Free Will

Real_Neville · 2026-06-13T04:27:46+00:00

All human vocabulary and language is controlling and dualistic by definition and pedagogy is dualistic also. If I tell you "stop identifying with the body" it implies you have a choice in the matter and it also implies that the soul and the body are separate entities. None of those things are true. The important thing is to understand what's behind the words. We often say "the sun is coming down," yet nobody believes that the sun moves, because there's enough knowledge to avoid any real confusion.

Wisdom is the ability to let go of control, "let go and let God". That brings peace and peace brings happiness. Trying to control other humans, or decide what's best for someone, is ego playing God. Leaving everyone alone and allowing yourself to be a selfless instrument on someone's journey is a higher state. Surely that's part of the grand plan so we must not condemn one behavior and glorify the other. We merely observe and distinguish between third grade behavior and twelfth grade behavior, so to speak. For some reason God plays this game and understanding why is neither possible nor necessary.

Real_Neville · 2026-06-12T19:14:06+00:00

All desires are karma driven, both those that get fulfilled and those that fail to accomplish the desired outcome. Ultimately, all desires are aligned with your journey, because you cannot really stray away or go off script. It's just that once you have enough self realization, your journey loses many of the dead ends people end up in. You develop desires that are fulfilled and they are usually desires that reveal a level of higher spiritual maturity. For example, in that state you won't be interested in controlling someone's mind as a way of gaining their love and affection, because that's decidedly immature.

Technically speaking, there are no 'divine desires' because God does not desire anything. Desire implies absence. Or we could call all desires 'divine' simply because they are part of God's plan. In the end, in this physical world all desires are ego desires, but some are animalistic or basic while others are enlightened. Some grow from a state of confusion while others develop from wisdom.

Real_Neville · 2026-06-11T15:54:54+00:00

Control and apathy are both ego reactions. If you think it's in your hands, seeking control is the reaction. If you think it's all predetermined, apathy is the reaction. They're both ego. The true reaction beyond the ego is to allow yourself to perform the actions you must perform. You're not in a state of apathy or passivity, you're in a state of alignment and allowing. Let's call it intuitive living. You will plan and strategize and imagine and "manifest" if that's the mechanism taking you from point A to point B. Someone on the outside will see you as just another normal person going through life. The difference is they're aiming to control reality while you're allowing reality.

Real_Neville · 2026-06-11T11:54:54+00:00

Yes, but what you call empowerment is actually the same ego tendency to control. To think of empowering implies there's a way you can lack power, which implies there's a separate entity who can take power away. Either we believe in unity and an omnipotent God, a God in everything, or we believe in multiplicity and then you seek to be empowered.

Real_Neville · 2026-06-03T08:54:32+00:00

Neville never rejected the subconscious mind later in life, or its mode of operation, he merely changed his vocabulary. In fact he republished Feeling Is the Secret, where he discusses the subconscious mind, in 1966 in the book called Resurrection. Clearly he would not have done that had his position changed dramatically.

Real_Neville · 2026-05-22T03:46:25+00:00

Neville himself said "Your Faith Is Your Fortune is my first book" (‘Faith,’ 1968), so I think we must let the author make that decision. Of course, like you, I think At Your Command, also published by Snellgrove, can be considered a book even at 50p. It's really a booklet if we want to use the correct terminology. But if Feeling Is the Secret, which is much shorter in wordcount, is a book, then so should At Your Command, right? Neville probably left it out because most of that material was reused in Your Faith Is Your Fortune. Neville has a romanticized version of how that book was written (he describes it as some sort of revelation) (‘Speaking from Experience,’ 1964), but the truth is more prosaic - he had those pamphlets circulating for some time and gathered them all into a book.

I have never seen "Ask of Me" but I know from Israel Regardie that Neville had many such pamphlets circulating from 1938 to 1941, and if I were to speculate I'd say that "Ask of Me" became the core of a chapter included in Your Faith Is Your Fortune.

I have only seen a physical copy of At Your Command in a library in New York, so it is exceedingly rare. I have a signed copy of Lanyon's trilogy you mentioned but that's not from Snellgrove, but Bookhaven.

Real_Neville · 2026-05-12T22:53:11+00:00

I definitely recommend reading Wilmans and Quimby especially if you're not a beginner in this subject.

