05 Jan Neville Goddard Lectures: “What is His Name?”

5/12/64

Tonight’s subject is “What is His Name?” This is taken from the 30th chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It’s a riddle and you and I are challenged to unriddle the riddle. Now, last meeting we told the story of a friend who heard this voice from within him speaking with tremendous authority, and the voice said to him, “Feed me with challenges. How else can I grow?” Well, the Bible has asked us to unriddle the most fantastic riddle in the world. I know—-if you will believe me—-I can share it with you this night, I have unriddled it not by labor, not by speculation, by sheer revelation. You can’t conjure revelation; it simply happens in its own good time. But the riddle is this: “Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Canst thou tell?” (verse 4). So there is the challenge, to give the name of one who established all the ends of the earth, and also to give his son’s name.

Now we are told to search the scriptures, search them diligently, for if it is not recorded in scripture it’s nonexistent. So search it and search it over and over, for there are so many names given in scripture for the creator of the universe. In the very first verse we have the word Elohim: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Is it Elohim? In the very first chapter, the same Elohim: “Let us make man in our image.” That’s Elohim. Then we have the word El Shaddai, “God Almighty.” Then we have Adonay, “my lord.” Then we have the great secret name of Jehovah or the Yod He Vau He, defined for us as I AM. And we have all these names throughout scripture, and we’re called upon to name the name and then name his son.

Well, in the very question a part of the answer is given. Read it carefully or listen to it carefully, “Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name?” That should give you the cue right away. It isn’t asking us how this universe was created, by what process, but who created it and for what purpose. But if I ask you, “What is his name?” and then the second question is “What is his son’s name?” I have pinpointed it. Isn’t he a father? Isn’t that a father? Isn’t that the ultimate name that you’re seeking? It isn’t God, it isn’t Elohim, it isn’t Jehovah, it isn’t any name, it’s Father. “What is his son’s name” is the cue to the first question “What is his name?” Because the second one pinpoints it: “What is his son’s name?” To have a son is to confess you’re a father, and so to say I’m a father is to admit of the existence of a child, to prove your own creative power. Your creativity is in the offspring, so right away we see in it a father-ship relationship somewhere.

Now, Jeremiah makes the statement—-and the word Jeremiah is defined in many ways, but here are three wonderful definitions of it—“Jehovah hurls; Jehovah will rise; Jehovah will loosen the womb.” That’s what the word means by definition. He hurls, he will rise, and he will loosen the womb. Then Jeremiah is made to say: “Thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart. …I am called by thy name, O Lord, God of hosts” (Jer. 15:16). He discovered that he was called by the name. Now mind you, he was hurled into a turbulent state, but he knew as he was hurled Jehovah will rise. He hurls himself into this world of confusion, but he will rise, and he will loosen the womb. If he loosens the womb, well then, I can come out, I can be born.

Now only the indolent mind will really fail to rise to the challenge of a riddle. But I warn you if you will accept it, I’ll tell you this night if you will accept it, it will save you from losing your way in the tangled speculations that pass for religious truth. That all over the world, they don’t mean to mislead you but they’re speculating—they haven’t had the experience. You’ll find unnumbered denominations and that goes for even the biggest of the organized groups, they are speculating. So here we find these words in the Book of Matthew, “Take my yoke upon you.” This “Take my yoke upon you” in Hebrew is a very common rabbinical expression, the yoke of the law, which means “the studies of scripture.” So he’s asking you to take his yoke, his knowledge of scripture based upon experience and not upon speculation. He’s asking you to exchange your yoke, your present inherited yoke, based upon the speculations of the priesthoods of the world, for his yoke which is based upon his own personal experience of the answer to this riddle. So, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. My yoke is easy, and my burden light” (11:29).

Now in this 11th chapter of Matthew (and it’s all crowded together) he said, “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed them unto babes…for such was thy gracious will” (verse 25). And then he invites one to listen and accept his yoke. Now he makes this statement (it’s all wedged right into this marvelous claim that he’s going to make) he said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (verse 27). He’s asking you to take his yoke, his actual understanding of the scriptures based upon his personal experience; and defies anyone to name that Son. You could name…he always reveals the creator of the universe as Father. He doesn’t speak of him as some other being, just Father, and he speaks of Son. And the world has taught you to believe that he is the Son. And so, the priesthoods of the Christian world will tell you Jesus Christ is the Son of God, while in the story, if you read it carefully, he confesses he is God the Father. He said, “You want to see the Father, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you ask to show you the Father? When you see me you see the Father” (John 14:9). But he confesses no one has seen him, that is, they have not grasped him. They see the outer garment, the mask, the persona that he wears, but they can’t see the wearer of the mask. But when you see me, if you ever can grasp me as I tell you the stories, said he, then you’ve seen the Father. So do not ask to show you the Father; he who has seen me has seen the Father.

