In No Barrier But Self (1953/54), Neville Goddard looks back on a single meeting in London that changed the trajectory of his life:

“In 1925, while visiting London, I met an old Scotsman who told me that my attitude of mind determined my life. That I need not be enslaved by life but could control my future by my present thinking. This idea intrigued me. I was fascinated by the thought that, in spite of my limited education and background, I could transcend my environment. Seeing my interest, this gentleman gave me some twenty or thirty books. These I read from cover to cover, as I was hungry for the knowledge I found there.”

For decades, the identity of this “old Scotsman” has been attributed to a man named Arthur Begbie, based entirely on a brief remark in Israel Regardie’s The Romance of Metaphysics:

“Whilst in England, he met Arthur Begbie who introduced him to the world of psychical research, giving Neville his first taste of the spiritualistic seance. It left him, I should say, a little bit flat, but nonetheless, he knew afterwards, that he was definitely embarked upon a long journey. Of that he was sure, in spite of his dislike of the atmosphere and the procedure of the seance. Shortly after his return to America in 1926, to continue his theatrical career, his interest in mysticism became keener and keener, coinciding with a waning interest in the theatre.”

This single sentence created another historical research detour, not unlike the one we faced until we finally found Abdullah, Neville’s teacher.

There is no verifiable “Arthur Begbie” who was a Scotsman, in the psychical research movement, or a spiritualist capable of handing a 20 year old vaudeville star, Neville Goddard, 20 to 30 books on metaphysics.

Only two historical candidates exist. One whose first name is Arthur and another whose last name is Begbie.

1. Harold Begbie (1871–1929) 

Begbie somewhat fits the bill for this position because he was an English journalist, poet, novelist, and social commentator (and of course his last name is Begbie). He brushed up against the spiritualist movement in London when he wrote, On the Side of the Angels (1915) where he collected and published a testimony surrounding the “Angels of Mons.” The book was taken pretty seriously. The material had accounts of a British officer who wrote to the London Evening News describing how, during the retreat from Mons, he and two other officers watched what appeared to be a body of mounted horsemen riding parallel to their column.

Begbie also wrote many books about religious conversion which are great reads:
Twice-born men a clinic in regeneration: a footnote in narrative to Professor William James’s “The varieties of religious experience” (1909)
In the hand of the potter: a study of Christianity in action (1911),
Broken earthware (1909),
The proof of God (1914),
More twice-born men; narratives of a recent movement in the spirit of personal religion (1923)

Begbie was in the spiritualist climate of the time, but and a big but… he was English, not Scottish, and he was not involved in psychical research or séance circles.

There is though a quote from a lecture, The Word (1966) where unfortunately in the notes the name wasn’t heard correctly and could be Begbie mistaken as Bacon.

But I have been reading for forty years, forty-odd for that matter. I became fired with reading at the age of twenty. Prior to that, nothing interested me but sports—cricket, soccer, football, everything athletic—but not anything of the mind. I was in London when a Mr. Bacon(?)*, a Scotsman, interested me in literature. I returned at the age of twenty to the States, simply hungry beyond measure, and I had to overcome the hunger, so I put in six, seven, eight hours a day reading and meditating.

Let’s look at another candidate.

2. James Arthur Findlay, MBE, JP (1883–1964)

Two quotes about Findlay (note his first name is “Arthur”):

“Other prominent Scottish Spiritualists who contributed to the international movement were advocates such as Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) and Arthur Findlay (1883–1964). Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, championed Spiritualism on national and international tours despite facing criticism for his Spiritualist beliefs. Findlay, an affluent businessman from Glasgow, was heavily involved in psychical research and gifted Stansted Hall, near London, to the Spiritualists’ National Union for its headquarters, which continues to be central to British Spiritualism today.”

Why does Findlay match Neville’s “old Scotsman”? Well, first of all, he was born in Glasgow and raised in Ayrshire.