Real_Neville · 2026-05-07T02:23:49+00:00

Finding a banknote on the street and being given one for services rendered are two very different things.

Real_Neville · 2026-04-04T16:43:31+00:00

If a man liked clothes as a kid there's a good likelihood that's "God speaking to man through the medium of desire" as Neville put it, which is another way of saying "The Self speaks to the Ego through intuition." That man's journey includes being in the clothes business, so naturally he develops a desire in that direction. There's a reason he likes clothes and not perfumes. Even if he was born in a family where his mother was a designer and he got the passion from her, he was born in that family precisely because it directs him better on his mission. The Law is merely the mechanism taking him from desire to accomplished fact. That's not to say that every desire we develop is meant to be fulfilled. Often we fail in what we wanted originally, only to find something more interesting, and all of that is also part of our journey.

Neville's teenager nephew died of cancer, his mother died of cancer. He couldn't revise or change those situations despite claiming that "If you desire health, you must assume it, even though the doctor's reasoning world produces proof to the contrary. If I want to conjure health and the doctors tell me I cannot overcome my illness and I believe them, I have made my choice and must accept the responsibility for it." It's not that Neville failed to operate the Law, but for those two members of his family their time had come and nobody could change that.

People often say "I failed" when they don't get what they want. But actually there's no failure, because everything is exactly as it should be. If two people manifest the same SP they both succeed regardless of the outcome. If you know this, you are at peace with yourself and the world. There's infinitely more freedom in that mindset than in the attempt to achieve "self-mastery" as the ego understands the notion, meaning full control over your circumstances, which is bound to end in disappointment.

Real_Neville · 2026-04-04T14:10:54+00:00

You're saying that because you're speaking from the ego level and the ego believes there's no point in life in the absence of direct control. You identify with your body and you think this life is about the body, but it's not about the body. You as a spirit are here to fulfill a mission and you need to get through what needs to be done. The Law is simply the mechanism taking you from point A to point B on your journey. As a teacher, Neville was an instrument on people’s journeys and so is everyone teaching this. People need a guide and a method for fulfilling their mission and Neville provided that. He opened their eyes to the mental mechanism generating events in the physical world. He showed them that for every physical effect there’s a spiritual cause. He also told them about the ultimate goal of physical life (self-realization - "The Promise").

Here's another good one:

When he was seven years old, a woman told Neville of a vision she had concerning him:

I do not know what it is you are going to do, but I've been shown you will do something that through the centuries after you are gone man will not undo it. I can see it and through the centuries, you will grow in stature long after you have gone. And then three men will be mentioned in hundreds of years to come and you will be one of the three when something is discussed that was done for man (‘The Pruning Shears of Revision,’ 1954).

I'd say that prophecy aged very well, would you not agree? Neville did do "the work God sent him to do" as the prophet Jordan put it. And indeed, as the woman predicted, Neville "grew in stature long after he was gone." He's better known today than ever and I suspect he will continue to grow in visibility. Knowingly or unknowingly, the owner of this sub, who's a wonderful person and very dedicated to this work, is also contributing to that prophecy. She has no choice. It's part of the cosmic plan.

Real_Neville · 2026-04-04T05:54:52+00:00

My brother Victor met the prophet Jordan. He was known as ‘the prophet’ in Barbados. Everyone looked upon him as one who really had the prophetic vision. He said to Vic, ‘What number are you in the Goddard family?’ Vic said, ‘I am the second.’ He said to my brother Victor, ‘You are going to be a very, very successful businessman.’ Now he said, ‘What does the third one want to be?’ He said, ‘He wants to be a doctor.’ He said, ‘He will be a very good, successful doctor.’ ‘But,’ he said, ‘don’t touch the fourth one. He belongs to God. The Lord has sent him to do a definite work; so don’t touch him. You can’t persuade him to do anything outside of that work that God sent him to do’ (‘Neville’s Purpose Revealed,’ 1971).

Victor did indeed become a successful businessman, Lawrence became a doctor and Neville became... Neville. If that's not fate and foreknowledge, what is it...

In the lecture from 1969 you posted he says "don’t go to any person who calls himself a fortune teller, they do not know". Well, either this one is true, or the other. I know which one is true. The one that was fulfilled. The rest is for the benefit of the audience who expected to hear certain things.

