Imagination · “Feel It Real”
The Whole World Is Yourself Pushed Out
Treat the outer world as a reflection of your own consciousness, and persistently assume (feel as real) the state of the wish already fulfilled, ignoring contrary appearances.
In 5 lines: Treat the outer world as your own consciousness reflected back — “yourself pushed out.” Decide the single fact of the wish fulfilled, and build a short sensory scene that assumes it is already so. Drop into the feeling of “I am already there,” not “I want to get there.” Refuse the contrary evidence of the senses, return to the state nightly, and persist. Then take the real-world steps the fulfilled person would take.
What it is
This is the core teaching Neville Goddard attributed to his mentor Abdullah: that the entire outer world is a reflection — “yourself pushed out” — of your own state of consciousness, and that the way to change it is not to manipulate circumstances but to assume the feeling of the wish already fulfilled and persist in that state until the outer conforms.
On Neville’s account, Abdullah hammered a single discipline into him over roughly seven years of study: stop wanting a thing (which affirms its absence), and instead be the person who already has it, looking at the world from that assumption.
The practice is therefore an identity move, not a visualization trick — you occupy the end and let outer reality mirror it back. (Sourcing note: Abdullah left no writings. Everything here is reconstructed from Neville Goddard’s spoken accounts of what Abdullah taught him.
The signature phrase “the whole vast world is yourself pushed out” is Neville’s own articulation in his lectures of the worldview he credited Abdullah with drilling into him — it is not a recorded quotation of Abdullah himself.)
The Method
As relayed by Neville, Abdullah’s instruction reduced to a few firm steps:
- Define the wish as a single end-state. Name precisely what it would mean for the desire to be already accomplished — not the steps, the fact of it.
- Construct the felt scene of fulfilment. Build a short imaginal scene that implies the wish is already true, and bring in the senses. In the Barbados account Abdullah told Neville: “You see Barbados, and you see America from Barbados, and you can smell the tropical land of Barbados, see only the little homes of Barbados, and that’s all you do.” 3. Assume the feeling of it being done. Drop into the inner tone of one for whom it is simply so. Abdullah’s refrain to Neville was flat and final: “You are in Barbados.” Not going — already there.
- Treat the outer world as your own consciousness reflected. Hold the premise that circumstances are an echo of inner state, so the work is entirely inward; there is nothing “out there” to push on.
- Ignore contrary appearances. Abdullah taught Neville to feel the assumed reality around him and let the present surroundings recede — to refuse evidence of the senses that contradicted the assumption.
- Persist until it hardens into fact. Return to the assumed state, especially at night, and remain faithful to it. Abdullah’s metaphor for the all-or-nothing commitment: “You can’t be a little bit pregnant.” *(Sourcing note: the bracketed dialogue — “You are in Barbados,” the smell-of-Barbados instruction, “you can’t be a little bit pregnant” — are the words Neville repeatedly quoted Abdullah as saying. They survive only in Neville’s retellings and vary slightly between his accounts.)*
Source & Lineage
Abdullah (fl. 1920s–30s, New York) was the esoteric teacher — described by Neville as an Ethiopian rabbi and Black Jewish mystic — under whom Neville Goddard studied Scripture, Hebrew, Kabbalah, and the disciplined use of imagination.
He left no writings; his teaching reaches us only through his student. Neville Goddard (1905–1972) built his entire public system on what he received here — “the feeling of the wish fulfilled,” “living in the end,” and “the whole vast world is yourself pushed out.”.
This entry frames the teaching as attributed to Abdullah, the root Neville drew from — Neville’s own technique pages (below) carry his mature, first-person formulations. The deeper roots Abdullah is said to have transmitted are Hebrew Kabbalah and symbolic Bible interpretation.
The Traditions' versions
Neville’s living in the end — assume the wish fulfilled as a continuous state; Neville’s own development of this teaching.
- Neville’s inner conversations — police inner talk so it implies the wish fulfilled.
- Eric John Campbell — assuming the new self-concept — modern restatement, “assume from peace.”
- Troward — impressing the subjective mind — the subjective mind takes any sustained impression as instruction (a root Neville credited).
- Kabbalah / “I AM” — the Name as creative being-statement, the esoteric stream Abdullah is said to have taught.
Common refinements
Wanting instead of being. Reaching for the wish reaffirms its absence — the exact error Abdullah corrected in Neville. Assume from the end.
- Thin, sensory-poor scenes. Abdullah insisted on smell, sight, and surroundings; a flat mental picture lacks the felt reality.
- Arguing the “how.” Abdullah refused to discuss logistics: “How could he discuss with me how I am going to Barbados when I am already in Barbados?” Debating the route reasserts that you are not there.
- Quitting at the first contrary appearance. Persistence — especially falling asleep in the state — is the labour, not the polish.
- Treating “ignore appearances” as denial. Ignoring contradictory feeling is the practice; ignoring real bills, symptoms, or grief is bypass.