HIS PURPOSE
Neville Goddard
- 07/20/1971
Tonight’s subject is: “His Purpose.” When purpose is revealed, everything falls into
place, so the revelation of purpose gives meaning to the existence of life. There is a
purpose behind it all. It may not seem so, judging from this level, but there is a
purpose – a great purpose. It is God’s purpose to give Himself to us, because in the
end we will awake as God. That is the purpose.
Paul tells us he knows the plan by which it is done when he writes his letter to the
Ephesians. He says, “He has made known unto us the mystery of His will according
to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.”
(Ephesians 1:9) Then he tells us, “In the fullness of time God sends forth His son
into our hearts crying, “Father.” (Galatians 4:6)
“In the fullness of time” – that is, in the very end of the drama, His son appears
calling us, “Father.” Then, and only then, will we know that God has fulfilled His
purpose in us. Now, this is the fulfillment of Scripture, and we are told, “Scripture
must be fulfilled in me.” (John 17:12)
“And beginning with Moses in the law and all the prophets and the Psalms, he
interpreted to them in all the Scriptures, the truth concerning Himself.” (Luke 34:27,
RSV1) “For Scripture must be fulfilled in me.”
He says, “In the volume of the book – “which means the Bible – “it is written of
me.” (Psalm 40:7, KJV2) For, from beginning to end, it’s all about that central
character that is being formed in us. And when He is formed in us, He comes
forward, and That One calls us, “Father.”
In the story of “Job,” the innocent being suffered unmercifully; the word “Job”
means, “Where is my father?” That is the search of every child born of woman –
Where is the Cause of the phenomena of life? Where is the Father of it all? Where is
He?
In the end of the book of Job, Job can say – as the world can say who has accepted
the belief in God, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye
sees Thee.” (Job 42:5) When you have heard of God – and those who believe in
God have heard of God – but in the end, more than having heard of God – you see
1 Revised Standard Version
2 King James Version
Him. Now, how do you see God?
We are told in Scripture, “No one has ever seen God, but His only begotten son,
who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made Him known,” (John 1:18) for to see
God, you must see Him in His son. The son reveals the Father.
Now we are told, “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.” (Luke
10:22)
Now, we have searched the Scriptures for that Son, and we are told in Scripture, in
the 2nd Psalm – and the Psalmist by the name of David is speaking, and he is made
to say:
“I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son;
Today I have begotten thee.’”
(Psalm 2:7)
Then in the 89th Psalm – these are now the words of the Lord, and He says:
“I have found David, my servant,
And he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father,
My God, and the Rock of my Salvation.’”
([Psalm 89:20, 26)
Man, having been taught that the Bible is secular history, hasn’t the slightest
concept of this Scripture – of this mystery. When Paul speaks of this mystery that
was revealed unto him, he is not telling us that this is a matter to be kept secret, but
it is a truth that is mysterious in character. Tonight I will share with you my personal
experience of this mystery, and I know it’s going to be the experience of everyone in
the world, for it is God’s purpose.
Twelve years ago today in this City, across the way at the Hotel Sir Francis Drake,
that mystery began to unfold in me. I retired quite early, having read a bit of the
Bible, a bit of William Blake, and then retired. I made a call to my wife and
daughter, who were then in Beverly Hills, and then turned in, in a very normal
manner. Then at about 4:15 in the morning a vibration that was the most intense
thing that I’ve ever experienced began in my head. It was an earthquake, plus a
storm! I felt that every bone in my skull was coming apart. I entertained the thought,
not knowing anything of the human form – I am not a doctor, so I knew nothing of
what a cerebral hemorrhage would be, but I thought for a moment, “This must be it.
It must be a massive cerebral stroke, and maybe this is my departure from this
world.” That was the feeling I had – the thing was so intense!