And no one asked him then concerning the Son, no one. So because no one asked him concerning the Son—-if I am a father, well, then there must be a child—-so he brings it up. He said, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered based upon tradition, “The son of David.” Then he replied, “Why then did David, in the Spirit, call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” (Mat. 22:42,45). The word translated Lord is one of the words for God, Adonay, which is used more often than the word Jehovah, because Jehovah is the sacred name, Yod He Vau He, and so they used Adonay in place. Even though you see it in the script Yod He Vau He, the translators will concede it, and put Adonay in its place. It’s the closest to Yod He Vau He. And so, he was called Adonay. Adonay means “my lord,” but that’s an expression used by every son of his father. You asked the son of his father and he referred to his father as Adonay, my lord. And so David then is playing the part of son. So David in the Spirit, not in the flesh—-this is a drama of the Spirit—-and David in Spirit calls him Adonay, calls him “my Father.” So if David thus calls him Father, how can he be David’s son? So he establishes the riddle, he unriddles the riddle, and tells you who created the universe, who established it, who sustains it, and who is his Son.

Now, that is in conflict with the rabbinical concept and the priestly concept today. They will not accept that at all. They teach you that there’s a presence called God, something outside of man that created him, and that man in some strange way is simply begging a favor of this creator, and that he’s promised to redeem man. Man and God are really one! But in this mystery, it was done for a purpose: to extend his creative power. By putting himself into this complete contraction called man, he could then unravel a mystery which was predetermined. It isn’t worked out as he goes along; the whole thing was set up in the beginning. It is God’s intense nearness that makes him invisible to us. Were he not so near…he’s not even near, because nearness would imply separation; therefore, it’s not near, he actually is the very being in search of the answer to the riddle. In fact, the whole vast history of humanity is nothing else than one long wrestle with this infinite riddle.

And so, man having organized around the mystery not understanding it and rejecting it as told in scripture…for he told the story if one would read it carefully. But now, if I read it as I was taught it, I would be influenced by my teacher; and my teacher would have made me believe that a presence called God, where he is they didn’t know, therefore, they couldn’t convey it to me. But then they taught me of a being called Jesus Christ, and he was born as I was born. Maybe a little differently— he didn’t have a father, not an earthly father, his father was God—but I had the earthly father. She was something different, something unique, that’s what they taught me, that she brought forth a son, and she didn’t know a man. I believed that and believed it all the way through until I began to wrestle with the riddle, wrestle with life. And then certain visions disturbed me.

And then came the vision of visions: the discovery of the Father. I hadn’t the slightest concept of the meaning of that statement: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mat. 11:27). I read it, as you read it, and my school master in his own limited way tried to explain it and only added to confusion. I had no light thrown on it whatsoever. Then came that moment in time, to go back to Jeremiah, “Thy words became a joy and a delight to my heart…I am called by thy name, O Lord, God of hosts.” I am actually called by your name? Yes, called by my name. Well, my name is Neville and that is certainly not the Lord, God of hosts. Your name is Robert, your name could be Mary, name could be anything, but that’s not the Lord, God of hosts. So, how could I be called by thy name, which is the Lord, the God of hosts? Suddenly he tells us the name means “Jehovah will rise, Jehovah will loosen the womb.” Well, he did rise in me; and he rose in me and he loosened the womb, of that womb that was really a tomb; and then he came out of that womb. He rose from the grave, like a seed falling into the ground and it dies. If it doesn’t die, it brings forth nothing. It must die as a seed; so it is the earth which is its womb and becomes for a moment its grave. But to prove the grave is transformed into a womb, something grows. So when it grows and comes out bearing a hundred-fold, then that which was a grave became a womb. And out of the womb…he loosens the womb and something comes out. The very one that hurled himself into it came out. He came out of that loosened womb.

