Lecture Summary
No Other Barrier But Self
(Notes by Margaret Ruth Broome)
In No Other Barrier but Self, Neville Goddard makes one of his most direct and uncompromising statements: there is no external obstacle to fulfillment. Every apparent delay, limitation, or failure arises from the individual’s own state of consciousness. The only barrier is the self one is presently conscious of being.
Neville explains that people often attribute lack or difficulty to circumstances, other people, timing, or fate. In truth, these are reflections, not causes. Life faithfully mirrors the assumptions held within. As long as one identifies with a self-concept that includes struggle, unworthiness, or limitation, those conditions must continue to appear.
A central theme of the lecture is self-identification. The “self” that acts as a barrier is not the body or personality, but the inner sense of identity that quietly declares, “This is who I am.” When this identity is rooted in limitation, no amount of effort or technique can override it.
Neville emphasizes that freedom comes not from changing conditions, but from changing the concept of self. The moment awareness withdraws from the old identity and assumes a new one that implies fulfillment, the barrier dissolves. Nothing outside needs to be forced or persuaded. Expression follows identity automatically.
Imagination is presented as the means of removing the barrier. By entering imaginal acts that imply success, freedom, or completion and accepting them as natural, awareness moves into a new state. Persistence in this new self-concept is not struggle, but loyalty to the new identity.
The lecture also addresses responsibility. Once the law is understood, blame loses its meaning. To recognize that there is no barrier but self is not condemnation, but liberation. It returns power to its rightful place within the individual.
In No Other Barrier but Self, Neville teaches that mastery of life begins with honesty about self-concept. When the inner barrier is removed, the outer world has no choice but to respond accordingly.
No Other Barrier but self
William Blake, the greatest bard of Imagination, was one of the truly great poets of our time. Poets can take liberties; that is their privilege. Blake did not take the prose of history and lift it to the level of poetry; rather, he wrote the poetry of his faith. This I know, for my visions have dovetailed his experiences, as well as those given in the greatest Book on Imagination – the Bible.
Christianity rests on the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God fulfilled his promise to Israel to save mankind. These events have unfolded in me.
Although I can talk about these visions and record them in the written form, I cannot bring you to the point of their experience. But I know the truth of Blake’s words when he said: “Man is all Imagination, and God is Man and exists in us and we in Him. The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination; that is God Himself.”
Blake, recording his experiences in poetic form proclaimed: “The true method of knowledge is experiment and the true faculty of knowing is experience.” This faculty I will speak of now.
In 1925, while visiting London, I met an old Scotsman who told me that my attitude of mind determined my life. That I need not be enslaved by life but could control my future by my present thinking. This idea intrigued me. I was fascinated by the thought that, in spite of my limited education and background, I could transcend my environment. Seeing my interest, this gentleman gave me some twenty or thirty books. These I read from cover to cover, as I was hungry for the knowledge I found there.
In 1927, I experienced my first involuntary astral projection. This particular night, while in my hotel room, I felt a peculiar sensation begin in my head. It intensified, and I found myself catapulted out of this body and placed on a beach among strangers. I knew what had happened and desired to return to my room. The moment my desire was expressed, I was back in my room in my physical body once more.
With my eyes closed, and knowing I was in my hotel room, I intensified the feeling in my head and was again whisked out of the body, but this time I remained in the room. I then moved around the room and looked down at the body on the bed. The body itself was clearly visible, but the head was covered with a white substance like a cloud, which parted briefly, allowing me to glimpse the face. Then I told myself that since I was spirit, I could go through the wall. I tried, but the wall was so solidly real I could not penetrate it. Frustrated, I made a running jump and hit the wall so hard I knocked myself out and came to in my body with a frightful headache.
A few months later, I again found myself released from the confines of my body. Remembering my former experience, I quietly imagined myself elsewhere, and in the twinkling of an eye, I was there. Then I knew that I was all Imagination.
I had given reality to the wall, so I could not go through it. Although I gave reality to the interior of that room, the instant I imagined myself elsewhere, I was there, even though I had no feeling of having moved.
As I began to experiment, I realized that there was no barrier except myself. That my feeling of stupidity or lack, within me, limiting me, keeping me from fulfilling my desires. I realized that it was up to me to exercise my great talent of Imagination, as it is up to you, for as Blake says, “Man is all Imagination and God is Man.”
Begin now to prove to yourself that you are all Imagination. We are told in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
Paul does not say this earthly body will be redeemed, but that when it is destroyed, we will have a house made without hands, eternal in the heavens.
The body you now wear is the limit of opacity and restriction which you, all Imagination, allowed yourself to reach when he entered its skull. At that moment, Imagination became a living soul. It is from this restriction that God can turn around and awaken, allowing you to know that you are God. Then and only then will you clothe yourself with your garment that is made without hands and is eternal in the heavens.
In my first book, “Your Faith is Your Fortune,” I said, “In the beginning was unconditioned awareness of being. This unconditioned awareness became conditioned by imagining itself to be something. The unconditioned awareness of being became that which it had imagined itself to be; so did creation begin.”
I was not educated and had not heard of Blake when I wrote those words. I discovered Blake only about six years ago, at which time I found confirmation of what I had experienced and understood his words: “The true method of acquiring knowledge is by experiment, and true knowing is by experience.” This I know to be true.