But this is what happened: instead of being one who departed the world, I began to
awake. At the moment, I thought I would awake as I had awakened for 50-odd years
of my life. Now this was 1959, twelve years ago. But as I awoke, I awoke within my
skull, and I knew, as I woke within my skull, that my skull was a sepulcher. It was a
tomb, and I am alone! And my skull was sealed, there was no opening, a completely
sealed tomb – sepulcher. I had one consuming desire, and that was to get out. I
intuitively knew that if I would push at the base of my skull that something would
give. I pushed the base of my skull from within, and something gave – rolled away.
Then I stuck my head through that opening and pushed, and I pushed and pushed,
and I came out inch-by-inch-by inch, just as a child comes out of the womb of a
woman, only this exit was out of my skull! And when I was almost out, I pulled the
remaining portion of my body out of my skull.
I looked back at that out of which I had come to find it was this body. It was ghastly
pale, and tossing its head from side to side, just like one in the recovery room
following some major operation. It looked like death itself! I arose from the ground
and looked at it, and there it was just like something that was dead.
Now a peculiar, unearthly wind began, and I thought it was coming from the corner
of the room. I looked over where I thought it originated. I hadn’t turned away more
than a matter of seconds. The wind was in my head, and it was also coming from the
corner of the room. When I turned back to where the body was, the body was gone,
but in its place sat my three older brothers. The oldest sat where the head was, the
second one sat where the right foot was, and the third one sat where the left foot
was. They, too, were disturbed. They could not see me – and I will tell you why
later. I could see them and hear their thoughts. Every thought was objective to me. I
heard their voices. I heard their discussion about the wind.
And my brother Lawrence, the first one – he got off the bed and started towards the
same direction where I thought this storm originated. He hadn’t gone more than,
say, two feet when his attention was attracted to something on the floor. And
looking down, he announced this – he said, “Why, it is Neville’s baby!” My other
two brothers, Cecil and Victor, in the most incredulous voices asked, “How can
Neville have a baby!” He did not argue the point. He stooped over and lifted the
evidence from the floor, and here was a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. He
brought it towards the bed, and laid it on the bed. Then I lifted that little infant in
my arms, and looking into its face, I asked the little child, “How is my sweetheart?”
It broke into the most heavenly smile, almost to a laugh, and then the whole scene
dissolved.
That is the story of the birth of God! It’s not the child. The child, we are told in
Scripture, is only a sign. “And this shall be a sign unto you: ye shall find a babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12) – lying at the very
lowest ebb. But a sign of what? That God is born! “Not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13) – Self-begotten.
I had not the slightest idea that the story of Jesus Christ was so literally true, for I
was taught, as every Christian is taught, that it was historically true two thousand
years ago. I did not realize that it was contemporary, that it has to be something that
takes place in every one throughout Eternity – that God’s timeless Plan is taking
place in time. His timeless purpose is working in time. And in the fullness of time,
this one is called, that one is called, that one is called, and each gives birth to God,
for God is the Savior! As we are told, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of
Israel, your Savior, and beside me there is no savior.” (Isaiah 43:3) So, the Savior is
born! And you contain that Savior within you! God literally became, as you are,
that you may be as He is. This is the story of life through death, the story of the
germ of wheat. That little grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die, or else it
remains alone, but “if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
So God actually dies, to completely forget He is God when He becomes you. He is
buried in you, and He will awake in you, and the sign of His awakening in you is
the little child wrapped in swaddling clothes. That is the evidence that an event
outside of the wildest dream of man took place at that moment in time, and the one
in whom it took place was the one in whom God awoke! That was the sign.
Now we come to the child. There’s another child. We are told, “Unto us a child is
born” – that is the child, but – “unto us a son is given.” (Isaiah 9:6) These are two
entirely different events. They are separated by approximately four and a half
months, approximately, 139 days, to be exact.
A hundred and thirty-nine days later, a vibration similar to that one that preceded it
[in the child’s birth] takes place again in your skull. And this time it is centered at
the top of the skull, and you feel you can’t take it. When it reaches the apex of
intensity, at that moment your skull seems to explode. It actually explodes. And then
you find yourself in a modestly furnished room, looking at a son, and you know he
is your son! He’s a boy, oh, about thirteen years of age, and you know exactly who
he is. You know that he is David of Biblical fame, and you know he is your son. And
you know he knows that you are his father!
