The Thinning Veil: What Abdullah Taught Neville Goddard About Crossing Into a New State
What if October's thinning veil separates not the living from the dead, but your old identity from your new one? Explore Neville Goddard, Abdullah, the Law of Assumption, and why becoming someone new means leaving your former self behind.
The Short Version
Every October the phrase comes back: the veil is thinning. In the folklore of Samhain, the boundary between the living and the dead grows thin enough to cross. Neville Goddard learned from his teacher Abdullah to read images like that as something happening inside you.
In the Law of Assumption, the veil is the old self, standing between you and the state you are assuming. It thins the moment you stop being who you were. Abdullah lived as if it were always thin: when he met Neville in 1931, his first words were you are six months late.
The full story of that teacher is in Abdullah Unveiled.
What to Remember
- Samhain, the night of October 31 into November 1, closed the Celtic year and opened the next. The veil was said to thin.
- Neville read scripture as a drama inside consciousness, a way of reading he learned under Abdullah.
- He took the temple veil, torn from top to bottom, as an inner event and described his own experience of it. Neville’s Promise
- The veil is not between the living and the dead. It is between who you were and who you are assuming.
- Old selves visit when you keep setting a place for them. The cure is the mental diet.
- Companion piece: the costume you don’t take off.
Read the teacher’s whole method in Abdullah Unveiled.
In Plain Words
People say that around Halloween the wall between our world and the spirit world gets thin.
Neville Goddard’s teacher, Abdullah, taught him that the wall that really matters is inside you, between the person you have been and the person you want to be. That wall gets thin whenever you decide to stop being the old you.
So use this week. Decide who you are leaving behind, picture your new life as if you already live there, and do not go back to visit the old you. Pair this with the costume you don’t take off, and meet the teacher himself in Abdullah Unveiled.
Featured Book
The teacher who greeted Neville Goddard as if the veil were already open
Abdullah Unveiled is the story and the method of the Ethiopian-born teacher behind the Law of Assumption, with prompts that walk you through applying each lesson to your own life.
Get Abdullah UnveiledAn October Story · The Night of Samhain
Six Months Late
The night the veil thins, and the teacher who acted as if it had never stood at all.
Sometime this week, someone will tell you the veil is thinning.
It shows up every October on every feed: the thinning veil, portal season, the time of year when signs come faster and the other side leans close. Some of it is decoration. Some of it is very old. And underneath both is a real teaching about crossing, which Neville Goddard spent his life giving away, and which he first learned from a teacher who greeted him as though they had already met.
- Samhain
- The Celtic festival on the night of October 31 into November 1 that closed one year and opened the next. It is widely seen as the ancestor of Halloween.
- The veil, in folklore
- The boundary between the world of the living and the world of spirits, said to grow thin at Samhain so that passage in both directions becomes easy.
- The veil, in Neville’s teaching
- Not a boundary between the living and the dead, but the old self, the state you have been occupying, standing between you and the state you are assuming.
- State
- An identity you occupy. In Neville Goddard’s teaching, states are infinite and already exist, and you move through them.
- The death of the old self
- The step every crossing requires: the new assumption replaces the old identity instead of sitting on top of it.
In the Law of Assumption, the veil is not between the living and the dead. It is between who you have been and who you are assuming.
I
Chapter One
The night between years
Samhain fell halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, and for the Celts it was the hinge of the year: the end of one and the beginning of the next, a night that belonged to neither summer nor winter. On that night, it was believed, the boundary between the human world and the Otherworld lifted, and crossing it became easy.
Ireland kept the night long after it stopped being pagan. In 1832 the painter Daniel Maclise went to a Halloween party in Blarney, County Cork, and painted it the following year: apples swinging on strings, fortune games in every corner, a whole room trying to see the future.
Notice what everyone in that room believes. Not that the future is fixed, but that tonight it is reachable. A door that is usually shut is, for a few hours, open.
II
Chapter Two
Six months late
Almost a hundred years after Maclise’s party, in 1931, a young dancer from Barbados walked into a room in New York where a man was speaking. A Catholic priest had told him about this teacher, and he had put off going. By Neville’s own account, the speaker looked at him and said:
“Neville, you are six months late.”
Abdullah to Neville Goddard · New York, 1931, as Neville told it
Neville said he had never met the man. Abdullah’s explanation is one of the strangest moments in the whole Neville story. The brothers, he said, had told him Neville was coming. And when Neville insisted they were strangers, Abdullah answered that Neville had simply forgotten, and that the two of them had been together in China thousands of years ago.
II
Figure II. New York, 1931. A teacher greets a stranger by name and tells him he is late for an appointment he never knew he had.
Whatever you make of China, look at the posture. Abdullah did not treat the meeting as chance. He treated it as a fact that had already happened, and Neville was simply arriving late to it. That is not a man waiting for the veil to thin on a particular night. That is a man who lives on the far side of it.
