Neville Goddard Audio Lecture: Those Who Know Thy Name

About This Lecture

This lecture is built on the Psalmist's words that those who know God's name will put their trust in Him. The key to everything Neville draws from the verse is his understanding of what a name means in scripture. A name, in this reading, is not a label arbitrarily attached from outside but is synonymous with the nature and very being of the one named; to know a name in the biblical sense is to know the essence of its bearer. And the name of God, Neville reminds the listener, was revealed to Moses at the burning bush as 'I AM.' To know God's name, then, is not to memorize a word but to recognize that the simple awareness of being, the bare sense 'I am' that every person carries, is itself the divine identity, shared rather than observed from a distance.

From this identification Neville draws the verse's own consequence, that knowing the name leads naturally to trust. If 'I AM' is God's name, and if that name is also one's own name forever, then the person who truly knows it is led to place their trust in their own awareness as the creative power. Trust, in Neville's hands, is never an abstract piety. It means daring to walk in the assumption that you are already the person you wish to be, and treating the inner conviction 'I am that' as wholly reliable, more reliable, in fact, than the senses that report you are not. Those who do not know the name go on trusting outer conditions and other people to determine their lot; those who know it transfer their trust inward, to the 'I am' through which their world is shaped.

The practical teaching follows directly and is stated with Neville's usual emphasis on loyalty. To the degree that the listener remains faithful to the assumption of the wish fulfilled, refusing to be argued out of it by present facts, that assumed state will externalize and be reaped as fruit in the outer world. Knowing God's name and putting trust in it become, in effect, Neville's devotional language for the disciplined persistence of an assumption. Trust is what keeps the assumption alive through the interval when nothing has yet visibly changed; without it, the assumption is abandoned at the first contrary appearance and never has time to bear fruit.

The lecture thus weds the scriptural revelation of the divine name to the core of Neville's working practice, and the union is deliberate: the mysticism and the method are two views of one thing. To identify with 'I AM' is to know the name; to assume one's desire as a present truth is to put that name to use; to stay faithful to the assumption until it is realized is to put one's trust in the name as the Psalmist commends.

To apply the teaching, the listener is asked to do three connected things. First, recognize the awareness of being as the divine 'I AM' rather than searching for God elsewhere. Second, after that 'I am,' assume the specific state desired and feel it as a present fact. Third, trust the assumption enough to remain in it, declining to give your loyalty back to circumstances that contradict it. To know the name in this living sense, Neville teaches, is already to have begun trusting it.

Key Scripture

Neville grounds this lecture in Psalm 9:10, Exodus 3:14.