You look down before you, and here is an enormous head severed from a body. That
is the head of the giant that your son severed, and you know he is the David of
Biblical fame and you are his father!
David’s father is God. The name in Scripture is Jesse, and “Jesse” is any form of the
verb “to be.” It actually means, “Jehovah exists.” That is the name of David’s father.
What I am telling you, you do not know now, but no one in Eternity can convince
you that you are God but your Son. I can tell you from now to the ends of time that
you are God, and you will say, as Job said in the end of the book of Job, “I have
heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees Thee.” (Job 42:5)
You can only actually know that you are when the Son appears. For, “No one knows
who the son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the
Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal it.” (Luke 10:22)
So, “No one has ever seen God, but His only begotten Son who is in the bosom of
the Father, He has made Him known.” (John 1:18) But He appears at the end of the
drama. Then you know why you put yourself through the “furnaces of affliction.” It
took all these “furnaces of affliction” to awaken you from that self-imposed death,
that you may redeem man. And, so, He actually awakens within the individual, and
he awakens as God!
But not one thing in Eternity could ever convince an individual that he is God, save
the Son of God who calls him, “Father.” He said:
“I have found David . . .
And he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father,
My God, and the Rock of my Salvation.’”
(Psalm 89:20, 26)
That, you will read in the 89th Psalm. This is how the drama unfolds within the
individual. This is God’s purpose.
Now, we are told, “You must be born again. Except you are born from above, you
cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” (John 3:14) You read those words,
and they seem to mean what? Nothing! Just words. May I tell you, they are literally
true.
As we are told in Peter’s First Epistle, “We are born anew … through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (I Peter 1:3, RSV) Now you know who
Jesus Christ is! It is your own True Being, which is that in you that will actually
rise from the grave.
The moment you rise from the grave – right on the heels of it, follows your “birth
from above.” So, you are “born from above” through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ-in-you. But He rises in you from the grave of your own skull. That’s how He
rises in you.
So, do not look on the outside for Him. Jesus Christ is in man, or man could not
breathe! He is in you, or you could not be alive. And the day will come He will
actually unfold Himself within you as you. He comes to us “as one unknown,” yet
one who in the most ineffable mystery lets us experience who He is. And when we
experience Him, we experience Him in the first-person singular, present tense
experience.
You can go out and tell it to anyone who will listen to you, but you cannot persuade
them that it is going to happen to them until it does happen, and they will know how
true your story is. Because, the Bible teaches that, no matter how you tell it – how
persuasive you are, you cannot convince anyone that he is God. Only the Son can
convince the individual that he is God! Until the Son appears, the Son cannot be
spoken of as your son. He has to appear, and through some peculiar, innate wisdom,
you look at your son as though memory is returning – as though you had suffered
from amnesia. So, God is rising in man and his memory returns. “God has sent unto
you,” as it is said in Scripture, “your own spirit.” (Proverbs 1:23; Isaiah 32:15; Luke
11:13; John 3:24, 34; I Thessalonians 4:8.) Now you know that the Holy Spirit is
The One who brings back the memory of all that was foretold. “I will send the Holy
Spirit, and he will bring unto you all that you have heard from me. He will reveal to
you all Truth, and you have only heard the truth from me.” (John 14:26.) That is
what He says.
So, when memory returns, you can hardly believe that you are looking at one that
you formerly denounced as your son. When you read the story of David, has it ever
occurred to you that the David of Biblical fame is your son? You would say, maybe
– if you were not born in the Jewish faith, “How could he be? I am a Christian.
David is a Jew, and how could he be my son?”
Forget Jew, forget Christian, forget black, white, yellow, pink, and see it as what it
really is. It is God’s Plan of Salvation. It hasn’t a thing to do with what the world
teaches. It is all something entirely different.
