Neville Goddard's "At Your Command" resorts to heresy and blasphemy in order to bolster the New Thought movement and the Law of Attraction.
I want to be fair in this review, so let me acknowledge my perspective. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. But, unlike some Christians, I’m also open to learning. I read widely - from different authors with various perspectives, including those who do not share my faith.
In that spirit, I don't have a knee-jerk, disapproving reaction to anything related to the so-called "Law of Attraction." Indeed, I agree with many of the observations and wisdom put forward by those (like Goddard) who were pioneers of “New Thought” and many today who embrace the “Law of Attraction.”
There’s wisdom to be gleaned from Goddard’s work, such as these quotes from “At Your Command”:
"You can only be to others what you are first to yourself.”
“Your opinion of yourself will determine your expression in life.”
“To dissolve a problem that now seems so real to you all that you do is remove your attention from it. In spite of its seeming reality, turn from it in consciousness. Become indifferent and begin to feel yourself to be that which would be the solution of the problem.”
“Life does not care whether you call yourself rich or poor; strong or weak. It will eternally reward you with that which you claim as true of yourself.”
But there’s also some bad, even dangerous, advice such as:
"Your desires contain within themselves the plan of self-expression. So leave all judgments out of the picture and rise in consciousness to the level of your desire and make yourself one with it by claiming it to be so now."
Really? What about those who have a desire to exploit or abuse others?
And then there's the premise itself, namely the author’s audacious undertaking to remake and redefine the Bible to be something that it is not AND to then insist that this is the best (and only legitimate) way to look at the Bible.
Goddard writes: “Instead of looking upon the Bible as the historical record of an ancient civilization or the biography of the unusual life of Jesus, see it as a great psychological drama taking place in the consciousness of man.”
Well...why? Much of the Bible IS a “historical record.” The Bible is actually a collection of books - and those books come in a variety of genres. But some of those books are indeed history books!
Goddard completely redefines the Bible to be about consciousness and manifestation. And he centers it on everyone’s favorite subject: YOU.
He writes: “If you, the reader, will give up all of your former beliefs in a God apart from yourself, and claim God as your awareness of being—as Jesus and the prophets did—you will transform your world with the realization that, ‘I and my father are one.’”
This is breathtaking in its intellectual dishonesty! Goddard takes quotes by biblical prophets — and refashions them as if these people were speaking of themselves and their own consciousness! He also takes Jesus’ quotes and redefines them as Jesus asserting the same kind of divine consciousness that (Goddard says) all of us have — or can have.
He even plays this redefinition game with one of the most reverent and holy identifiers for God in the Scriptures:
“Before man can attempt to transform his world he must first lay the foundation—‘I AM the Lord.’ That is, man’s awareness, his consciousness of being is God. Until this is firmly established so that no suggestion or argument put forward by others can shake it, he will find himself returning to the slavery of his former beliefs.”
To those who take God and the Bible seriously, this statement is nothing short of heresy and blasphemy!
But even if you don’t believe in God or the Bible...
What Goddard is doing is intellectually dishonest. Texts have meaning. The authors who wrote texts, including ancient texts, had goals and intentions when they (the authors) wrote those texts.
Who is Neville Goddard to ignore or redefine the intentions of the biblical authors?
Goddard’s approach represents a radical postmodernist conceit that (if fully imbibed) divorces one from reality.
He even goes so far as to assert that his take on Jesus and the Bible must be accepted without question and that the alternative to his view is “slavery” to one’s former (and fundamentally flawed) beliefs.
In his excellent book “Never Get Angry Again,” psychologist David J. Lieberman writes that “all roads out of reality lead to the land of suffering.”
I commend anyone who wishes to better their life. I don’t want to pour water on that desire. But I encourage you not to divorce yourself from reality and intellectual integrity. That’s too high of a price to pay.