#135: The Unseen Harvest

The Unseen Harvest

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have planted your seed. In the quiet act of assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled you dropped into the fertile soil of your own consciousness that which contains within itself both the power and the plan of its own expression. That planting was complete. Nothing more is required of you in the outer world, for the seed you planted is not dependent upon your anxious watching or your hurried efforts to bring it to harvest. It carries its own appointed season within it, and in that season the unseen growth will break through into visible form.

The error most make is to plant and then immediately begin to disturb what they have planted. They drop the seed in feeling, and before the soil has even closed over it they return in consciousness to question whether it was truly planted, whether the soil was ready, whether the season is favorable. They lift the tender shoot to see if roots have formed. They do this not once but many times a day, and with each disturbance they wonder why the harvest delays. Yet the law is simple and unbending: the seed, once truly received in consciousness, grows only when left undisturbed. Faith is the refusal to dig it up again.

When you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled you have done the only act that is creative. That feeling is the seed. It is not a wish, not a hope, not a petition sent to some being outside yourself. It is the living germ of the thing itself pressed into the ground of your own awareness. And because it is living it contains the full plan of its unfoldment. The how, the when, the through what means — these are not your concern. They are contained within the seed. To question them is to declare that the seed is insufficient, that the power which grew the worlds is not adequate to grow your desire. Such questioning is the very disturbance that prevents the harvest.

You are told that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. This is not a poetic phrase. It is the description of the law itself. The substance is the feeling of the wish fulfilled. The evidence is the unseen activity that begins the moment the seed is dropped. That activity is invisible to the outer eye and to the reasoning mind, yet it is more real than anything the senses report. The seed does not argue with the soil. It does not demand proof that the ground is warm enough or moist enough. It simply is what it is, and the soil, being faithful to its own nature, responds. Your consciousness is that soil. When you remain faithful to the seed you planted — when you refuse to dig it up with doubt or impatience — the soil does its perfect work.

The season of which I speak is not measured by the calendar. It is the time required for the invisible to become visible, for the assumption to harden into fact. That time varies with the nature of the seed and with the depth of the planting. A small desire, assumed with little feeling, may appear quickly. A great desire, assumed with profound conviction, may require a longer interval. But the length of the interval is never your responsibility. Your responsibility ended when you felt the wish fulfilled and remained in that feeling long enough for it to register as a fact in consciousness. After that, the law takes over. To watch the calendar, to count the days, to wonder why nothing has yet appeared, is to disturb the seed. It is to say in feeling, though not perhaps in words, that you do not trust the power you invoked.

Consider what it means to disturb the seed. It means to return in consciousness to the state you have left. It means to feel once more the old frustration, the old anxiety, the old belief that the desire is not yet yours. Every time you do this you are uprooting what you planted. The roots may have begun to form; you tear them. The first green shoot may have pushed upward; you crush it. And then you wonder why the harvest is delayed. The delay is not in the law. The delay is in your repeated disturbance of the very thing you claim to desire. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot feel the wish fulfilled and at the same time feel the wish unfulfilled. One of these feelings is the seed. The other is the hand that digs it up.

The unseen harvest is already on its way the moment the seed is planted. You do not see it, yet it is more certain than anything you do see. The outer world is the delayed reflection of inner activity. What you have assumed in feeling must appear, for there is no other cause in your world. The appearance may come through a bridge of incidents you could never have planned. It may come in a manner that surprises you completely. It may come when you have almost forgotten you planted the seed. But come it must, because the law is that the seed reproduces after its kind. Your only task is to let it do so without interference.

Many believe they must help the seed to grow. They think they must find ways and means, must make contacts, must exert effort in the outer world to bring the desire to pass. This is the old belief that man is the doer. It is the belief that the seed is dead and must be forced into life by outer action. Yet the seed you planted in consciousness is not dead. It is alive with the same life that moves the stars. It needs no help from you. It needs only to be left alone. The moment you begin to help, you are declaring that the seed is insufficient. You are disturbing it with your anxiety to make something happen. And the very effort you make to hasten the harvest becomes the force that retards it.