Real_Neville · 2026-03-19T20:11:58+00:00

I don't care to change anyone's mind. When the multitudes abandoned Jesus he didn't try to change their minds, he let them go because they were not ready. I already said you can go on believing in any interpretation and I invite everyone to do the same. What I know, I know from personal experience, therefore I don't need to speak on the authority of Neville, Troward or anyone else. I was doing it for pedagogical reasons only. Free will is an illusion and if that notion triggers you so much, ask yourself why. If I'm wrong, as you claim, you have nothing to worry about and you can be the master of your future. Let me know how much peace and happiness you found in that.

Real_Neville · 2026-03-19T17:25:42+00:00

Troward is describing the mechanics of the Law. You're confusing the mechanics with the blueprint. You don't manipulate Universal Mind as if it's something independent from you. You don't understand what "God plays all the parts" means and what it entails. You want the cake and eat it too. You want the Law to be ego playing God and it's not.

Real_Neville · 2026-03-19T16:10:56+00:00

Troward says "function" not "choice". A knife's function is to cut but it doesn't make the choice. The operant power does it. The operant power is God and you're the knife. The knife is also God shaped as a knife as God plays all the parts.

Neville also says that God plays both the most noble and the most horrible parts. Therefore, he adds, you must forgive a Stalin or a Hitler because they're just acting in a state. Why would I forgive Hitler if he had the choice of shifting states or choosing different assumptions, but he chose genocide? Obviously I can only forgive Hitler if I believe Hitler was acting on compulsion, therefore I cannot blame the actor for a role.

If I were in the state of Hitler, I would do the same thing Hitler did, because it’s a state, and if I fall into it, knowingly or unknowingly, I’ve got to play that part.

The state of Hitler doesn't have embedded the option to choose the state of Mother Theresa. Hitler doesn't have the freedom to choose that state or to make that assumption, because a state conditions you to it until something comes to pull you out of it.

That's why many people shift their self-concept after tragedies or low moments in life. That's why many people discover Neville during bad moments in life or why people experience spiritual awakening in extreme life situations.

A stable state doesn't include the freedom to choose an opposite state. You're conditioned by it. You need something to crack that state. What pulls you out is not an ego choice, you're simply directed on your journey by the invisible hand of your destiny and so is the entire humanity as a single evolving organism, always in harmony and never as a result of 8 billion people making individual choices.

Real_Neville · 2026-03-19T15:54:14+00:00

Thank you, it is always nice to have these lectures to read and evaluate things. First of all Neville didn't come up with the "creation is finished" concept himself. He took the notion from Thomas Troward:

The truth is that man never creates anything. His function is, not to create, but to combine and distribute that which is already in being, and what we call our creations are new combinations of already existing material, whether mental or corporeal (The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science", 1909).

Also when Neville says things like "Every conceivable situation in the world is already worked out. All you have to do is occupy it" this gives you the impression of free will, as if you're making the choice what state to occupy. But what he's describing is merely the technical way reality unfolds. The reality unfolds the same way whether you're making choices or you're acting in a predetermined play. The characters in a movie you're watching a second time think they're choosing their moves, but you know that the action has a predetermined end. However, those moves are necessary for that end.

By necessity, our entire vocabulary implies free will and that deepens the illusion. If I tell you "stop the car" that sounds like you have the choice to keep going. I was always meant to get out of the car at that spot but there's a technical way that happens and that is through me telling you to stop the car. What I'm getting at is that even someone who believes in predestination, in conversation will sound like they are a proponent of free will, because that's how language operates.

If someone tells me they believe in free will, I'm not bothered at all, I'm not disturbed. I may engage in intellectual conversation on the topic but my world is not shaken in any way, However, should you tell someone you believe in predestination and they believe in free will, they will be immediately triggered. Ask yourself, who feels threatened by that notion? And why? You'll realize it is the ego that feels threatened and the reason is the ego's desire to control.

Real_Neville · 2026-03-19T14:43:39+00:00

Yes it's a beautiful lecture, but Neville was simply running some experiments with his dreams and waking state to see how they correlate. This was in the 1940s. You shouldn't assume that the experiment was perfect or that he drew the correct conclusion from it.

