Lecture Summary
The Two Outlooks and the Power of Assumption
In this transformative lecture, Thinking Fourth-Dimensionally, Neville Goddard explains that every person lives from one of two states: the natural (carnal) mind, which sees only the limitations of the senses, and the Christ mind, the fourth-dimensional perspective, which perceives past, present, and future as a single, completed whole. According to Neville, our inability to experience this larger dimension is due only to habit, not law, and we can awaken to it by assuming the feeling of our desired state and remaining faithful to that assumption.
Using the stories of Mark 5 and John 5:4 as psychological allegories, Neville shows how each character symbolizes a state of consciousness within us.
- The madman among the tombs represents living in the dead past, held back by superstition, prejudice, and outdated beliefs.
- The woman with the issue of blood symbolizes the mind that cannot conceive because it is “running” with doubt, yet is healed the moment she accepts faith as her only reality.
- The dead child of Jairus represents our forgotten desires, which can be resurrected through persistent assumption.
- The impotent man at the pool reveals that no external “man” is needed to initiate change; you must enter the disturbed waters of desire yourself by declaring I AM.
- The woman at the well shows the tension between the senses (the five husbands) and the creative imagination (the sixth, the Christ within), urging us to sip the “living water” of assumption.
Neville emphasizes that imagination is the only creative power and that assumptions, once sustained, inevitably harden into fact. He illustrates this through his personal story of imagining himself in Barbados without money, resources, or means and being carried there by a series of perfectly natural events.
The core message is clear:
To change your life, you must withdraw attention from the senses, assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, remain faithful to that inner movement, and let the unseen world crystallize into form.
Neville encourages the reader to test this law boldly, to feed only the states they wish to embody, and to reject the limiting habits of the natural mind. By doing so, one resurrects every “sleeping” desire and steps into the dimensionally larger world where all things already exist.
Thinking Fourth-Dimensionally
There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by every man, and the ancient storytellers were fully conscious of these two outlooks. They called the one the carnal mind and the other the mind of Christ. We recognize these two centers of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Corinthians 2:14.
To the natural mind (carnal mind), reality is confined to the instant called now. This very moment seems to contain the whole of reality, and everything else is unreal. To the natural mind, the past and the future are purely imaginary.
In other words, my past, when I use the natural mind, is only a memory image of things that were. To the limited focus of the carnal or natural mind, the future does not exist.
The natural mind does not believe that it could revisit the past and see it as something that is present, something objective and concrete to itself. Neither does it believe that the future exists.
To the Christ mind—the spiritual mind—which in our language we will call the fourth-dimensional focus, the past, the present, and the future of the natural mind are a present whole. It takes in the entire array of sensory impressions that man has encountered, is encountering, and will encounter.
The only reason you and I are functioning as we are today, and are not aware of the greater outlook, is simply because we are creatures of habit. Habit renders us totally blind to what otherwise we should see. But habit is not law.
It acts as though it were the most compelling force in the world, yet it is not law. We can create a new approach to life. If you and I would spend a few minutes every day withdrawing our attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on an invisible state, and remain faithful to this contemplation—feeling and sensing the reality of an invisible state—we would in time become aware of this greater world, this dimensionally larger world.
The state contemplated is now a concrete reality, displaced in time.
Tonight, as we turn to our Bible, you be the judge as to where you stand in your present unfoldment. Our first story for tonight is from the 5th chapter of the Gospel of Mark. In this chapter, there are three stories told as though they were separate experiences of the dominant characters.
In the first story, we are told that Jesus came upon an insane man, a naked man who lived in the cemetery and hid himself behind the tombs.
This man appealed to Jesus not to cast out the devils that bedeviled him. But Jesus said unto him, “Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.” Mark 5:8.
Thus Jesus cast out the devils that they may now destroy themselves, and we find this man—for the first time—clothed and in his right mind and seated at the feet of the Master.
We will get the psychological sense of this chapter by changing the name Jesus to that of enlightened reason or fourth-dimensional thinking.
As we progress in this chapter, we are told that Jesus now comes upon the High Priest whose name is Jairus. Jairus, the High Priest of the Synagogue, has a child who is dying. She is 12 years old, and he appeals to Jesus to come and heal the child.
Jesus consents, and as he starts toward the home of the High Priest, a woman in the marketplace touched his garment.
“And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?” Mark 5:30. The woman who was healed of an issue of blood she had had for 12 years confessed that she had touched him.
“And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.” Mark 5:34.
As he continues toward the home of the High Priest, he is told that the child is dead, and there is no need to go to resurrect her. She is no longer asleep but dead.
“As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.” Mark 5:36.
“And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.” Mark 5:39.
With this, the entire crowd mocked and laughed. But Jesus, closing the doors against the mocking crowd, took with him into the household of Jairus his disciples and the father and mother of the dead child.
They entered into the room where the damsel was lying. “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.” Mark 5:41.
“From this deep sleep she awoke and arose and walked, and the High Priest and all the others were astonished. And he charged them straightly that no man should know it, and he commanded that something should be given her to eat.” Mark 5:43.
You are this very night, as you are seated here, pictured in this 5th chapter of Mark. A cemetery is for one purpose: it is simply a record of the dead.
Are you living in the dead past? If you are living among the dead, your prejudices, your superstitions, and your false beliefs that you keep alive are the tombstones behind which you hide.
If you refuse to let them go, you are just as mad as the madman of the Bible who pleaded with enlightened reason not to cast them out.
There is no difference. But enlightened reason is incapable of protecting prejudice and superstition against the inroads of reason. There is not a man in this world who has a prejudice, regardless of the nature of the prejudice, who can hold it up to the light of reason.
Tell me you are against a certain nation, a certain race, a certain “ism,” a certain anything, no matter what it i,s you cannot expose that belief of yours to the light of reason and have it live.
In order that it may be kept alive in your world, you must hide it from reason. You cannot analyze it in the light of reason and have it live.
When this fourth-dimensional focus comes and shows you a new approach to life and casts out of your own mind all these things that bedeviled you, you are then cleansed and clothed in your right mind.
And you sit at the foot of understanding, called the feet of the Master.
Now clothed and in your right mind, you can resurrect the dead. What dead? The child in the story is not a literal child. The child is your ambition, your desire, the unfulfilled dreams of your heart.
This is the child housed within the mind of man.
Now we will go into the silence.
Thinking Fourth-Dimensionally | The Neville Goddard Lectures | February 16, 1948
Ready to go beyond reading Neville’s lectures and truly live his teachings?
Step into the next level of your spiritual transformation with the Living Neville’s Teachings Curriculum, a powerful course designed to help you embody the Law, apply it daily, and experience results that last.