In my experience, I felt myself to be Spirit, yet I could not get through the wall. I moved only when I imagined myself elsewhere. I tell you, the real you is all Imagination, and I invite you to test him. Take some wonderful goal for yourself or another. Listen carefully, and you will hear two hissing sounds in your head. The one on the left is intensely shril,l while the sound on the right is like an intermittent radio beam. Concentrate on that hissing sound, then put on a friend’s voice as you would a record on a player. Hear your friend tell you what you want to hear.
Now, you must believe in the reality of that imaginary conversation, for your thinking always follows the tracks laid down in your inner conversations. You are a speaking being, for you cannot think without words, audibly or inaudibly spoken. Believe in the words you have heard. Walk in that conviction, and they will be spoken to you on the outside, for Imagination is forever creating reality!
No intermediary is needed between you and God, for he is your very self! Sit quietly and imagine you are hearing what you want to hear. Remember, you are not your physical body. You are spirit, all Imagination and will be wherever you are imagining yourself to be! But do not imagine lightly, for your body will make that very journey which you first entertained in your imagination.
Recently, a man came to me. He wanted to go to Sweden for his firm, but because he was new to the job, he felt he would not be asked. I suggested he feel himself going up the ramp of an airplane. I asked him to hear American voices around him and to feel airborne. Then feel the sensation of the plane coming down, and hearing only Swedish voices as he was now in Sweden.
Six months later, this gentleman represented his firm in Sweden. I now have a beautiful crystal teardrop vase he brought back to me in appreciation of the thought I gave him. An imaginal act contains within itself the power of its own fulfillment. Imagination is your real body, eternal and creative. Where you are in your Imagination, there you will be in the flesh. You are always where you are in consciousness.
Thinking of something is not a creative act. You must think from your wish’s fulfillment, not of its desire. I am is the way. I was, or I will be, will never make it. A being called Jesus Christ is not the way. I am! Consciousness is! I am is God’s name forever and ever. When asked, “What is his name?” say, “I am.” Desire cannot fulfill itself until it is assumed.
If you want to be in San Francisco, you must assume you are there by seeing the world from San Francisco, not wishing you were there while seeing the world from Los Angeles.
Stand back and view your world. Are you seeing what you desire to see, or are you still thinking of your desire? By this test you can always tell if you are thinking of or thinking from.
If you are not seeing your world from your fulfilled desire, you are still desiring, still holding yourself here, barring yourself from the desired state’s fulfillment.
Being all Imagination, you must be where you are in your Imagination. If you will describe your world from the point of your fulfilled desire, and remain faithful to that description, your desire will externalize itself for you.
The Bible contains the great story of Imagination. Man does not yet understand it, but as Blake said, “That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the ancients considered what is not too explicit to be fittest for instruction, because it rouses the faculties to act. I name Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer, and Plato.” Much of the Bible is pure poetry.
The Books of the Psalms and Jeremiah tell of this series of events in poetic form. Luke begins his book by saying: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who, from the beginning were eye witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.”
Luke is speaking to you, as Theophilus is the state one enters when he desires to know more about God. The word “Theophilus” means “one who loves God.”
Luke does not criticize those who have tried to tell their story, but, knowing the Bible is not chronologically accurate, he writes an orderly account. Luke knew the stories of the shepherds’ watch and the heavenly chorus were separated in time by years. In my own case, the shepherds’ watch came fifteen years after the angel's chorus.
Luke tells, in narrative form, how the events take place, and claims to have made a better arrangement of them. If you interpret his words as events that took place, you will never understand the mystery. This series of everlasting events takes place in the individual.
Every child born of woman will have all of these experiences, as God awakens himself in the individual. God actually sank himself in us, as we are told in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “He put eternity into the mind of man.” The word “eternity” means “a lad; a youth; a young man.” The child who was with God before the foundation of the world is this eternity.
Have you ever thought of the Son of God as being God the Son? Think about it. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, in woven in every being, awakens and comes forth as the Son of God.
“Infinite Love in unthinkable origin is God the Father.”
“Infinite Love in creative expression is God the Son.”
“Infinite Love in eternal procession is God the Holy Spirit.”
The three are one! I and my Father are one Infinite Love! No more concise statement has ever been recorded.
Take this wonderful concept of being, and give of yourself to yourself. Listen to the hissing in your head. Put the words you would like to hear on that hiss and believe in their reality. If you are faithful to those words, nothing can stop them from coming into expression.
You need no intermediary between yourself and God, for you and God the Father are one. Use your heavenly talent. Blake did. He took his mystical experiences and wove them into poetic form. He knew how to get out of this body, for he became a mental traveler and shared his travels in poetic form, saying:
“I traveld thro’ a land of men A land of men and women too And heard and saw such dreadful things As cold earth wanderers never knew.”
Then he painted the wonderful picture of the birth of the child, saying:
“For there the babe is born in joy That was begotten in dire woe Just as we reap in joy the fruit Which we in bitter tears did sow. “And if the babe is born a boy, He’s given to a woman old Who nails him down upon a rock Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.”
You are nailed to this body, but you can extract yourself from it to become as strong as the youth Blake speaks of in this poem, and make this body give you what you want to express in this world.
I tell you, your Imagination is God, and with God all things are possible. Imagine you are what you want to be. Remain faithful to that thought, and nothing can stop you from becoming it. And remember, the barriers you see are in yourself! Do not concern yourself with how you will outwardly become your desire. Only dwell on the state desired, and you will become it.
No Other Barrier But Self | The Neville Goddard Lectures | 1954
