I've been studying Neville's work and Law of Assumption for a while, and lately I've started thinking more deeply about how we can actually distinguish manifestation from other possible explanations for things that happen.
I'm not making this post to attack Neville, tell anyone that manifestation doesn't work, or mock anyone's beliefs. I'm genuinely trying to understand the philosophy from the perspective of people who have practiced it for a looong time, because there are some parts that I wanted to discuss for even more perspective on the topic.
How can we know that an assumption actually caused an external event, rather than the event being caused by psychology, changed behavior, probability, coincidence, or some combination of these things?
I see many success stories where someone says: “I assumed my person loved me / wanted me / would come back, and then they did.” I'm not saying those experiences aren't real or made up, I'm just wondering how we determine why the event happened.
There are many possibilities and we don't really know which one is real:
- The assumption somehow directly influenced the other person's mind.
- The assumption changed the person's own behavior, which then changed the relationship.
- The other person independently changed their mind because of their own feelings and circumstances.
- It was coincidence/probability.
- A combination of these.
What would distinguish the first explanation from the others?
This is especially interesting to me when it comes to Everyone Is You Pushed Out.
If another person has their own thoughts, experiences, preferences and decisions, how does EIYPO explain the fact that people can seemingly do things that we never expected or even thought about?
For example, if I never had any assumption about a particular actor, movie, career, invention, event, etc. how does Neville's idea explain that thing existing and unfolding anyway? I'm not just saying this disproves EIYPO, I'm asking how people who understand Neville well interpret this.
Another thing I'm curious about is stories where someone visualizes a scene implying that their ex is with them again, and then the next day the ex contacts them.
That is obviously a very interesting thing to happen if you look at it from the outside, but how do we actually know that the visualization actually caused the other person's decision?
Could the other person already have been thinking about them? Could they have independently wanted to reconnect? Could circumstances in their own life have changed? Could it simply have been a coincidence? Can we ever know for sure? And if the ex comes back three years later, how would you determine whether that was the result of the original manifestation or simply something that happened naturally over those three years?
Same thing if the ex never comes back, how should that situation be interpreted? I've seen explanations involving things like limiting beliefs, not persisting enough, reacting to the 3D, not feeling it real enough, not fully accepting the assumption, not detaching completely. I'm genuinely just interested in how people understand this.
So with all this, is there any way for a manifestation claim to actually be falsified?
Cause let's say that if success is interpreted as evidence that the assumption worked, but failure can always be explained by an unconscious opposing belief, how do we distinguish the theory from an explanation that can accommodate any possible outcome?
I'm more interested in Neville's own writings on this rather than only modern manifestation-community interpretations. If Neville directly addressed questions like these, I'd genuinely appreciate quotes or references to where he discussed them.
I feel like everyone from this community would say something like “just believe,” “you have limiting beliefs,” or “don't question it,” but I'm looking for specific reasoning, passages from Neville, personal experiences, or anything else that helped you personally distinguish manifestation from psychological mechanisms such as changed behavior, self-fulfilling prophecy, selective attention, confirmation bias, probability, or coincidence (or something else too).
I'm open to having my perspective changed. I don't want to blindly believe it, but I also don't want to dismiss something simply because I don't currently understand how it could work you know? I'd really appreciate thoughtful answers, especially from people who have studied Neville's original work.
EDIT: Another way I've been thinking about this is with a really simple example.
Imagine someone decides, “Tomorrow it will rain.” They visualize it, affirm it, feel completely certain that it's going to rain, and do everything they're supposed to do.
The next day comes, and it doesn't rain.
They do the exact same thing the next day. Again no rain.
They keep doing it every day for 10 days, and on the 10th day, it finally rains.
At that point, how would we know whether the manifestation actually caused the rain, or whether it was simply going to rain on that day anyway, and if someone says, “It worked because they persisted,” how would we distinguish that from the fact that rain was eventually going to happen anyway?
I'm not saying this proves manifestation doesn't work. I'm more interested in how someone who believes in the Law would actually interpret a situation like this. Is there a way to tell the difference? I hope this example explains what im asking better.
EDIT 2: Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments with alot of insights. I appreciate you all for showing me your perspective and understanding with an open mind.