1945 · Neville Goddard

Prayer — The Art of Believing

Prayer redefined: not petition but the art of believing what is denied by the senses — with the psychology of how it works.

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This is Neville's most "technical" book: prayer stripped of begging and rebuilt as applied psychology. Its foundation is the law of reversibility — if a state of consciousness produces a physical fact, then reproducing the state reproduces the fact. Feeling, deliberately assumed, runs the machine in reverse.

Along the way Neville is startlingly frank about mechanism: the subconscious that accepts every felt suggestion, the rapport between minds, the reason will-power fails where belief succeeds. It reads less like devotion and more like an operator's manual — which is exactly what he intended prayer to be.

Key ideas

Prayer is believing, not begging

"The art of believing what is denied by the senses": prayer succeeds when you accept the answer as already given and feel from that acceptance — pleading reaffirms the lack.

The law of reversibility

Every transformation of force is reversible. A realized state radiates a feeling; therefore an assumed feeling induces the state. This is the book's scientific spine.

Belief beats will

Effort is the confession of doubt: when will and imagination conflict, imagination wins. The subconscious yields to felt conviction, never to force.

Rapport and suggestion

Minds communicate below speech. The states you sustain about others reach them — which is why prayer for another is the disciplined imagining of their good as accomplished.

Define the objective

Vague prayers disperse. A clearly defined objective, felt as fulfilled in a relaxed state akin to sleep, is the whole procedure.

Chapter by chapter

Chapter 1The foundation: faith as the essence of prayer, and the universal law of reversibility on which every claim rests.
Chapter 2The dual nature of consciousness: prayer as the key that unlocks the subconscious — the believing half of the mind.
Chapters 3–4Imagination, faith and rapport: why belief wins over will, and what hypnosis reveals about suggestion and the subjective mind.
Chapters 5–6The healing word and the mental conversation: clearly defined objectives, and inner arguments replaced by happy conversations.
Chapter 7The good servant: imagination that sees only the good, and the awakening of the healing power within.

Essential quotes

“Prayer — the art of believing what is denied by the senses — deals almost entirely with the subconscious.”
— Prayer, The Art of Believing — Chapter 2

“The universal law of reversibility is the foundation on which its claims are based.”
— Prayer, The Art of Believing — Chapter 1

“By the law of reversibility, that all transformations of force are reversible, the energy or feeling awakened transforms itself into the state imagined.”
— Prayer, The Art of Believing — Chapter 3

Practice what it teaches

Who this book is for: For the analytically minded — the reader who wants to know *why* the practice works before committing to it, and for anyone whose praying has felt like pleading.