In the Gospels, Jesus offers a striking parable:
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God"
(Matthew 19:24; also Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25). Although it seems to warn against riches, Neville Goddard explains that it addresses the difficulty of letting go of rigid ideas about Jesus and God
Letting Go of Mental Wealth
The "rich man" symbolises anyone deeply attached to existing beliefs—whether material, social, or religious. Many people hold fixed, often limiting, ideas of Jesus and God inherited from tradition. These concepts can become heavy mental baggage, much like the camel, making it difficult to pass through the "needle’s eye"—the narrow gate to the attainment of desire.
Neville taught that to manifest our desires, we must release these limiting ideas. The "eye of the needle" represents the fine, inner opening we must pass through by letting go of rigid attachments and embracing a new state of mind. The true "kingdom of God" is not a distant place but a state of being awakened awareness, where we recognise our creative power as consciousness itself.
Jesus as a Symbol of Inner Awareness
According to Neville, Jesus is not a historical figure but a personification of the imaginative, creative power within each of us. The Bible is a symbolic narrative describing states of consciousness. Jesus represents the awakened, creative self—the aspect of us that realises "I AM" is God and understands its power to shape reality through imagination.
This is echoed in Paul's writings. In 2 Corinthians 5:16, Paul states:
"So that we, from now on, know no one according to the flesh, even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him no longer."
Here, Paul shifts from a literal view of Jesus to an understanding of Christ as an internal, spiritual reality—a perspective Neville highlights in his lecture “Seeing Christ Through The Eyes of Paul.”
The Struggle and the Shift
For many, abandoning traditional images of a distant God or a purely historical Jesus feels daunting. Yet Neville likens this struggle to a camel trying to pass through a needle’s eye: seemingly impossible while burdened with outdated beliefs. The camel represents the weight of these attachments; the needle’s eye, the narrow mental opening we must enter to realise our true creative nature.
Entering the Kingdom Within
To move beyond these limitations, Neville urges us to trust our imagination and recognise that the kingdom of God is a state of consciousness we enter when we fully accept our creative power. By shedding rigid concepts and embracing the truth that we are divine consciousness expressing itself, we move beyond the "eye of the needle" and into a state where all things are possible.