And then, all that was concealed in him which is fatherhood began to appear; for before him appears his son bearing witness to his fatherhood. He didn’t know until that moment that he had a son. It was concealed in the very beginning of time, as told us in Ecclesiastes: “God has put eternity into the mind of man, but he’s put it so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (3:11). Then, suddenly, at the end he comes out, that which was concealed in his mind, and he stands before him, and he does call him “my Father.” He calls him “Adonay,” “my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation” (Psalm 89:26). Doesn’t call him John, doesn’t call him Robert, doesn’t call him Neville; he calls him Father.

Yet not for one moment did you until that moment in eternity ever believe you were the answer to the riddle. How could you? You can’t make one hair of your head; you can’t add one hour to the span of your life as you’re told. Not an hour can you add to the span of your life, in spite of all the false claims to the contrary. You make your exits and your entrances from the stage on time, and no one adds to or takes from that span of time. As we are told, “Who by taking thought, who by being anxious, can add one cubit to his stature?” (Mat. 6:27). Well, that translation in the Goodspeed Bible is “Who by being anxious can add an hour to his span of life?” So, they’ve changed it completely to conform to the real basic meaning of the phrase. You do not come in before your time and you don’t leave before your time. Even when you seem to take your life, you don’t leave before your time, no one does. And no one comes in before his time.

So here, you didn’t realize, you who cannot add an hour to your span of life, who can’t grow one hair of your head, who can’t grow any of these things, and you establish all the ends of the earth? And that you have a son and that son is the princely David of biblical fame? Why, it seems nonsense…until it happens. When it happens, then it doesn’t matter what the world will tell you. You can share it with others. And the whole gospel of John, for instance, is completely based upon believing or disbelieving in his message…all that matters. These are the stories that he experienced to interpret scripture. And the rabbis rejected him because they had their own speculations; and he wasn’t speculating. He was simply giving his own personal experience of scripture. He said, I came to fulfill scripture, nothing else; Scripture must be fulfilled in me. So as the book unfolded in him, he was the grand being who was hurled by Jehovah—and Jehovah hurled only himself. There was no one else to send, so he sent himself. He sent himself into this maelstrom, this horror as it were, this place where you and I are subjected to the incarnation of the tragedy and the glory of the message of God. Well, we must not lose our vision of the glory in the tragedy. So while we are passing through all the afflictions, let us keep alive the vision of the glory. It’s going to come, and you are the answer to the riddle.

So “Who established all the ends of the earth? What is his name and what is his son’s name? Canst thou tell?” Well, I know in my own case, I have talked with so many rabbis and ministers and those of different aspects of the faith since it happened. I haven’t found one who is teaching it who will listen even with interest. They are so completely sold on the belief that God is something on the outside, and that he has one unique son, called Jesus Christ, and that is it. You can’t sway them for one moment. They will say after they read your book, “You know, I see and feel in your book a certain sincerity, Neville, but…” and there the book is closed and the mind is closed.

So when he said, “Take my yoke upon you” he’s asking you to accept and exchange the yoke you now wear, based upon the false traditions, the speculations of the priesthoods of the world, for his yoke, which is his knowledge based upon experience of the scriptures of God. He tells you, I am he. Before I came into incarnation, I dictated it through my servants the prophets. They only served me. And throughout the centuries men have searched eagerly all through the scriptures to find that of which they spoke. They couldn’t find it by their speculations; it comes only by revelation. When it was revealed to one and he told it, they rejected the revelation and held onto their traditions. So he said, you will circumnavigate the earth to make one proselyte, and you’ve thrown away the key; so you can’t get in, and you stop him from getting in, because you become a slave to your traditions, and your traditions are keeping you out.

So I will share it with you, but I can’t compel anyone to take it. I tell you, the name of that father is “Father”…and it’s you. But you don’t know that your name is Father, who is really the God who established all the ends of the earth, because you emptied yourself of that knowledge when you took upon yourself the limitations of a man, and became obedient unto death, even the death upon the cross of man (Phil. 2:7). So here you are nailed upon this cross of man, having emptied yourself of your primal form, your immortal self; and then you had to dream the dream of life that you had predetermined, for a purpose. And the purpose was to exercise your creative talent, called in scripture “your son”; for, he’s called “your son” and he is, in scripture, nothing more than the power and the wisdom of the God that you are (1 Cor. 1:24). But you’re told it takes the son to set you free; you will continue to dream the dream of life until the son appears (John 8:36). It comes only in the end, and when he appears he sets free his father who dreamed him into being. He was hidden in his father from the very beginning, and it took the entire dream to bring him forward and have him presented as son.

