Neville Goddard's Mistake Regarding Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey -- And the Meaning I give to Aleph-Hey-Yod-Hey

I have another meaning for "I AM."

If you read or listen to Neville Goddard's books, lectures and records, you know he frequently repeats that the name of God in Hebrew is yod-hey-vav-hey (YHWH), which means "I AM." And if you know a bit of Hebrew, you know it isn't, and doesn't.  YHWH means "HE BECOMES." It is third person.

Neville is right, though (well, at least more right), about Exodus 3: 14, where God says that his name (nature!) is "I BECOME." That is the first-person personal pronoun "I," -- aleph-hey-yod-hey (AHYH). (Of course, Hebrew reads from right to left.)

I believe both "words" refer to the pattern of the Eternal's life becoming manifest: the Eternal life-force (Y/A) . . . through its focused, intense desire to manifest (H) . . . its strength/capability to manifest (V) . . . and its receptiveness and reciprocation to manifesting (H). YHWH and AHYH really aren't words; they are pictures, illustrations in the mystical, symbolic forms of the Hebrew alphabet.

The discernability of the pattern indicates the existence of the Eternal. We know he is there because we can see things happening -- the pattern indicates his presence. Neville said of the harvest that comes after planting the seed of prayer (imagining!), "If it works, then you have found him (God). He is your own wonderful human imagination."

What is important is that there is no separation in the flow -- the pattern is a whole. The aleph, if you would, becomes, and is, the last hey. The "flow" is an emanation: everything in the flow is in the single unit. This, I believe, was Moses' realization: he and the "God" speaking to him in his imagination were one. The Bible says that he said, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord, your God, the Lord is one,” and it sounds like God is someone else, separate from us. I think that what he really said was, “Listen! O Divine Strength-ruling-as-a-human, the flow of Divine Life into manifestation, your Strength, the flow of Divine Life into manifestation is one, conglomerate whole (that is, it includes you -- you are that Strength -- AHYH!)" (Deuteronomy 6: 4, as I see it).

My insight today is that aleph-hey-yod-hey means "THE WORLD I HAVE BECOME." Neither "I AM" nor "I BECOME" is separate from its manifestation! As Moses said, "I become in reality that which I become in imagination!" (Exodus 3: 14).

We can take our imaginal world "to the bank," as it were, in prayer and meditation, positive confession and affirmation -- "THIS is the world I have become."

Neville's teacher, Abdullah, said when Neville desired to go to Barbados, "You are in Barbados." And later, when Neville despaired of getting there, "You can not talk about how you are going to get to Barbados if you are in Barbados!" In other words, "Get your head into the world you have become, and it will come to pass naturally." Neville changed his imaginal view of the world to being in Barbados, and then means to get there came.

AHYH: "This is the world I have become -- it is ME, my flow and emanation!" "Ye believe in the Strength, believe also in ME."

So what? Write it! Compose the world you have become. Have become, not going to become, else you'll be waiting for it eternally. What you want to come to pass you must HAVE in your world now, else how can you have faith for it? "THIS is my world. I HAVE it." Then you can sleep on it, and in it, trust it, feel it, see and hear and taste and smell it. You are not waiting for it -- you HAVE it. What you desire, AHYH: "I AM THAT. I AM! This is my world! It exists here, within me. This is the kingdom of God."

Write what happened. Write what your friends and family said. Hear them speaking to you. Write how you feel and felt. Remember how things were (the present should seem like a distant past!). "Your faith is your fortune," Neville said, "is," not going to be. Your fortune is the world you ARE, even though it hasn't manifested yet. Believe it in.

And, if you are still operating under your own lordship, doing whatever you want, repent and turn the lordship of your life over to the righteous Strength. It isn't separate, and it won't do you wrong. 'Israel' means the Strength ruling as man, and that shining, burning light in you needs for you to have a conscience, to recognize what is right and good and mature. You can only get that by seeing God's holiness. You and I are, after all, Its -- the Eternal's -- manifestation. This is his show (quite literally!), and that show is us!

