Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Climbing a Ladder
A self-test to prove to yourself that vivid, felt imagining hardens into outer fact — and a template for manifesting any chosen event.
Target: climbing a ladder (neutral, unwanted).
- Write “I will not climb a ladder” on slips, post everywhere.
- 3 nights, pre-sleep: feel yourself climbing it, rung by rung.
- Stop after 3 nights; watch for a real ladder.
- Then re-aim the same method at a real desire.
What it is
A deliberately neutral experiment Neville assigned to his students: for three nights running, imagine yourself climbing a ladder just before sleep, while simultaneously denying any conscious intention to climb one in waking life.
Because the target (climbing a ladder) is arbitrary and unwanted, a result rules out wishful coincidence and lets you prove the principle to yourself. Once proven, the same procedure can be pointed at anything you genuinely desire.
The Method
- Set the neutral target. The target is simply “climbing a ladder” — something you have no normal reason or wish to do.
- Write the denial. On several slips of paper write the statement “I will not climb a ladder.” Place them everywhere you’ll see them — bedroom, mirror, wallet. This removes conscious intention so any result can’t be explained as you planning it.
- Imagine before sleep. Each night, relaxed in bed, “slowly and vividly imagine climbing a ladder rung by rung and step by step,” before drifting off. Neville’s instruction: with eyelids closed, imagine a ladder right in front of you and “FEEL YOURSELF ACTUALLY CLIMBING IT” (Consciousness Is the Only Reality).
- Do it three nights, then stop. After three nights, discontinue the exercise entirely.
- Watch. Many students reported being unexpectedly required to climb a ladder in real life — for some within days, for others a week or more.
- Then aim it. Neville told students the ladder could be replaced with anything desired (his example: “making a million dollars”). Use the identical felt, pre-sleep imagining on a real goal.
Source & Lineage
The “feel yourself actually climbing it” instruction comes from Neville Goddard’s Consciousness Is the Only Reality (his 1948 lesson series).
The ladder experiment itself is one of Neville’s most famous demonstrations, recounted in his lectures as an assignment to new students to test the law before believing it. A widely circulated first-person testimonial by Neville’s student E.
O. Locker Jr. describes the experience. It is genuinely Neville’s and well-documented.
Common refinements
Imagining you see a ladder rather than feeling yourself climbing it — Neville stresses the first-person, kinaesthetic feeling.
- Rushing. The instruction is slow and rung-by-rung.
- Continuing past three nights or “trying hard” — the design is to do it, then drop it.
- For real goals, choose a single simple felt scene that implies the goal, not the ladder.