And so, “Where is your father?” The word is asked in the Book of Samuel, “Whose son are you, young man?” and he said, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite” (1 Sam. 17:58). That’s who I am…I am the son of your servant Jesse. The word Jesse is I AM. So when he appears he calls you Father. And who is he calling Father and who is Father? You say, “Well, I am the father. He called me Father, so I am his father.” But he doesn’t call you Jesse, any more than I call my father Joe Goddard. Others would call him Joe Goddard, but I always called him Father. So he can call anybody else the name Neville…he can’t call me that, he has to call me Father. So he calls me Father. You look at him, and you see him, and you are his father, and he is your son.

So I will tell you the answer to that riddle: You, as you are seated here, regardless of the name you bear on earth, you are the Father and your son’s name is David. Because your son’s name is David and you are his father, and my son’s name is David, the David, the same David, and I am his father, then we are one. That’s the only way you and I will know of our unity. We never lose our identity in this union. We are still completely individualized. In fact, this journey through death, when the curtain comes down on this fantastic drama, and we all awaken as the father of the one son called David, we will be individualized beyond that which we were when the drama began. When we began this drama, we did it for the purpose of increasing our individualization. We’re all individualized, and we tend forever towards ever greater and greater individualization. There is no absorption in this union; there is simply a unity, a oneness. We are all that being that was in the very beginning, called in scripture, the Elohim. The God—-it’s plural—-the gods created it all. It was the gods who hurled themselves into their creation. And they agreed to dream in concert, so the whole would be a dream in concert. When the concert is over, they all will return completely, not only without loss of consciousness or loss of individuality but an increase of individuality. And all together form the one God and that God is Father.

Then there’s the next step. What that step will be that you and I will conceive for the fifth act, I do not know. I can only share with you the ending of the drama as it has ended in my life. Every story as told of Jesus Christ in scripture is true, but man himself has to realize it. As he realizes it he exchanges the yoke of the traditions of his fathers for the yoke of Jesus. And Jesus means Jehovah, that’s all it means. The word Jesus means “Jehovah saves.” It was Jehovah who threw himself into this maelstrom; it’s Jehovah who will rise; it’s Jehovah who will loosen the womb and save himself and bring him out; and when he comes out he is Jesus. And so, it was to Jesus that David in the Spirit turned and said, Adonay. So in the end, only one name; and at that name every knee in the world should bend and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is God the Father. He said, “Why do you ask me to show you the Father? I have been so long with you, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” (John 14:9). And then he unfolds who he is as Father by revealing (if they will listen to him) his Son.

But the traditions could not accept it, for time separated the event from the one he claims who called him in the Spirit, Adonay. For a thousand years separated the two events. If I go back 2,000 years, I hear the drama unfolded. I must go back 3,000 years to hear the promise and the question asked of the youth who could actually bring down the tyrant that annoyed Israel, and that youth was called David. His name was Olam and it’s translated “the eternal youth” in scripture. He took this youth, this eternal youth, or the personification of all the generations of humanity and all of their experiences and personified it into one single youth. But when the whole is over it’s because of all the generations of humanity and all of the experiences of man that you could extract from it all that eternal being called David. You pass through the furnaces, pass through all the afflictions, and because you’ve passed through all the afflictions and experiences—-not in some other way but actually experienced it—-you could bring him forth. It takes all of the fires to bring out of you that which you buried in the beginning. So he took eternity and placed it in the mind of man so that man could not find out what God had done from the beginning to the end. That which he put in the mind of man was Olam, and Olam means “the lad, the youth, the stripling.” So I will set your father free if I can only find the name of your father, so “Whose son are you, young man?” For I made a promise: Whosoever’s son should destroy the enemy of Israel, I’m going to set the father free.

So the Father is dreaming and dreaming and dreaming the dream of life until he brings forth David. When he brings forth David, David has conquered life; he’s conquered all the generations of man. He’s passed through every experience that man could ever experience, really. Having passed through it, and memory being kind to him—not letting him remember the horrors of the past—he only now knows the glory. He hasn’t forgotten the glory in the tragedy through which he had to pass to bring forth David. So he brings out David. And when the king of earth, his name is Saul, and he sees this heavenly youth and that he was the conqueror, he remembers his promise: He is going to now set free the father of that youth. He cannot enslave him any longer in the dream of life. So the king of the earth must set free one of the dreamers who aided in the great concert. He has to go free. So tell me, “Who is your father?” “Jesse.” And Jesse is I AM.