That was Abdullah: born in Ethiopia and raised in the Jewish faith, as Neville described him, and for about five years the man who taught Neville Hebrew, scripture and the Law. He taught Joseph Murphy as well, and he belonged to a remarkable generation of Black mystics in New York. Everything Neville later taught began in that room.
III
Chapter Three
Torn from the top
The most important thing Abdullah gave Neville was not a technique. It was a way of reading. Under Abdullah, Neville learned to take the Bible not as history but as a psychological drama unfolding in a single human consciousness, every character a state and every journey an inner movement.
Read that way, scripture has its own veil, and it is not thinning. It is torn. At the moment of the crucifixion, Matthew records, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. For centuries that was read as a curtain in a building in Jerusalem.
Neville read it as a body. In 1960, decades after Abdullah’s room, he described an experience in which he felt himself split from the top of his skull to the base of his spine, and he understood it as that verse fulfilled in him. He wrote about it in The Law and the Promise, and the full sequence is in Neville Goddard’s Promise.
III
Figure III. “The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” Matthew 27:51. Neville read the temple as the human body.
Hold that beside the folklore. Samhain says the veil thins once a year, on its own. Neville said the veil is you, and it opens from within. Nobody else can thin it for you, and no date is required.
Neville learned to read the veil in Abdullah’s room. You can learn it the same way.
The teacher behind the Law of Assumption, his method, and prompts for every lesson.
Read Abdullah UnveiledIV
Chapter Four
The dead who come back to visit
On the first two days of November, Mexico sets out marigolds, photographs and favourite foods, and for the Día de los Muertos the dead are welcomed home. The season’s great emblem was drawn by the printmaker José Guadalupe Posada around 1910: a skeleton in an enormous European society hat, his joke about people who dressed above themselves. Under the finery, the same bones as everyone.
Here is the uncomfortable Neville reading of the season. Some of the dead who visit you are not ancestors. They are your own former states, and they come back because you keep setting a place for them.
Every time you rehearse the old story in your inner conversation, explain your situation to a friend in the old terms, or check the evidence to see whether anything has changed, you are putting out the marigolds. Neville taught that states are infinite and that you move through them, and a state you have left can only return if you invite it. His tools for closing that door were the mental diet, which guards the inner conversation, and revision, which rewrites the scenes that keep replaying.
V
Chapter Five
The crossing
Arnold Böcklin painted the crossing in 1880 and went on painting it for years. In Isle of the Dead, a small boat moves across still black water toward a rock of cypresses, and in it stands a figure wrapped entirely in white, facing away from us, beside a draped coffin.
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What makes the painting unbearable is that the crossing only goes one way. Whoever is in that boat is not coming back to the shore as the person who left it.
That is what Abdullah asked of Neville two years after their meeting, when Neville wanted to go home to Barbados for Christmas with no money. Abdullah told him: you are in Barbados. Not you will be. Not you could be. You are. Neville had to stop being the man in New York without a fare, completely, and sleep each night as the man already in his family’s home on the island. When he tried to argue, Abdullah closed the door on him. A ticket arrived from his brother, and Neville sailed. The full story is in the Barbados lesson, and its Halloween twin is the costume you don’t take off.
The old self stayed on the far shore. That is the only way across.
VI
Chapter Six
Every lesson ends in a death
Once you see it, the pattern runs through everything Abdullah left Neville. In The Count of Monte Cristo, the story Abdullah used to test whether Neville could read, Edmond Dantès escapes his prison only by sewing himself into a dead man’s burial sack. He comes up out of the sea as someone else.
In the Barbados lesson, the man who could not afford the fare simply ceases to exist. In the temple, the curtain tears from the top. The Law of Assumption is a teaching about crossing, and every crossing in it costs an old self.
That is why so much manifestation advice feels thin in the wrong way. It tries to add a new state on top of the old one: the same person, now with a vision board. Abdullah never offered Neville that. He offered the boat.
Coda
The veil is you
So is the veil thinner this week? For the purposes of the Law, it is as thin as it has ever been, which is exactly as thin as your willingness to stop being who you were.
If the season helps, use it. Samhain was the Celtic new year, and there is no better night to let the old year’s self stay on the far shore.
A Samhain crossing in five steps
- Write two sentences. One describes the person you are leaving. The other describes the person you are becoming, in the present tense.
- Choose one scene from the far side. A conversation, a place, a key in a lock. Something that only happens if the new state is already true.
- Cross at night. On Halloween night, or tonight, enter the scene in the state akin to sleep and fall asleep inside it, the way Neville slept in Barbados.
- Tear up the first sentence. Keep the second somewhere you will see it every morning.
- Do not row back. When the old self visits in conversation or in thought, do not feed it. Revise the scene and close the door.