Findlay’s biographers emphasize his lifelong habit of massive reading:

Always a student, and a great reader, he had read many of the standard books on Comparative Religion and Mythology before he was twenty-one years of age, and since then he has made a special study of this branch of science. Readers of his Trilogy will realise how intimately this subject is connected with Spiritualism. How thoroughly he has covered this entire field of thought by these three books will be best realised by turning over the pages of the “Index to the Trilogy”. Here we find nearly sixteen thousand references to their contents, which, in itself, emphasises the amount of labour and research involved in their compilation.”

This is a man with a big library who indexed in 16,000 entries and most likely could easily hand Neville “twenty or thirty books.”

Findlay was deeply embedded in Spiritualist institutional life, was the Vice-President of the Glasgow Society for Psychical Research (founded 1921), a central figure in the National Laboratory of Psychical Research (1925), and later co-founder of the International Institute for Psychical Research (1934).

This is a person who could introduce Neville to:

“…the world of psychical research, giving Neville his first taste of the spiritualistic seance.”

Findlay’s timeline matches Neville’s too because he moved to London close to 1925-26.

Findlay purchased Stansted Hall in 1923, and okay, it is technically in Essex, outside the northeastern boundary of Greater London, but it’s 46 miles and an hour or so travel in normal traffic.

Archival records also confirm that in 1925 Findlay was in London. On March 25, 1925, he attended the inaugural meeting at the Royal Piety’s Club, St. James Street in London, where the National Laboratory of Psychical Research was established.

In that exact year (1925), Findlay also made an early retirement as an accountant and stockbroker. He had time on his hands and was centrally placed in London’s spiritualist world. His séance work fits Neville’s later reaction.

Findlay had spent years investigating the Glasgow direct-voice medium John C. Sloan, publishing On the Edge of the Etheric. These were classic formal séances which Regardie said left Neville:

“a little bit flat”

With Arthur, Neville could have been introduced to Spiritualism and walked away somewhat unimpressed, sending him toward Kabbalah, mysticism, and eventually Abdullah, who we later find out was a spiritualist as well.

A Note on Neville’s Habit of Calling Everyone “Old”

One more wrinkle we need to mention and it’s kind of funny. Neville appears to have habit of calling every pivotal mentor in his life “old.”

Abdullah, for example, is described as being “past ninety” and over 115 years old at some point, none of these ages match the records. So when Neville says in No Barrier But Self that in 1925 he “met an old Scotsman,” we have to consider his perception of age.

Harold Begbie was 57–58 when he died in 1929, which puts him in his early fifties when Neville was in London… not young, but hardly “old”. James Arthur Findlay was born in 1883, would have been about 42 in 1925 again, this isn’t exactly “old.”

Update: The Bacon – Bailey Enigma

And then we have another enigma.

From the lecture, The Word (1966):

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” But I have been reading for forty years, forty-odd for that matter. I became fired with reading at the age of twenty. Prior to that, nothing interested me but sports—cricket, soccer, football, everything athletic—but not anything of the mind. I was in London when a Mr. Bacon(?)*, a Scotsman, interested me in literature. I returned at the age of twenty to the States, simply hungry beyond measure, and I had to overcome the hunger, so I put in six, seven, eight hours a day reading and meditating. But I have never read any book that has crowded so much into so few words—the first five little verses of the 1st chapter of John—I have never. I have read and read away, but I cannot find anything that is crowded as this is crowded.”

And from the same lecture:

“The time is not right for, I would say, 99.99 percent of the people in the world. Today they are far more interested…in London in 1925, this wonderful lad—he was six months my junior; in ’25 I was twenty, well, he was twenty-plus—I said, “Are you interested in these things?” He said, “No, certainly not. I’m young, I have to live first.” No matter what I would say to him…I said, “Well, your father gave me this Light of Asia and he gave me all these lovely books, and I can’t tell you, I just can’t tear myself away from them.” “I’m not interested,” he said, “My father is an old man.” The man was fifty years old, but he was an old man. His father was an opera singer, who had retired, and they lived in a small, lovely little home in Alastead(?) And they were a delightful family, called the Baileys(?). Well, Matthew, that was his name, and he would not have anything that was […..]. So when we came back to America four months later, next thing I heard that he’d gone off to India as a tea taster, and contracted some kind of tropical disease and died…wasn’t interested. He had so many things to do in this world that he couldn’t possibly be interested. So he made his exit at the age of twenty-one, unprepared, uninterested, not a thing could interest him. He had to live it up, because he had all this before him. He left what he called the old father and the old mother. Well, they lived to be in their eighties without their son. So he wasn’t interested.”

