination is the means by which new causes are introduced. By imagining from the end and accepting the feeling of fulfillment, awareness moves into a new state. When this state feels natural, it becomes the new cause, and different effects begin to unfold without effort or manipulation.
The lecture also addresses misunderstanding around effort and technique. Neville stresses that one does not make things happen through force, repetition, or emotional intensity. Effects follow identity, not strain. When being changes, doing and having follow automatically.
Neville further explains that understanding this law brings both responsibility and freedom. Responsibility, because one can no longer blame circumstances or others for repeated patterns. Freedom, because once the cause is known, it can be changed at will.
In Every Natural Effect, Neville teaches that mastery of life comes from working at the level of cause. When consciousness is ordered, effects align naturally. Life becomes predictable, coherent, and responsive to the state one chooses to occupy.
Every Natural Effect
Every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It is a delusion of the perishing, vegetable memory. We do not remember these moments in time when we imagined certain states. So when that imaginal state takes form so we can see it with the outer eye, we do not recognize our own harvest and deny that we had anything to do with these natural effects that are taking place in our world. Because our memory is faulty, we do not remember. "There is a moment in every day," said Blake, "that Satan cannot find, nor can his watch fiends find it. But the industrious find this moment and it multiply and when it once is found, it renovates every moment of the day if rightly placed." Now, by the word "Satan," he simply means doubt. Doubt cannot find it. I desire a certain state in this world. Reason tells me it’s difficult; my friends tell me it’s impossible; and so, if I doubt that I could ever realize it, that’s the voice of Satan speaking to me. He’s always challenging God. God is my own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. So, the protagonists are God and Satan simply faith and doubt. Can I imagine that I am the one that I would like to be and remain faithful to that assumption as though it were true. If I can and remember that assumption and when I did it, then I will see when it happens in my world the relationship between the natural effect and its spiritual cause. The spiritual cause was that moment of assumption.
Now let me share with you what was given to me this past week in the form of a letter. He’s here tonight. His barber was the low man on the totem pole when he first encountered him. There were four in the shop. Well he was the fourth man. If you’re familiar with the barbershop, and maybe you ladies do not know, and so the boss always has the first chair; and so, if it’s a slow day, he gets the man. By the time he’s through, he gets the second one. He doesn’t share it. If three should come in, then they go to the different chairs. Well, four chairs, the fourth one waits for his customer. Well, this friend of mine one day happened to sit in his chair. And he liked the way he cut his hair and gathered from what he said that he liked cutting hair. He was proud of his profession as a barber, proud of it not making excuses as so many barbers do. He was proud to be a barber and wanted to be the very best barber and win competitions. So, having heard this man express this desire, my friend imagined that he was tops. Well, in a little while he bought out the boss barber and then dismissed him and rearranged his staff and then from then on began to proceed to the top.
Well, three weeks ago, while sitting in his chair, which is his now the boss barber is his barber for he was the low man but now he’s the top man. He said to him, and in a very exciting way, that there was a contest to be held in San Francisco. And he would like to enter this contest for hair styling and cutting of hair. Well, my friend said when "I discovered that he really wanted it, and no one goes into a contest unless he wants to win, I saw on the wall the trophy that would be his. And I heard him tell me how he won." Well, there were four men in the shop. One was committed for that weekend and so, this past weekend, he took two with him. So, there were three from that shop of four men. There were only nine trophies given in the State in this competition and that one little shop won four. The boss barber won first prize and a second prize, and his two men that went with him each won a second. So, they came back from San Francisco bearing four out of nine. Now he said to me, you’ve often said from the platform, "I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place you may believe." Well now, I’m going to tell you, Neville, before it takes place. There’s going to be a contest in Southern California, and I have seen his trophy as the first one on that wall. And so, I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place, you will know that I am putting this into practice. I know he lives by it. "Then there will be another contest," said, he, "in Miami and one must win in Miami to be eligible for that which will be held in Brussels which will be international. I am putting him there in Brussels as first among all contestants." Well I know that he will win. For every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It’s a delusion of man’s perishing, vegetable memory. He doesn’t remember. Well now, he will remember what he did. And I have his record at home in his letter.
