ETERNITY WITHIN!
"So until the end we are asleep, dreaming strange dreams. We dream we are in prison and we dream that we are free. We dream we have money and we dream we are poor, and whatever we identify ourselves with, we externalize."
ETERNITY WITHIN: Neville Goddard Lecture
4th Oct 1966
Is eternity within
Tonight’s subject is a mystery to be known only by revelation. It is a secret that has been kept hidden from the beginning of time. Where there is no mystery, where there is no end from the beginning there is no challenge, no place for imagination or any room for faith or hope. But when it pleased God, in the fullness of time, to make it known to his apostles, those whom he called and incorporated into his own Risen body, they are sent to tell the story of the gospel of God.
The subject I have chosen for tonight is taken from the book of Ecclesiastes. I have so many commentaries on this book at home, so many written interpretations by our Biblical scholars and they are so widely separated in their opinions, yet without this, the most disputed verse in the entire book, that I have chosen tonight, everyone in this world should despair.
The book starts with the statement,
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. There is nothing new under the sun.”
Which, by the way, modern science has confirmed. They are now telling us that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively.
“Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’ it has been already in ages past, but there is no remembrance of former things, nor shall there be any remembrance of things to come later among those who will come after.”
Then he takes all of the opposites in the world saying,
“There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to laugh and a time to cry; a time to mourn and a time to dance.”
He goes through all the opposites that you and I pass through, one after the other. A few of them are obvious.
Certainly, we are born and we die, and what man hasn’t laughed and what man hasn’t cried, so we can see all these parts.
But there is one little verse in the third chapter of Ecclesiastes that is the most disputed of the entire book. Here is the verse.
“He has made everything perfect in its time. He has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
The interpretation of this verse is determined by the meaning that the scholar gives to the word “eternity”. I haven’t read one interpretation where they went deep enough. The word is translated “eternity” in the Revised Standard Version, which I have quoted. It is translated as “the world” in the King James Version, but if you go back to the root of the word “olam” you will discover it means “a lad; a young man, a stripling, a youth.” This makes no sense to the average person and the scholar would ignore it completely.
You could come to the conclusion that all things are in the human imagination and that the imagination is capable of containing the imagining of space.
Your dreams reveal that to you, for when you awake where did they happen? I have seen the stars, the moon and the sun in my dreams. The modern wise men would tell me it was just a dream and all in my imagination, but I have seen people just as clear as I am seeing you now and we converse all in my imagination, so I will go along with the modern wise men in that respect. But when I awake and things seem to be objective and independent of my imagination, was the other unreal? Not according to the book of Ecclesiastes.
It is telling you that everything is in your imagination, that your imagination is forever manifesting itself in the imaginations of men.
This I do know. By simply assuming I am the man I would like to be and mentally acting in harmony with my assumption, I have aided the birth of my desires and brought them to pass. I have played the game of assumption time and time again and it has never failed me. When someone asks something of me, I simply assume they have what they want, then whatever needs to take place in this world will take place and bring it to pass, but where did the desires’ fulfillment originate but in my imagination?
But if there is no escape from a world of recurrence, what would it matter if you could perform miracles, be worshiped by all and possess the world if, in the end you would say, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”.
But Koheleth, the preacher, meant something far deeper than that. It is marvelous to know that the whole drama of life is taking place in your imagination. That you have the choice of life and death, good and evil, blessings and cursings; that you can by assumption have a rich and wonderful life where everything is a blessing. But, if in the end when you close your eyes for the last time you realize it was all vanity, would you not question what did it matter? That is what Koheleth is summing up. He is telling us that there is something greater and to wait for the fullness of time. When? No one knows, not even the Son, only the Father. But in the fullness of time that which was placed in the mind of man will be revealed.
Now let me repeat it. “He put eternity into man’s mind yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
That which God put into the mind of man is a lad, an eternal youth who is his only begotten Son. Now let me unfold it for you, for I speak from experience. I am not theorizing or speculating. I am telling you what I know from experience. And the truth that one knows from experience, he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or that he can know that same truth in any other way. I share with you, this night, the truth that I know from experience. One day you will experience it, but tonight you will hear it through the secondary revelation of the ear, for I will tell you what I have experienced concerning this wonderful eleventh verse of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. Here is the story:
God has put his only begotten son into your mind, for it is God’s purpose to give you himself. You will never know in eternity that God accomplished his purpose unless God’s Son sees him and calls him Father. And when God’s only begotten Son calls you Father there will be no uncertainty. The revelation is so altogether knowing, that when he appears there will be no doubt in your mind as to the relationship.
