Tradition
New Thought
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New Thought took shape in nineteenth- and twentieth-century North America around a striking conviction: mind, imagination, and belief help form the life a person experiences. It is a varied modern spiritual movement rather than a single creed, and the popular language of “manifestation” often presents only a simplified version of its ideas.
Across this broad stream, teachers often read sacred and philosophical language through a mind-centered lens: consciousness is not merely passive but creative. Neville Goddard is one influential voice, not a spokesman for every form of New Thought. He interprets biblical “I AM” language through imagination and assumption, teaching that a person can inhabit the feeling of a desired state as though it were already present.
This gives New Thought its own place in the inquiry into identity. The “I am” of biblical theology, Neville's imaginal practice, and Advaita-related attention to bare being all make a first-person phrase carry unusual weight. The strongest connection is that each turns identity into something to examine rather than merely inherit. Their histories and aims remain different: New Thought asks how an assumed state may shape experience, while the older theological and non-dual traditions make other claims about God, Self, and reality.
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New Thought
A modern spiritual movement that emphasizes the formative power of mind, imagination, and belief in shaping experience. It is related to, but not identical with, later popular “manifestation” culture.
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What this reading rests on
Feeling Is the Secret
original work
Primary example of Neville Goddard's teaching that feeling and assumption give an imagined state formative power in experience.