What this lesson is not saying
- MisconceptionThat manifestation works better on certain dates.ActuallyA date can help you believe, which is why portal days draw so many people. The law itself is constant, and the crossing is an inner act.
- MisconceptionThat every presence you feel this season is a message.ActuallySome of what returns is an old state you keep inviting back through your inner conversation.
- MisconceptionThat you can keep the old self and add the new one.ActuallyEvery crossing in Abdullah’s teaching costs an old self: Barbados, the burial sack, the torn curtain.
- MisconceptionThat Abdullah taught rituals or spells.ActuallyNeville presents him as a teacher of Hebrew, scripture and the Law, a way of reading reality, not a set of ceremonies.
The Abdullah Cluster
He told Neville he was six months late. This book is what Neville learned once he arrived.
The first meeting, the Barbados instruction, the closed door, the years of Hebrew and scripture, and the prompts that walk you through applying his method yourself. By the end of Abdullah Unveiled you will think, speak and assume differently.
Get Abdullah Unveiled- Samhain
- The Celtic festival on the night of October 31 into November 1, marking the end of one year and the start of the next, when the veil was said to thin.
- Snap-Apple Night
- Daniel Maclise’s 1833 painting of a Halloween party he attended in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832.
- La Calavera Catrina
- José Guadalupe Posada’s print of a skeleton in a fashionable hat, now the emblem of Mexico’s Día de los Muertos.
- Isle of the Dead
- Arnold Böcklin’s painting, first version 1880, of a boat carrying a white-robed figure and a coffin toward a cypress island.
- The veil of the temple
- The curtain torn from top to bottom at the crucifixion in Matthew 27:51. Neville read it as an event inside the human body and described experiencing it in 1960.
- Abdullah
- Neville Goddard’s teacher in New York from 1931, who greeted him with the words “you are six months late” and later told him he was already in Barbados.
The Thinning Veil and Manifestation: Frequently Asked Questions
What does “the veil is thinning” mean?
In Celtic folklore and modern pagan practice, the veil is the boundary between the world of the living and the world of spirits. At Samhain, around October 31, it is said to thin, so that passage between the worlds becomes easier. The phrase returns every autumn on social media as a season for intuition, signs and manifestation.
When is the veil thinnest?
Tradition places it at Samhain, the night of October 31 into November 1, which marked the end of the Celtic year and the beginning of the next. Halloween, All Saints’ Day on November 1, All Souls’ Day on November 2 and Mexico’s Día de los Muertos all gather around the same days.
What did Neville Goddard teach about the veil?
Neville read the Bible as a psychological drama taking place in each person’s consciousness, a way of reading he learned under Abdullah. He took the veil of the temple, torn from top to bottom at the crucifixion, as something that happens inside a person, and he described his own experience of it in 1960 in The Law and the Promise. In his teaching the veil is not between the living and the dead. It is the old self standing between you and the state you are assuming.
What did Abdullah say when he first met Neville Goddard?
Neville said that when he walked into the room where Abdullah was speaking in 1931, Abdullah greeted him with “Neville, you are six months late,” and explained that he had been told Neville was coming. When Neville said they had never met, Abdullah answered that Neville had forgotten, and that they had been together in China thousands of years ago.
Can you manifest during Samhain or Halloween?
You can manifest on any night, because the Law of Assumption does not depend on a date. What Samhain offers is a story millions of people believe for a few days: that a boundary is thin and crossing is easy. If that belief helps you enter a new state with more conviction, use it. The crossing itself is an inner act of assumption, not a property of the calendar.
What does the death of the old self mean in manifestation?
It means a new assumption replaces the old identity instead of sitting on top of it. Neville taught that you cannot stay the person who lacks something while assuming you have it. The old state has to be left behind, the way Abdullah required Neville to stop being the man in New York with no fare and live as the man already in Barbados.
Why do old patterns come back after I start manifesting?
Old states come back because habit invites them: rehearsing the old story in your inner conversation, checking the evidence, explaining your situation to other people. Neville’s remedies were the mental diet, which guards the inner conversation, and the revision technique, which rewrites scenes that keep replaying. A ghost that keeps visiting is a state you keep setting a place for.
How do I cross into a new state on Halloween night?
Write one sentence describing the person you are leaving and one describing the person you are becoming. That night, in the drowsy state akin to sleep, imagine a short scene that would only happen if the new state were already true, and fall asleep inside it. In the days afterwards, do not go back to visit the old self in conversation or in thought. Treat the crossing as complete.
Images: Daniel Maclise, Snap-Apple Night, 1833; José Guadalupe Posada, La Calavera Catrina, about 1910; Arnold Böcklin, Isle of the Dead, 1880 (Kunstmuseum Basel). All public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Scripture quoted from the King James Version.