Now let me go back and unravel this great mystery. I say God’s Son is David. The word “olam” first appears in the book of Samuel. A promise is made by the king that the father of anyone who destroys the enemy of Israel will be set free. Not the man, but his father. When David returned from the slaughter of the Philistines with the head of the giant in his hand, the king, remembering his promise, tried to find out who the father was. The king turned to his commander and said, “Whose son is this youth?” When he didn’t know the king said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is.” No one knows, so the king turned to David and said, “Whose son are you, young man?” Then David answered, “I am the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite.”
The word “Jesse” is connected to the verb “to be”. In other words David is saying, “I am the son of him whose name is I AM.” I am the son of the Lord, as told in the 2nd Psalm.
“I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’”
The divine son-ship of David is the only one of its kind and totally supernatural. He is looking into the eyes of his father, and his father is God. We are told that Jesus is the Son, but I tell you that Jesus is God the Father. When the question was asked, “What think ye of the Christ, whose Son is he?” they answered, “The Son of David.” Then, said he, “Why then did David, in the Spirit, call me ‘Lord’? which means, my father. If David calls him ‘Lord’ how can he be David’s Son?”
Because the Son of God was placed in the mind of Man.
Now let us go to scripture to find the spot where David was buried, and where the Lord was buried. In the 2nd chapter of I Kings we are told, “David slept with his fathers and was buried in the City of David.” The 3rd chapter of Nehemiah tells us the place saying, “He was buried after the stairs that went down from the City of David to the Fountain Gate, the reservoir below the place of the living Budah.” So David was buried after the stairs, at the top, in the City of David.
Now we are told that when Jesus was crucified (it being the Jews preparation for the Passover) they took him down and placed him in an empty tomb not yet occupied by man. Where? In the City of David. Scripture tells us there are many sepulchers in David’s city, but that he is buried at the top of the watershaft, which goes down to the great reservoir of Living Waters. Even today men are excavating all of North Africa trying to find that area, but they will never in eternity find it there, for David’s burial place is in the shell you wear. Sleeping with his fathers, David is buried in the City of David at the top of the stairs that leads down to the Living Waters in you.
You may not know it, but in spite of your sex you are the Father of David. I know, from experience, that I am David’s Father. David sleeps with his fathers – not forefathers – and is buried in the same city where his Father, the Lord is buried.
I tell you; you are the Father. You are that Lord called Jesus who is buried in the City of David and when the fullness of time comes you will rise and as you do you will bring forth a new creation to be born from above. “We are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Well, Jesus Christ is buried in you as you are told in the 2nd letter of Paul’s to the Corinthians.
“We all carry in the body the death of Jesus, that we may manifest in our body the life of Jesus.”
You carry his death in your body in the hope that you will manifest his life in your body, and when he rises in you – you are He.
How do you know that Jesus died for you? How do you know that when He rises you are He? Through the revelation of His Son who rises in you and calls you Father, for when he calls you Father you will know who you are.
David is buried with his fathers, for no one has ever seen the face of God but the only Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. You can’t see the face of God, but His Son can, so it is the Son who reveals you as the Father. We are told in the 13th chapter of Mark,
“If any man ever tells you, ‘Look, there is the Christ’, or ‘Look, here he is’ do not believe him.”
Don’t believe him. “For it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him.” Identical! Well, how will you know that you are he? When his Son calls you Father. David sleeps with his fathers, for all of us are the Elohim. Although the word Elohim is plural it is translated both in the singular and the plural.
David has called me Father and one day he will call you Father. He will call everyone Father and then all will be united into the one God.
“I have manifested thy name to those whom thou has given me. I in them and thou in me that they may become perfectly one.”
I have told you what has been given me by revelation. It may not make sense but you cannot expect this greatest of all mysteries to make sense, for it takes place in a region so remote from the place the intellect inhabits, that you cannot explain it to the intellect. No scholar understands it. The lowest one of the orders found in scripture is the eighth order, the order of the brilliant minds of the world. It is said that the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God. That it takes the foolishness of God and the weakness of God to confound the wise. The wise can analyze it, but scripture cannot be understood until it is revealed.
I wouldn’t have the slightest concept of what that verse meant were it not revealed to me and I actually experienced it. If you read the twelve chapters of Ecclesiastes, and confine the reading to vanity, you would go out and do anything under the sun to enjoy the little happiness that you could, for in the end it would all be gone if it were not for that one little verse. For the entire book tells you:
“The wise and the stupid they die and become dust. Everything is dust, vanity of vanities. All is vanity.”
But what I am trying to tell you tonight is so altogether profound. So go home knowing that, although you seem to make an exit from this world, you don’t really die, that you are an immortal being and buried in you is David, God’s immortal, eternal Son.
Do you know who David really is? He is not a boy, born a thousand years B.C. No! In Hebrew thought, everything consists of all the generations of men and their experiences fused into one grand whole, and concentrated time into which all generations are fused and from which they spring, is called eternity. Eternity is personified as a youth – the eternal youth.
