Imagination · “Feel It Real”
The Telephone Technique
Use the act of answering (or imagining) a phone call to hear only the news you desire, refusing to accept unwanted incoming words as fact.
You choose what enters; bad news need not be assumed.
- After an unwanted call, re-hear it with changed words, tone, joy.
- Revise bad mail the same way; don’t call to argue.
- Generative: imagine answering the phone to the news/orders you want.
- Present tense, felt as real.
What it is
A specific, everyday application of the law of assumption built around the telephone (and by extension, mail and news). It has two modes: (a) defensive — when a call brings bad news, you refuse to accept the spoken words as fact and instead re-hear them as the words you wanted; and (b) generative — you sit quietly and imagine answering the phone to hear exactly the news, order, or confirmation you desire.
The telephone is treated as a channel you control rather than passively receive.
The Method
- Recognise incoming suggestion. Notice that headlines, mail, TV, and especially phone calls deliver “facts” you may be unconsciously assuming. “A friend calls, and pouring out all the bilge in the world tells you how bad things are… As you listen, their woes enter and are assumed by you” (Test Yourselves).
- Choose what enters. “Like a computer, choose what you are going to allow to enter.” You are the gatekeeper of what you accept as real.
- Revise the call in real time. When the conversation ends and “your friend’s voice is still fresh and clear in your ear, hear her changed words, the changed tone of her voice, and feel the joy emitted there.” Re-run the call as you wished it had gone.
- Apply it to mail too. “If the morning’s mail brings bad news don’t call the person… but revise it. Change the letter completely. When you answer the telephone test yourself again and hear only what you want to hear.”
- Generative mode. To create rather than just defend: “Sitting in my chair I quietly listen for the phone to ring, answer it in my imagination and hear the orders I desire to create — and they come” (Neville’s own business practice).
Source & Lineage
All three quotations come from Neville Goddard’s lecture “Test Yourselves” (delivered 25 September 1967). In it Neville describes a friend whose “telephone technique never fails her” — she revises a call as she hears it, replacing unwanted words with what she wishes to hear — and his own practice of imagining the phone ringing with the orders he wants. Genuine, well-attested Neville material.
Common refinements
Arguing with the real caller. Neville is explicit: don’t call back to complain — revise it internally instead.
- Revising only the words. Change the tone and the feeling of joy too.
- Using it to ignore genuinely actionable bad news (a real bill, a real diagnosis). Revise your emotional assumption, not your responsibility to act.
- In generative mode, listen for and answer the call as if it’s already happening — present tense, not future hope.