The Man Who Told Neville “You Are in Barbados”
Every great teacher has a teacher. For Neville Goddard, that teacher was a man known as Abdullah, an Ethiopian rabbi who taught Neville the practical application of Kabbalistic principles in New York City during the 1930s. Abdullah’s story is one of the most fascinating and least documented chapters in the history of twentieth-century mysticism.
What We Know About Abdullah
The historical record on Abdullah is frustratingly thin. Nearly everything we know comes from Neville’s own lectures and writings, where he referred to Abdullah frequently and with deep reverence. According to Neville, Abdullah was an Ethiopian Jew who had studied Kabbalah, the Hebrew mystical tradition, at a profound level. He was living in New York and teaching a small group of students when Neville encountered him, reportedly around 1931.
Neville described their first meeting in several lectures. He said that when he walked into Abdullah’s lecture hall for the first time, Abdullah looked at him and said, “You’re six months late.” As if he had been expecting Neville to arrive and was mildly irritated by the delay. This anecdote captures something essential about Abdullah’s teaching style: direct, unsentimental, and operating from a level of knowledge that seemed to include the future.
The Teaching Method
Abdullah’s approach, as Neville described it, was distinctly different from the gentler, more encouraging style of most New Thought teachers. Abdullah was blunt. He refused to coddle. And his primary teaching method was confrontation with the student’s own limiting beliefs.
The most famous example is the Barbados story. Neville wanted to sail home to Barbados for Christmas but had no money for the voyage. He told Abdullah about his desire. Abdullah’s response was immediate and uncompromising: “You are in Barbados.”
Not “imagine yourself in Barbados.” Not “affirm that you will go to Barbados.” Abdullah stated it as a present fact. When Neville protested that he had no money and no ticket, Abdullah repeated: “You are in Barbados.” And then, as Neville told it, Abdullah refused to discuss the matter further. Every time Neville raised his doubt, Abdullah simply repeated the statement or changed the subject.
“Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.”Neville Goddard
This core teaching of Neville’s is directly traceable to Abdullah’s method. Abdullah didn’t teach techniques. He embodied the principle and demanded that his students do the same. No gradual approach. No stepping stones. You’re either in the state or you’re not. Choose.
The Kabbalistic Dimension
Traditional Kabbalah is a complex Jewish mystical system involving the Tree of Life, the sefirot (divine attributes), Hebrew letter mysticism, and elaborate meditation practices. Abdullah’s Kabbalah, as filtered through Neville’s account, was something different: a practical application of Kabbalistic principles stripped of much of the traditional ceremonial apparatus.
The key Kabbalistic principle that Abdullah appears to have transmitted to Neville is the idea that the human imagination is a direct expression of the divine creative power. In traditional Kabbalah, God creates through speech (“And God said, Let there be light”). In Abdullah’s teaching, as received by Neville, humans create through imagination. The parallel is direct: just as God’s word becomes reality, your imaginal act becomes reality.
Abdullah also reportedly taught Neville to interpret the Hebrew Bible as a psychological document rather than a historical one. This hermeneutic approach, reading scriptural characters and events as states of consciousness rather than historical persons and events, became one of the hallmarks of Neville’s public teaching.
How Abdullah Differs from Traditional Kabbalistic Teaching
Traditional Kabbalah is typically taught within an Orthodox Jewish framework, with years of Torah study as a prerequisite and an emphasis on ritual observance alongside mystical practice. It involves complex meditation on Hebrew letters, visualization of the sefirot, and systematic ascent through levels of divine reality.
Abdullah’s approach, at least as Neville received it, was radically simplified. The practical application, changing consciousness to change reality, was extracted from its ceremonial context and taught as a standalone practice. Whether Abdullah taught the full traditional system to other students and simplified it for Neville, or whether his own approach was already a synthesis, we don’t know.
What we do know is that Neville credited Abdullah with giving him the key to everything he subsequently taught. The identification of human consciousness with God. The primacy of imagination. The principle that assumption becomes fact. All of this, Neville said, came from Abdullah.
The Legacy
Abdullah left no books, no recordings, and no organizational legacy. He lives entirely through Neville’s testimony. This is both appropriate and slightly frustrating. Appropriate because Abdullah seems to have been the kind of teacher who transmitted through presence rather than text. Frustrating because we have only one student’s account to work with.
But what an account it is. The teaching that flowed from Abdullah through Neville has reached millions of people worldwide. The Barbados story alone has inspired countless practitioners to test the principle for themselves. And the directness of Abdullah’s method, the refusal to entertain doubt, the insistence on present-tense assumption, remains one of the most powerful approaches in the entire New Thought tradition.
Exercise: Practice Abdullah’s Method
Choose a desire. Now state it as a present fact, the way Abdullah stated “You are in Barbados.” Not “I will have this.” Not “I am working toward this.” State it as done. “I have this.” “I am this.” “It is so.”
When doubt arises (and it will), don’t argue with it. Don’t analyze it. Simply repeat the statement. “I have this.” Then change the subject, internally. Think about something else entirely. The statement has been made. There’s nothing more to discuss.
This is harder than it sounds. Abdullah’s method demands a level of certainty that most of us haven’t practiced. But the directness is its power. No technique to get lost in. No process to optimize. Just the flat statement of what is so, held with unwavering conviction. Try it for one desire, for one week, and notice what happens both internally and externally.