And so you will know the answer to the riddle. When you know it, really, you step aside, and you take the yoke off of you. In the gospel of Matthew, “I’ll take it from myself.” For in that one small little three or four verses (it’s all crowded together) he tells you that “No one can know the Son but the Father; and no one can know the Father but the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (11:27). So, I will now choose to reveal my father: Said he to the king, “My father is Jesse.” Up to that, he didn’t know; but he’s looking for the father of that son to set him free, for he has to fulfill his promise. But until then, the fathers are enslaved. We are the fathers, we are the Elohim, we are the gods spoken of in Acts (14:11). “Great indeed is this day!” said the writer—-whoever wrote the Book of Acts, the one who wrote the Book of Luke—-“For the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” They’ve all come down and worn the forms of men, and they’re enslaved while they wear the forms of men; and they will continue to be enslaved until they find the Son. Because no one can set him free but the Son, and the Son will decide when he will choose to reveal his Father. So in that 18th verse of the first John, first chapter of John: “No one has seen the Father; but the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” You see John, you see Mary, you see Neville, you see all these characters of the world, the masks that the Father wears, but you haven’t seen the Father. And not one knows the Father but the Son; and when he comes, he calls him, Adonay, in fulfillment of scripture. For the 89th Psalm…and the 89th Psalm makes the statement: “I have found David. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation” (verse 26).

So here, Jeremiah, who threw so much light on it, makes the statement in his 23rd chapter…he is complaining about the false prophets of the world…oh, yes, they have dreams and they tell you the dreams came from God; but he tells you they’re not from God, they are the ambitions of men. So they have dreams and dreams and they try to encourage all in a strange optimistic way. Well, they haven’t had the dream that came from the depths of the soul. He’s asked them a very simple question, Did you stand in the council of the gods? Did you really stand in the assembly of the gods? They could not answer yes unless they lied. He said, then you have not been sent. Were you addressed by him? No? And so, he put these questions to them and the answer is no. If you were not in the assembly of the gods, if you were not addressed by him, then you’ve not been sent by him…and so you’re false prophets. So that was Jeremiah’s message to the world.

When you are brought in, in Spirit, into the council of the gods and asked a question by the risen Christ—the being that’s now about to embrace you and therefore you are he from that moment on—then you are sent on a mission because you are sent by him. And he doesn’t leave you, he goes with you. That’s the mystery: How could he go with you and still be there in the divine council, embracing one after the other, as he sends them on a mission? Well, that’s the great mystery. I fill all, said he, I fill all heaven and all earth; there’s no place where I am not. You take the wings of the morning and fly to the ends of the earth, he’s there. If you make your bed in hell, he’s there (Jer. 23:24). No matter where he sends you, and he’ll send you through hell that you may tell them of the true yoke, the true understanding of scripture, and have them exchange their yoke, which is a misunderstanding of scripture, for the true understanding based upon experience. He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

So when he addresses God the Father, you are misled, because he’s speaking of God the Father. But then, one doesn’t search long enough to find he tells you he is the Father. It’s like communion with self. He is communing with self while he is in search, while he’s playing the game, while he’s playing the part he predestined himself to play. He was, in the beginning, foreknown by himself. “And those that he foreknew, he also predestined, and those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29). The glorification is simply the complete gift of himself at the end of the drama, when he returns to his prenatal state; when he returns to that primal form of which he was emptied when he assumed the limitations of a garment, and stepped upon the stage, on time, and played all the horrible parts of the world. It took all of these to expand and increase the creative power that he had prior to entering the great drama.

So in the end when the curtain comes down, we’ll all gather together and we’ll understand clearly what the great wonderful tragedy meant. We’ll all rejoice, because, in spite of it all, all tears are washed away, all scars are gone, and nothing but joy remains; with an expanded creative power for another drama, which you and I together, in concert, will agree before we hurl ourselves into the garment. Having seen it clearly in the beginning, then we hurl it in forgetfulness and become the part. Then, having played it fully, whatever is then the one to be brought forth at the end of the drama we’ll bring him forth. We can’t fail because God can’t fail…and you are he.

So now, let’s go into the Silence and take…you can take the answer and the hope that you will now be able to tell it from experience rather than from belief in one whom you trust who has had that experience. Now let’s go.