When man has passed through all the generations of men (not avoiding one experience) and can say –
“Forgive them for they know not what they do as they are passing through states”
Then the sum total, the quiescence of all the experience of being man rises from sleep and calls you Father.
Yes, I have been blind; I have been deaf; I have been dumb. I have been everything man can ever conceive of. I have been imprisoned, embarrassed, everything in the world. Not in this little section of time, but in my journey. I have played every part under the sun. I have seen it.
One night I gave a banquet to all the parts I have played. That’s Messiah’s banquet. Having sent all into the world, Messiah invited the high and the mighty, but they gave excuses and did not come. Then he told his servant to go into the highways and byways and bring all. And they brought the lame and the blind, the halt and the withered.
This night I was lifted up on high and found myself in the human form divine. I was a radiant, glowing light. I didn’t burn; it was just a glow that illuminated everything that I had been. I did not need the stars; I did not need the moon; I was the light. And as far as my eye could see was an infinite sea of human imperfection – all the parts that I have played. I knew they were waiting for me, yet as I glided by I didn’t lift a finger to make one of them better than they seemed, but as I passed by – eyes that were missing were replaced in the empty sockets, missing arms and limbs became perfect. Not one had a blemish in the end. And as I reached the end the grand choral group sang out,
“Neville is risen, Neville is risen” and when I reached the end they all exalted, “It is finished” and I came back into this little garment I wear.
That night I was called by my personal name, as you are told in scripture, “I will call the entire host by name and not one is missing.”
You have a name, and you will be called by name in the final day and not one will be missing. They called me by the only name that I am known by. I have a surname, but when I was only three weeks old my mother heard the voice say, “Call him Neville”. Then it was confirmed 15 minutes later when my uncle spoke to her and said, “Call him Neville,” although the name was never used before in our family. And we read in the 41st chapter of Genesis,
“If it is repeated, then it shall shortly come to pass.”
I gave them what they wanted more than anything in this world, that night. They wanted restoration from my fall.
I – as God – fell, for there is nothing but God.
And I took that innocent perfection into the world of experience and played all the parts. Then I was lifted up and found them waiting for their redemption. And as I walked by, everyone was made perfect, for “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Everyone was made perfect, for I fell and took them with me, then I was lifted up and redeemed them all.
That was Messiah’s banquet.
Everyone has fallen in the same way. You may not know it, but when you see someone that is blind remember what you are told in the ninth chapter of John. The question was asked,
“Tell me master, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” and the answer came, “Neither this man nor his parents, but that the works of the Lord be made manifest.”
It was the Lord who fell and it is the Lord who will rise. That Lord is in you and his name, in scripture, is Jesus Christ. That is Jehovah. But man does not understand it, for he is completely confused with all the nonsense that goes on in the world. A couple of days ago I read that the present pope made the statement that he cannot allow things to get out of hand. He said, “The Roman pontifex” meaning all the pontifices from the beginning of their so– called reign “are the custodians and interpreters of divine revelation.”
Several years before, this same pope made the statement on Passion Sunday, that the Jews crucified Jesus because they did not know who he was. And he is the custodian of the revelation of God? Why, he hasn’t the slightest beginning of knowledge concerning Christ. I mean that as one who has experienced Christ. I speak in the same way Paul spoke to the Sanhedrin. They thought they were the interpreters; the great protectors of divine revelation and they didn’t know what they were talking about. No Jew or group of Jews killed God.
Listen to the words from the 10th chapter of the gospel of John,
“No one takes my life; I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.”
How are you going to get around that bold statement when every word of scripture is true?
No one takes your life; you lay it down yourself. By an act of self–limitation you achieve your purpose of expansion. You couldn’t expand beyond what you were, had you not by your own decision, limited yourself and falling, you took with you the one man broken into multiple parts and you will play all the parts under the sun. The thief, the victim, the murdered, and the murderer, but everything under the sun, so in the end you can say, “No matter who you are, you are forgiven, for at the present moment you know not who you are or what you do.”
Then you will be raised up on high by a power within yourself and prepare Messiah’s banquet, for all the parts that fell with you and when you glide by everyone will be made perfect. Why? Because you are perfect. As you glide by, everyone is molded into the beautiful form they knew in the state of innocence, before you fell, taking them with you into the state of experience. You fell into the state of experience and return to the state of imagination. That’s the crown.
“God put eternity into the mind of man so that man could not find out what god has done from the beginning to the end.”
I have revealed it to you, tonight, through the lesser revelation of hearing. Like Job, you have heard with the hearing of the ear. Job couldn’t understand how God could be a god of love when all the terrible things happened to him, but in the end Job realized he was the one who had caused it all. And, when you have played all the parts, like Job you will awaken and say,
“Now my eyes see thee.”