From our research, Begbie married Alice Gertrude Seal and they had four daughters, Janet (also a poet), Joan, Eve, and Eleanor. Findlay, had no biological children and only scattered references to adopted children, none of whom were named Matthew. Neither man had a son named Matthew. Halstead, the town Neville’s lecture notes transcriber wrote as “Alastead(?),” is just 30 minutes from Stansted Hall, the Arthur Findlay College in Essex.

Resources:

Regardie, Israel. The Romance of Metaphysics (c. 1946).
Findlay, Arthur. On the Edge of the Etheric: Being An Investigation Of Psychic Phenomena (1931).
Findlay, Arthur. Looking Back: The Autobiography of a Spiritualist (1955).
Begbie, Harold. Twice-Born Men: A Clinic in Regeneration (1909) (also published as Broken Earthenware).
Begbie, Harold. More Twice-Born Men: Narratives Of A Recent Movement In The Spirit Of Personal Religion (1923).
Begbie, Harold. Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality (1922).
Begbie, Harold. The Proof of God (1914).
Begbie, Harold. On the Side of the Angels: A Reply to Arthur Machen (1915).
Price, Harry. The establishment of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in London (1925).
Bradley, H. Dennis. The Wisdom of the Gods (1925). Documents the high-profile society séances in London in 1925, providing context for the kind of spiritualist circle Neville Goddard might have entered outside of official institutional venues.

Hey Cool Wisdom Books Readers!

We’ve archived Neville Goddard and New Thought gems, but hosting’s maxed and we need space NOW!

This is a collection of the major works of Arthur Findlay, the Scottish Spiritualist and psychical researcher who was likely the “old Scotsman” Neville Goddard met in London in 1925. 
Public domain editions we collected to save you time. Price: $3.99 to support Cool Wisdom Books and ongoing server costs.

Appendix 1

The ONLY reference to an Arthur Begbie was a typo for Harold Begbie in an article in The Boston Post on Feb-28-1915.

Appendix 2

Arthur Findlay at the Albert Hall

Ladies & Gentlemen,

I have been asked to open this large service of remembrance by giving you a short address, and I think I cannot do better than tell you what Spiritualism means to me and many millions throughout the world.

It is now 30 years since I first began to investigate the phenomena produced in the presence of a medium, and it is interesting on this occasion to sum up what I have discovered and what I now believe to be true.

Spiritualists know what happens after death because they have reached their conclusions by the scientific method of observation and experience. All orthodox religions, the world over, take the believer as far as the grave and leave him there. The rest, he is told, is a matter of faith, and consequently every religion has a hazy and different idea as to the life hereafter. Spiritualism, on the other hand, takes us beyond the grave and tells us what we may expect. We do not rely on faith or tradition but on experience, and because of this we can claim that Spiritualism is a natural religion and one that is founded on the rock of truth.

Let me therefore tell you what we may expect to experience when we die. Our physical body will return to earth as it relates to earth substance, but our etheric body, which is an exact duplicate of our physical body, free of physical imperfections, continues to function in another order of vibrations of greater frequency than those which make up the earth. The etheric body is the real body on earth though we do not see it, but nevertheless it keeps together the atoms which make up the structure of the physical body.

Our mind, which is really ourselves, because it is always imaging our surroundings, leaves the physical body at death. The mind takes with it the etheric body, which it controls in another environment, just as it controlled the physical body on earth. When functioning through the etheric body our mind responds to the finer vibrations of the etheric world to which the etheric body is related. Consequently we are still ourselves and think and act as we did on earth. Our memory is intact and we can remember all our past life on earth.