The peace that follows true planting is the sign that the seed has been received. When you can go about your way in the feeling that it is done, when the desire no longer feels like a desire but like a fact already accomplished, then you have planted. The anxiety that once drove you has gone. In its place is a quiet certainty. This certainty is faith. It is not a belief about the future. It is the knowledge that what you have assumed is already so in the only reality there is — consciousness. From this knowledge you do not waver. You do not check to see if the outer world has yet conformed. You know that the outer world must conform because there is no other power to prevent it.

The mustard seed of which you read is not a measure of quantity. It is a measure of quality. The smallest assumption, held with the faith that refuses to disturb, grows into the largest result. The faith of a grain of mustard seed is the faith that knows the seed contains the full tree. It does not look at the tiny seed and say, “How can this produce such a great thing?” It simply drops the seed and lets it be. Your assumption, however small it may seem to the outer mind, is that mustard seed. Held without disturbance, it will grow into the full manifestation of your desire. The size of the seed in the beginning is not the measure of the harvest. The measure is the faith that refuses to dig it up.

You live in a world that appears to be governed by time. Yet the seed you planted does not grow by the world’s time. It grows by its own inner law. The interval between planting and harvest may seem long to the outer man. To the one who has truly planted it is not long at all, for he has already entered the state of the fulfilled desire. He lives in that state. The outer events are merely catching up with what is already true for him. This is why those who have learned the art of planting and leaving alone often appear to receive their desires with surprising suddenness. The suddenness is only in the outer appearance. In consciousness the harvest was already present the moment the seed was dropped.

The temptation to disturb the seed is greatest when the outer world offers no evidence that anything is happening. In those moments the old state returns with great force. It whispers that nothing has changed, that the assumption was only imagination, that you were foolish to believe. These are the very moments when faith is tested. To yield to the whisper is to dig up the seed. To remain unmoved, to continue in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, is to let the seed grow in the dark where all true growth begins. The dark is not the absence of light. It is the necessary condition in which the seed does its hidden work. You do not see the roots forming. You do not see the shoot pushing upward. Yet if you leave the ground undisturbed the plant will appear in its season.

Every imaginal planting you have ever made has borne fruit according to this law. The desires you assumed and then left alone came to pass. The desires you assumed and then doubted, discussed, or anxiously watched either delayed or changed form. The law has never failed. It is your disturbance of the seed that has created the appearance of failure. When you look back you will see that the times you received what you desired were the times you planted and then lived as though the planting were enough. You did not need to know how. You did not need to push. You simply assumed and let the unseen harvest come in its own way.

Tonight, as you prepare for sleep, you have the opportunity to plant again or to leave undisturbed what you have already planted. If the desire is still active within you, assume the feeling of its fulfillment now. Feel the relief, the naturalness, the quiet joy of having received. Do not condition the feeling with thoughts of how or when. Simply be the one who has it. And having been it in consciousness, go to sleep in that state. The seed is planted. The season is already at work. Your part is done.

If the desire has already been planted and you have been faithful to it, then tonight’s act is one of continued non-disturbance. As you review the day, refuse to lift the seed to examine it. Refuse to measure progress by outer signs. Refuse to let the old feeling of lack or delay return even for a moment. The harvest is unseen, but it is certain. The same power that grew the seed into the first faint movement of life is continuing its perfect work. Your faith is the atmosphere in which that work proceeds without hindrance.

You are not asked to believe in something outside yourself. You are asked to believe in the reality of your own assumption. The assumption is the seed. Your consciousness is the soil. Faith is the refusal to disturb what has been planted. When these three are in harmony the harvest cannot fail to appear. It may come tomorrow. It may come after many tomorrows. But it will come, because the law is that every seed reproduces after its kind, and the kind you planted was the fulfilled desire itself.

Walk, then, in the quiet certainty that what you have assumed is already so. Do not discuss it. Do not look for signs. Do not wonder why the outer world has not yet caught up. The outer world is not the cause. It is the effect. The cause is the seed in the unseen, growing according to its own perfect law. In due season that which is now unseen will be seen openly, and you will know that the harvest was never in doubt from the moment you planted the seed in feeling.

The unseen harvest is yours. It was yours the instant you assumed the feeling of its possession. Nothing can prevent its appearing except your own repeated disturbance of the ground in which it grows. Refuse that disturbance. Remain faithful to the seed. And in its appointed season the harvest will stand before you, no longer unseen, but evident to all, the living proof that consciousness is the only reality and that what you plant in consciousness must appear in form.