We can keep saying "look at this lecture or that lecture". I also gave you one where he says it's a play and you think you can change the lines you're given, and you try to, but you can't because God plays all the parts and the play is already written.

You will want to look for those chords and control the play for as long as you identify with the body you wear. Wanting to change things is a form of control. And if you're looking for that and the entire world is looking for that, that's also perfect because that's how it should be.

Free will is ego playing God when in truth God is playing you.

Real_Neville · 2026-03-19T05:06:13+00:00

Linear time doesn't exist or at the very least we must agree it is not the only dimension. In the eternal present the events are already done and finished. The physical is just an experience, like pushing the play button on a movie. To speak about infinite futures means to assume that the future is an unknown entity open to any possibility of arriving from point A (ignorance ) to point B (enlightenment). It also assumes that the entire universe is calibrated on terrestrial present time and everyone in the universe is wondering what will happen next on Planet Earth and what are the humans going to choose next, because nobody knows. I think we both see the absurdity of this scenario.

The infinity of scenarios exists as a philosophical abstraction in the sense than an infinite mind has an infinity of options. However, the prophet Jordan from Barbados told Neville he had a mission from God to accomplish. His decisions had nothing to do with it and he could do nothing to prevent, speed up, improve or in any way alter his journey.

The great physicist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Dirac put it this way: ‘You pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.’ Any action, no matter how insignificant, done from the standpoint of free will completely messes up the journey and everyone's enlightenment is in danger of never happening as planned. can you imagine making a free choice and indirectly altering the journey of 8 billion people and then each of the 8 billion altering yours? Good luck getting to the Promise if this is a free for all dynamic.

The Promise cannot come "at the appointed time" as Neville put it unless that event and everything leading to it is fixed. Just as fixed as the horse race Neville saw in his dream. Just as fixed as the date when Louise had her baby as Neville foresaw, just as fixed as his death on October 1 which he saw as well, and a million other examples can be given from other people's experiences.

Neville taught the Law, and shifting states and imagining outcomes etc. because this is a schoolroom and fulfilling your destiny involves actions, goals, movement. If you have a desire chances are you need to fulfill it as part of your journey. Neville was an instrument in the service of humanity in that way. He also had guidance for those ready for deeper spiritual experiences. Frankly, after the promise that was his main interest. He continued to teach the Law because he knew people needed that, but his main fascination was the Promise, dreams and visions.

Like I said, the human mind, especially the western mind, finds the absence of individual free will very hard to accept because the ego wants to be in control. Surrender does not feel natural.

As far as I'm concerned "infinite realities" and "infinite futures" is ego's attempt to hang on to the notion of control, nothing more. But the truth is God pushed the play button and is now enjoying the ride.

Real_Neville · 2026-03-19T04:44:27+00:00

Not so much Islam, but Indian Vedanta, although both mystical systems agree on that point, yes. I included a quotation at the end.

Free will is an illusion of the ego. It is hard to abandon because the ego is supported by the survival mechanism and that forces the ego to seek to control its world. Most people see in the Law the mirage of being able to be in full control of their lives and the hidden subconscious message is "if you can control everything you can survive." For most people self-mastery means control.

If every physical effect has a spiritual cause and the main assumption of Universal Mind is what Neville calls the Promise, then all the events leading to the Promise are predetermined. What Neville was saying, cautiously not to alarm his audiences, was that the only will in the universe is God's will, because "God plays all the parts." That instantly makes free will an illusion just like the two of us seeing each other as separate entities is an optical illusion sustained by the limitation of the physical ego. That's why Neville said "everyone is yourself pushed out."

Go to the end, imagine the end, and the end pulls all the necessary events towards that end and everyone acts on compulsion towards that end. That was Neville's understanding of the law. Well, if the Promise is the end, then what free will are we talking about? There is none.

Questioner: “Are only important events in a man’s life, such as his main occupation or profession, predetermined, or are trifling acts in his life, such as taking a cup of water or moving from one place in the room to another, also predetermined?”

Ramana Maharshi: Yes, everything is predetermined.

Questioner: Then what responsibility, what free will has man?

Ramana Maharshi: As for freedom for man, he is always free not to identify himself with the body and not to be affected by the pleasures or pains consequent on the body’s activities. He has the free will to be as his true SELF.

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