Now he said to me in this letter, "I had a dream. I repeated the dream and then I had a third dream, all in the same night." So, the first and second was simply the same dream, repeated. "I do not bring back the details," said he, "of the dream but it was all about, in detail, strangely enough, about my birthday. But I cannot recall all the things that happened. I only know, here stood a man in a white robe with a book in his hand, opened in the middle, it was gilt-edged, and he had a quill in his hand (or it could have been a scythe). He looked almost like a cartoonist’s concept of Father Time. And he was insistent that my birthday was a certain day and I was equally forceful in stating that it was not because I knew my birthday to be the 19th of September, 1927, and he was insisting, over my protests, pointing all the things out in the book. And then I woke. In spite of his insistence and my protest, for I knew my birthday, at least that was my physical birthday." I’ll call his attention to the 87th Psalm, "And the Lord records as he registers the peoples. And he said this one was born there." It’s all about birth. There are only seven verses in it. It’s a small, short psalm. But this is the birth, not of a physical birth, this is a spiritual birth, "and this one was born there." I can say to him, you did the perfect job as I knew you would in challenging the Lord’s angel, the recording one. For to sin by silence when we should protest, makes cowards of us all. And no coward can be used in his stable of studs. I can say from the way you worded your letter that you have been born; but the perishing, vegetable memory has not brought it back. You have been born from above.
You have had other experiences which would imply an adumbration. But from this letter, I would say you have been. But memory has not brought it back. I am convinced of that from your letter. For it’s all in the past, it’s not present and it certainly is not future the way you worded the letter. For you know your birth date which is physical, and you said the 19th of September 1927, and he denied that was the day of your birth. To deny that was the day of your birth would imply you were born in the spirit world because he represents not the physical world but the spiritual world. So, I would say of you, you have been born from above. So, here, take these moments, every moment in time. It’s a special moment, a precious moment, a moment where you can actually use it to plant what you want planted in this world and, remembering that moment, well then, it has to come out. For every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. Well, that spiritual cause is that moment when you dare to assume that you are the man or the woman that you would like to be or that another man, in his case the barber, that he is the top as he desired to be. So, you can do it not only for yourself, do it for another or do it for many as he did. And these are these precious moments in this wonderful world of ours, but our memory fades and we do not remember.
So, when the whole thing rises in our world, we do not relate it to our own harvest. We can’t remember when we ever did it. But not a thing could happen in my world that comes by accident. It couldn’t. All things come because I planted it, either wittingly or unwittingly. I either did it knowing what I’m doing, or I did it not knowing because I was lost in some emotional state, and I felt intensely about a state. It might have been a lovely state or an unlovely state, but the seed was planted, and I will reap it. And the whole thing will come into my world whether I recognize my harvest or not. So, if I know this to be the law of life, it is entirely up to me now to select and plant only what I want to reap in my world.
So, everyone in this world is here for a purpose, and the purpose is to fulfill scripture. There is no other purpose. And the fulfillment of scripture brings me out of this world where I must remain until I awaken. Well, I can’t awaken until I fulfill scripture, for scripture is the plan. Now, another lady wrote this one. She said, "I found myself in this glorious mansion, high, high up. And they had the most beautiful gardens and perfectly kept. And a man and a woman left in a white car and someone said to me, ‘give me two names and they’re names of two relatives of mine.’ But I knew that it was you who had left, and I also knew that you would return.
Now, I have no memory whatsoever of what transpired between knowing that it was you who left and that you would return. But I awoke saying, ‘now I know that I have experienced what Neville said that I would.’ Then my throat was parched as though aflame and I went and got myself a nice cold drink of water, went back to bed and had this dream. I’m in a department store and there I am with all these Bibles for brides, Bibles given out for weddings. And, in a strange way, all the brides were dressed in their bridal white gowns and the department store supplied the grooms. They were all being married by proxy. And the department store supplied all the grooms that they may have a wedding picture taken with the groom supplied by the department store. Then I turned to one and, speaking to her, she said she’s going to Paris. And then I said to her, ‘I’m getting married next month.’" Well, this vision that you had, my dear, is a beautiful vision because, as you’re told in scripture – the Book of Isaiah – "Your maker is your husband, and the lord of Hosts is His name." So that what you saw is the perfect symbol of what the depth of our own being revealed to you, that you will have union with the Lord and union with the Lord means that that which is in you, like an egg, will be fertilized and then it will erupt within you. And the whole thing said of Jesus Christ will unfold within you, and you will be He. So, I can say, you had the perfect vision.
Every Natural Effect | The Neville Goddard Lectures |1955