Now, if this is true, and he said Christ is the Son of God, and he tells you that David
is the Son of God, is David the Christ? Let me turn to the 11th chapter of
Revelation. “And the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and
of His son.” (Revelation 11:15) “The kingdom of the world has become the
kingdom of our Lord and His son.” They do not say in Revelation, the 11th chapter,
“Jesus Christ.” They speak of “the Lord and of His son.”
Now, who is the Lord? We are told in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the 12th
chapter of II Corinthians, “No one can say that Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy
Spirit.” No one can really know it. Unless you know He is the Lord, then you can
speak of “the Lord and of His son,” for the Christ is the Son of the Lord.
So, if you know the Lord, you can only know that Jesus is the Lord by the Holy
Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is simply memory returning. It is remembrance. “He will
bring unto your memory all that I have told you.” (John 14:26) So, when He sends
the Holy Spirit upon man, then the whole thing begins to return as something that
was a lost memory. So, we suffer from total amnesia.
Now, let us go to the Scripture, for He tells us we must be “born again,” and then,
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted
up.” (John 3:14) Is that something you can experience? I tell you, from my own
experience, yes. You experience it in this manner: you are told at the very end of the
drama, after He was resurrected, then as they crucify him and he is resurrected,
came the splitting of the curtain of the temple from top to bottom. (Luke 23:45) You
are told in Scripture, “You are the Temple of the Living God, and the Spirit of God
dwells in you.” (II Corinthians 6:16)
If you are the Temple of the Living God and the curtain of the temple is split from
top to bottom, is it not your body that is split from top to bottom? It cannot be some
piece of cloth hanging in some synagogue or some cathedral or some church made
with human hands. For if you are the Temple of the Living God and that temple’s
curtain is split from top to bottom, marking the resurrection of the Spirit of God,
then it is your body that is split, and it splits in this manner:
This comes 123 days after the discovery that David is your son, revealing you as
God the Father. A bolt of lightning, seemingly out of the blue, splits you in two from
the top of your head to the base of your spine. Then you look at the base of your
spine and there you see a golden, liquid, pulsing, living light. As you contemplate it,
you know it is your Self, and you fuse with it.
You become one with that, which you contemplate, and then, like a bolt of spiral
lightning, you ascend your spine into your skull once more, and it reverberates like
thunder. We are told, “You will take the kingdom of heaven by storm.” (Matthew
11:12 and Luke 16:16 RSV) You take it with violence, for when you enter, you enter
in the most violent manner and the nearest thing on earth that I can use to illustrate
it would be a rivet. It is like a hot, hot rivet, and you bore it into steel. This thing
simply reverberates; your whole head reverberates as you go up your spine like a
serpent right into your skull. So, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,” (John 3:14) and he finds himself as the Son of
Man! And if you go up that way, why, then, you are the Son of Man!
Then comes one that takes place 998 days later, completing the circle of 1260 days.
Then suddenly, without warning, the heavens open. Your skull becomes translucent,
and there is no circumference – infinite transparency, and hovering above you is a
dove, about twenty feet up. And it’s floating, yet there is no water, but it is not using
its wings to remain aloft. It floats just as a duck would float, but it’s a dove. And the
dove looks at you lovingly.
At your side there will be a witness. In my case it was a woman of about 30. I call
her the “Voice of God.” And here, as I looked at the dove, she said to me: “They
avoid men, because men give off the most offensive odor. But he so loves you, he
penetrated the ring of offense to demonstrate his love for you.”
Then the dove descended, and I stuck my hand out with my index finger this way
[illustrating]. It lit on that index finger. I brought it automatically to my face, and it
smothered me in kisses all over my neck, my head, my face, and while it was
smothering me with kisses, the whole scene then dissolved, completing the Four
Mighty Acts as spoken of in Scripture. (Psalms 106:2; 145:4, 12; 150:2, KJV)
So, I tell you from my own experience that the story of Jesus Christ is true. As told
in Scripture, “Jesus Christ in you is the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27) Were He
not in you, it wouldn’t happen to you, because all these things happen to Jesus
Christ – to the Father and the Son – to the Lord and His Son. It has to happen to
Jesus Christ. And, so, no one can say Jesus is the Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.