Just as a baby enters the physical world naked, so we enter the etheric world naked, but our clothes are provided for us and they, and everything about us, appears as solid and substantial as did our surroundings on earth. Our etheric body enables us to function as solid substantial beings in a world similar to this earth.

When we have become accustomed to our new surroundings, and, if we have the knowledge and the will to do so, we can lower the vibrations of our etheric body and again respond to the vibrations of the physical world. Consequently we can hear and see what takes place on earth, and many a departed man, woman and child have attended their own funeral and seen their physical body laid in the earth.

Not only can we come back to earth, but, if we make use of a medium, we can make ourselves both seen and heard by our friends whom we have left on earth. We can re-materialise our etheric body, we can be heard by means of a materialised throat and larynx, and we can control a medium in trance and use this medium’s vocal organs to speak through.

Our friends who come back tell us of their new life and the world in which they now live, and, as we are all bound for this other country, it is interesting to know what they have to tell us. Everything to them is as natural as our world is to us here. They have houses, universities, schools, fields, trees, flowers, music, clothes and all the pleasures the mind desires. Life is intense and active.

The family tie again unites those whom affection held together on earth. There is no working for money, and they move from place to place, as we do, but much more quickly than we can. All is real and tangible, composed of substance in a higher state of vibration than the matter which makes up our world. All in the same plane can see and touch the same things. If they look at a field it is a field to all who look upon it. It is no dream world. Everything is the same to those in the same condition of mental development.

They can sit down together and enjoy each other’s company, just as they did on earth. They have books and they can read them. They have the same feelings and aspirations as they had on earth. They can go for a long walk in the country and meet friends whom they have not seen for a long time. They can gather the flowers in the fields and in their gardens, and these give off aroma the same as our flowers do.

In the etheric world our etheric body grows more and more refined as time passes, and we rise to higher and higher planes of consciousness. Any deformities we have here will be corrected there, and, if we have lost a leg or an arm, or are blind or crippled in any way, we shall have it corrected there, as it was the physical body which was the cause of our troubles.

Our understanding will be enlarged, and we will become more conscious of the beauty of our surroundings than we were in the physical body. Our scope of usefulness will be extended beyond the limit of our imagination. We grow to maturity but there is no old age. We will not have to trouble about earning a livelihood, about eating or about clothes, or about a house to live in, as our mind will be in so much greater control of our surroundings that it will be able to mould our surroundings to meet our desires.

After our loved ones on earth have joined us, there will be no more grieving about separation, and, by rectifying our past mistakes, we shall cease to regret the errors and mistakes we made on earth. There character counts like nowhere else, and that is why Spiritualism advocates the development of character, practice of the virtues, and the increase of our understanding here on earth, because everything we learn on earth is remembered by us when we reach our new abode. As we sow on earth we shall reap hereafter.

The foregoing is no flight of imagination, but a brief summary of what I have been told on many occasions by my friends who have passed on before me. These friends have proved their identity in many ways, and, from utter scepticism, I gradually came to believe that what they told me was the truth. What a wonderful revelation this is, and it makes us realise that here on earth we are just like children in the nursery, with greatly expanded opportunities before us after we make the change called death.

Death to a Spiritualist is like turning the bend of a road. He becomes unseen to those behind him, but he is still alive and still himself in every way. We no more change our identity at death than we do when we move from one room to another in a house. The illusion and mystery of death has been resolved. No longer need we cry aloud and only hear the echo of our voice. Life is no longer a narrow vale between two bleak eternities, as where the so-called dead have gone our reason now can go. All that they tell us can be understood, on the basis of our latest scientific discoveries with regard to the constitution of the substance which makes up the universe.

Spiritualism is founded on fact, because it is the result of observation and experience. Science is also founded on fact for the same reason. Consequently Spiritualism will someday be recognised as an important branch of scientific knowledge. Likewise, if supernatural religion some day adopts the scientific method, and comes down to facts and reality, the people of this earth will then be able to join together in one grand cathedral whose dome is the firmament and whose true and only priests are the interpreters of nature.

If that time ever comes, mankind will be joined together in a common belief of a common destiny, to the lasting happiness, peace and brotherhood of the human race.