The churches, today, speak of Jesus as suffering for your sins. Don’t for one moment believe it. Everyone carries within himself his own proof. If you miss the mark you don’t get the prize. You hit the mark and you get the prize. No suffering for sins. Suffering is simply a disciplinary action, which is nothing more than God’s love in you. There is not a God on the outside. We are told in Proverbs,
“Just as a father would correct his son, so the Lord chastens him whom he loves.”
Loving the part you play; he chastens and corrects it as he moves from state to state to state.
So Ecclesiastes is right. I am born and I die, I have known poverty and I have known wealth, I have known disgrace and I have known grace. There has been a time in my life when I would have gone along with Koheleth and said, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” but the last round came for me and I am about to depart this world of sin and death (and it is not long delayed I assure you), for the whole has been revealed.
Only in the end, when you are about to make your exit from Egypt (the world of states) is it actually revealed. If you are called to tell it, you will, and there will be those who hear it and believe and those who hear it and reject it. It is entirely up to the individual who hears the testimony. I tell you what I know from experience and you may believe it or you may reject it. It’s entirely up to you, but you will experience all that I have told you this night.
David, one day, having slept with his fathers (plural) will awaken in you. And you, being the Father, will awaken and rise from Golgotha, (your skull), for the place where they laid him and the place where he rose was in the City of David. David’s burial place, as told us in the third chapter of Nehemiah, is after the stairs that go down from the City of David to the Fountain Head. Exploding within, you rise from the sepulcher where Jesus Christ is buried. Five months later David explodes within you and you cry,
“I have found David, he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’”
The relationship is so well known that it is prophetic.
Then four months later you see the shaft and the Fountain Gate of Living Water where you laid down in the City of David. Merging with it, up you go into eternity and your journey is over. Then you linger for a little while to tell it. Two months ago, no insurance company would have given me one week to live, but I have to linger to tell it. The drama is over for me, but it has to be told. There are ears yet to hear it, so I came back and am as strong today as I was 25 years ago. I am the same young man I was 25 years ago in spite of my 61 years. I can do the things, physically, I haven’t done in the longest while, but I may go this night. It makes no difference now. I came back to tell those who had to hear it, whether they accept it or reject it, as told us in the last chapter of Acts,
“He expounded to them from morning till evening, trying to convince them of the kingdom of God and telling them about Jesus Christ, using for his argument the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms. And some were convinced by what he said while others disbelieved.”
This is the story of everyone to whom the risen God appears. All the fathers are coming back now, and you are the Father. We are the fathers with whom David sleeps. You are his Father and know it only from what I have told you, but the day is coming when you will know if from experience. And if you are David’s Father and I know I am his Father, are we not one? Can we not say the words in the 17th [chapter] of John,
“I in them and thou in me that they may become perfectly one”
The Old Testament ends on this note, “A son honors his father. If I am a father, where is my honor?” In other words, where is my son? So, the Old Testament ends on a hope, for the son has not yet appeared to honor his father, but as the New Testament begins the son appears.
Tonight, I have told you who you really are, and although it is all vanity, you can be anything you want to be, generically. You can be a sinner or a saint, for you are passing through a fabulous world of opposites and as Blake said,
“I do not consider the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be everyone of them in states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in his deadly dream of good and evil when he left paradise following the serpent.”
So until the end we are asleep, dreaming strange dreams. We dream we are in prison and we dream that we are free. We dream we have money and we dream we are poor, and whatever we identify ourselves with, we externalize. So I can’t deny the preacher’s statement, but that one verse gives the hope, for without that verse what would it matter tonight if there was no hope, no nothing.
The intellectual mind cannot understand what God put in the mind of man, but I have told you what it is. You will never know that you are Jesus until his Son explodes within you and calls you Father. Then by implication you know who you are. It’s still the same name. The self that is raised and the self that is called Father does not differ from the self that you were before, only now you include a far greater self who is none other than God the Father.
Now let us go into the silence.
Audience Questions
Question: When we die here where do we go?
Answer: This seems the height of vanity based upon what we know about our biologically human body, and what our scientists tell us about it, but you dreamed yourself into being, and the dreamer cannot be destroyed by his dream. You may dream the most horrible dream in the world, you may dream of dying, but you can’t be destroyed by your dream. As you dreamed yourself into being here, you will dream yourself into being there.
My mother was only 61 when she left here, but she looked 90 because she had suffered so for two years and her lovely form had withered before our eyes. I have seen her at the age of twenty, radiantly beautiful. I remained my age but she looked much, much younger, but the relationship of mother/son was still there. My father died at the age of 85. I have seen him several times since and he has never been over 50. You see, we are dreaming. You will find yourself not only in a world just as real as this, but the world may not be in the year 1966, as this present time is, it may be the year 3002 and it will be just as natural and normal to you as this year of 1966 is. No loss of identity, you will find yourself in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in you.
Good night.