Now, He makes the statement, “When you see me, you have seen the Father. How
can you say, ‘Show me the Father?’ I am the Father.” (John 8:9) “I and the Father
are one.” (John 10:30) “Have you been so long with me, Philip, and yet you do not
know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 8:9) But you do not
know the Father unless the Son reveals Him, and the Son does not reveal Him – I
can talk about the Father, but you do not know that you are the Father. The Son must
come into your world in the manner, which I have just described. There’s an
explosion within you, and that explosion reveals that which was hidden there. Well,
where in Scripture is it said that He was hidden within you? We are told in the 3rd
chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, the 11th verse: “And God has put Eternity into
the minds of men, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the
beginning to the end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
Now, the interpretation of this verse, which is the most disputed verse in
Ecclesiastes, hangs upon the meaning that you give to the word translated “Eternity”
The Hebrew word is olam; it is translated in the King James Version as “the world.”
“God has put the world into man’s mind.” In the Revised Standard Version it is
translated as Eternity. “God has put Eternity into man’s mind.”
But the word – you find it three times in the 17th chapter of the book of I Samuel,
and this is how it is translated: He has just severed the head of the enemy of Israel,
personified as the giant Goliath. It has been promised that the father of the son who
severs the head of the enemy of Israel will be set free. Not the son, but the father
will be set free. So, the king now turns to his lieutenant, Abner, and he asks the
question, “Abner, whose son is that youth?” Abner replies, “As your soul liveth, O
King, I do not know.” He sends him to inquire whose son that stripling is. No one
knows. Now, David stands before the king with the head of Goliath in his hand, and
he turns to David, and he says to David, “Whose son are you, young man?” (II
Samuel 17:56-58) Now, the three words: “young man,” “stripling” and “youth” are
translations of the word olam, the same word that is translated eternity.
So, when He put Eternity into the mind of man, He put David! Well, now, who is
David? I tell you, he is the Son. Well, now is he the son, or does he represent
something? He represents the history of humanity, but that history consists of all the
generations of men and their experiences, condensed into one grand whole, and that
concentrated time into which all the generations of men are fused, and from which
they spring, is named Eternity. That complete history of humanity, if personified,
would come out as David.
So, the man who sees David as his son has gone through the entire history that was
put into the mind of him. He has played all the parts, and having played all the
parts, he is now entirely entitled to be awakened as the Father-within-him as him.
And the concentration of the whole history of humanity stands before him as David,
and David is the personification of Humanity. So, you can say that Humanity is the
son of God! But Humanity personified as David of Biblical fame. So, all are
contained within the man who awakes.
So, I can say to you tonight that everyone of you – all who ever walked the face of
this earth – all that ever walked the face of this earth are now contained within you.
And I can say that all things are within my own wonderful human imagination,
because all are part of the history of Humanity. And having seen all personified as a
single youth – the Eternal Youth, for Eternity is a youth, not an old man – having
seen my son and having identified him as David, I know exactly who I was, having
seen David. So, the Bible is completely correct in saying, “No one has seen God,”
(John 1:18) “but the only begotten son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has
made Him known.” (John 1:18, RSV) “And no one knows who the Son is except the
Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom
the Son chooses to reveal it.” (Luke 10:22, RSV) So, that Son cannot reveal you as
God the Father until the end when you have completed the play and played it all.
When you have played it all, then automatically there is an explosion within your
head. Well, that is where the whole drama takes place, and standing before you will
be your son, the sum total of the history of Humanity. So, this is Eternity, and He
placed it in man, “yet so man could not find out what God had done from the
beginning until the end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
The word end is telos, which simply means perfect – being “perfect as your Father in
heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) It means to actually reproduce the original. Now,
the Original is God the Father. As we are told: “Let us make man in our image.”
(Genesis 1:26) Now, there is an image. That Original must be reproduced in you. So,
Paul could say, “Again I am in labor with you until Christ be formed in you.”
(Galatians 4:19, RSV) When He is completely formed in you, like a child being
formed in the womb of a woman – when it is formed, then it comes out at the
appointed hour. So, this will come out at the appointed hour, but “from above.”
So, there are two births: one “from below” from the womb of a woman, and one
“from above” out of the skull of generic Man. This is told us beautifully in the
Gospel of John, but told us symbolically in this manner, “And Peter went into the
tomb and the body was not there, but the linen clothes were there, and then the napkin
was folded up that was lying on his head, but apart by itself.” (John 20:6, 7,
RSV) Now you hear that, or you read it in Scripture, and you wonder: What on
earth did they record this for? But John is the most profound of the Evangelists, and
he told the birth in symbolism so that no one could understand it.
You and I use the word napkin in a very limited sense today. We speak of a cocktail
napkin, a dinner napkin, or a sanitary napkin, but the ancients had a wider use – a
wider sense of meaning for the word napkin. It meant the placenta, the afterbirth. It
is that which attaches the fetus to the uterus for the purpose of nourishment, and
then the uterus at birth expels the placenta. So, that napkin is the evidence that a
birth took place. It took place in the tomb, and the tomb’s name is Golgotha, and the
word Golgotha means skull. So, there was this napkin bearing evidence of the fact
that some birth took place, but that which was born has disappeared – it isn’t here,
but the evidence is here in the form of a napkin.
A birth did take place. And the “linen clothes” simply mean the body out of which it
came. It escaped from death, for the body is the body of death. It rose out of death,
leaving behind it the linen clothes, or the body, and the evidence of its resurrection,
which is the napkin, the placenta – the afterbirth.
So, this is God’s purpose. Now, if you know anything in this world that could
interest you more, why, then, tell it. There are men today who are in their 80’s who,
every time their name appears in the paper, they add to it, “a millionaire,” and their
consuming love is another million. They aren’t going to take one penny with them,
but they still want another million. What I am talking about tonight would not
interest them at all. But, may I tell you, the best and the worst in this world differ in
only one thing: the object of their love.
When you have the love for the Word of God, rather than for happiness, wealth, and
so on, then you are really on your way. He said, “I will send a famine upon the
world. It will not be a hunger for bread, or for the thirst for water, but for the
hearing of the Word of God.” (Amos 8:11, RSV) Until you have played the part, that
hunger will not come until the end.
Men would rather have the honors of men and frame them and put them up on the
wall and point them out to their friends, “Look, I got this one for so-and-so, and that
for so-and-so”, and all these things mean absolutely nothing. They will vanish in no
time, but what I am talking about is forever; it never, never vanishes. I am speaking
of Eternity. You are headed towards an eternal life in an entirely different age – a
New Age, and this that I’ve told you tonight is the way you are going to enter it. You
do not enter it by giving your substance to the poor, and giving to the foundations of
this world – no. You enter it in this strange, mysterious and peculiar manner that I
have spoken of here tonight. That’s how you enter it.
I hope I have made it clear. It is not the easiest topic, because nothing is more
difficult than to take something of this nature and strain it through preconceived
misconceptions of Scripture. So, man having been taught Scripture as secular
history rather than salvation history – and I am telling you this evening all the
symbolism of salvation history; it’s difficult to completely absorb it in a moment.
If I tell you, as I did tonight, that David is the Messiah – and David is simply the
sum total of all the events, all the experiences of Humanity – he is the
personification of human history and the Lord Jesus is The One Who plays all the
parts, and He plays it in you – and you, having played all the parts, will awaken as
the Lord. And because He is God the Father, there must be a son bearing witness of
His Fatherhood, and the sum total of this adventure passes before you as the Son of
that awakening – the result of it.
Now, because of the nature of tonight’s subject, suppose we go into the Silence, and
then you start with your questions.
Now, are there any questions, please?
A Lady: [The question is inaudible on the recording.]
Neville: My dear, this is something so unlike anything I had ever experienced before
– I have had many mystical experiences and many wonderful visions, but this came
so suddenly, so unexpectedly. Certainly, I did not expect it. But I did not realize how
literally true, on a higher level, the Gospel story is! Your head is simply like an
earthquake. I’ve gone through two very severe earthquakes in Southern California:
the one in ’52 that registered 7.5, and the recent one registering 6.2. The whole
house just kept shaking; we had hundreds of aftershocks. That was an intense one.
But this all takes place in your head. It is all in your head, and you feel as if every
bone were going to fly apart. But instead of that, you simply begin to awake. And
unlike all the other waking states preceding it over the years that you have lived,
you wake to find yourself, not on your bed where you fell asleep the night before,
but you wake to find yourself in your skull. And your skull is quite a large area, and
you are not a diminutive little thing like a miniature; you are simply your normal
size, and you rise in your head. And you have the consuming desire to get out, but
you have an innate wisdom of how to do it, and you do it. And just as you are told in
Scripture, “And the stone was rolled away,” (Mark 16:4) but you roll it away. But it
is a peculiar, unearthly sensation and a peculiar, unearthly wind. It is a storm wind
all right, but it is something that is different, and when it happens, as the poet said:
“All was foretold me: naught
Could I foresee!
But I learned how the wind would sound
After these things should be.”
– Edward Thomas
Now, Robert Browning, in his poem called “Saul” – he was inspired to write it by
the 12th chapter of the book of I Samuel, and he has David say to Saul, because
Saul was insane – he had lost his memory. He suffered from amnesia. He did not
know one from the other, and in this poem, David is telling Saul of the coming of
Messiah, and these are the words that the poet has put into the mouth of David!
David turns to Saul and says:
“O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love, and be loved by, forever. A Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee, See the
Christ stand!” – as he stands before Saul.
[Robert Browning, “Saul,” Sec. XVIII]
Browning could only have written those words after he had experienced it. So many
of the great poets are writing from experience, and having the ability to tell it
beautifully – well, he is one who can tell it beautifully, and those were the words he
put into the mouth of David of Biblical fame. Then memory returns. After all, Paul’s
first name was Saul, from the same tribe of Benjamin; and that was Saul – King
Saul.
But King Saul was demented, and so was Paul’s first aspect of life, because he took
everyone who followed this way and persecuted them. So his mind was demented.
Then he heard the Voice say, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” He called him
Saul; and he said, “Who art thou, Lord?” He said, “I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest.” (Acts 9:4, 5) And then he was blinded, and when the blindness left
him, he was converted and changed his name to Paul. A complete change of heart,
which is nothing but a change of nature.
So, when memory returns, you are not the being that you were when you suffered
from amnesia. Can you conceive looking into the face of one you love dearly – your
wife, your child, and not recognizing them? We have that in all of our hospitals:
those with partial amnesia, where a section of time is blotted out, and those who
have total amnesia who do not remember anything, and they give them all kinds of
shocks trying to bring back some kind of memory. You go and you know them, but
no matter what you do, you cannot persuade them that they are who you tell them
that they are.
If tonight a man who had a million dollars, and you know that he has it, and his
lawyer knows he has, and his banker knows that he has it, but he doesn’t know that
he has, and he has a code that will not allow him to sign a check for something that
he does not know that he has, he could not sign a check. If his ethical code denies
that, he would not sign it for a dollar, but he could sign it and have it honored for a
million dollars. So, that’s how we are.
Are there any other questions, please? Well, the time is almost up. This, I know, is
entirely different, but, I tell you, we are mixing them up. Last night we gave you the
HIS PURPOSE
Neville Goddard – 07/20/1971
Law, and tonight we have given you the Promise, so we are mixing them for the
series. There are ten of them – eight more to follow. Well, if there are no questions,
there is no need for remaining. Thank you.
Neville Goddard, Summa Theologica, Manly P Hall, A Course In Miracles