The First Word in the Bible is Missing

It just struck me that the first word in the Bible is missing. That word is the Ineffable. Jewish mystics, as you know, have a very high view of the Most High God. I learned from Rabbi David A. Cooper (God is a Verb) that they haven't a name for that God. Kinds of descriptions, yes, but no name, for "name" means nature, and the nature of the Most High is indescribable. "It" is totally incomprehensible. So they call It "the Ineffable."

Rabbi Cooper taught me that it was the Ineffable who created the God we can know, YHVH Elohim. It took me some mental wrestling (and many Neville Goddard lectures) to figure out that YHWH is not a word but a pattern, the pattern of the Ineffable's manifesting that indicates Its existence and nature. And that pattern is us.

Victor Alexander brought to light that Elohim is a singular word compounded with a plural ending: the Strength above the Flames. The Strength is the Ineffable, flowing as YHWH through the flames of Glory. We (the consciousnesses/spirit God imbued humans with) are flames of that Glory.

Victor Alexander also points out that the connotation of Beresheeth, the first word in the text of Genesis, means before the beginning. Cooper had said the connotation was 'as' or 'with' a beginning: "With (or as) a beginning, the Ineffable created God . . ."

As I said, it just struck me that the first word in the text is missing. Moses not only assumed that there is a God, he didn't even "eff" it: "(The Ineffable), beginning, created God, the Heavens, and the Earth." These three are how the Ineffable began the action that is the universe, all dimensions of space and time, and all that is beyond experience and comprehension. Again, I believe that the first verse in the Bible is:

(The Ineffable), beginning, created God, the Heavens, and the Earth.

Stop Misreading the Bible: Undivide Everything

Moses was a mystic, a priest, a soldier, and a philosopher, but certainly not a story teller or historian of ancient peoples. He knew the myths that the religions of his day had grown up with, and the truths they had grown away from. Then Moses had a personal, spiritual experience and learned what those myths and truths were about. He was inspired to write the most important spiritual things he had learned.

So we open the book of Genesis and see the most important of Moses' spiritual revelations. Gilgamesh? I don't think so.

The Ineffable, the incomprehensible No-Thing, created -- becoming via imagining -- God (Its power that is manifest in a united conglomeration of glorious individual consciousnesses, the oneness of Its power in many spirits), the Heavens (Its power in directable, subjective thought, "mind"), and the Earth (Its power in objective manifestation). How big and wonderful is the Ineffable? The whole of all creation -- God, the Heavens and the Earth -- is Its dream.

What is It doing in Its dream? It is dreaming Itself into manifestation. It dreamed a goal It wanted to become, a manifestation of Its own perfection. In that manifestation It will exist as God, the Heavens and the Earth -- "Man." Man, as a carefree, loose cannon enjoying every whim and desire that comes to mind? No, Man as a disciplined consciousness responsible to the nature and character of the Ineffable he is from and of.

So, the Ineffable is dreaming of man, whose desires become living experience, but who hasn't the compunction to conform to the Ineffable's perfection. What would such a man do, and become, if he were confronted with the effulgence of the Ineffable's Glory? I think Moses knew from experience. His desire (Eve) had got him to the Truth of the Ineffable, the Glorious One, and once there . . . being prostrate on the ground didn't seem low enough; total surrender didn't seem emptied enough; awe didn't seem contrite enough; and regret for sin, for lost time, for divergence from Its Glory didn't seem deep enough. When you see It, you are destroyed.

We cannot comprehend the Ineffable, but we can appreciate It. We just can't seem to appreciate It enough. We free-fall, relinquish all and depend totally on Its mercy and strength -- "O (Ineffable), What would You have me do?" And so the powers of the Ineffable fall before the Ineffable in total abdication and obeisance. Conscience is born.

"And One is God, Father of everyone and Supreme over all, and Omnipotent in everything and Omniscient in all of us. 7. To each one of us, however, He gave us grace according to their measure in appreciating Christ. 8. Because of that it is said [in Scriptures,] 'He ascends to the highest, He furnishes a resting place and He grants rewards to humanity.' 9. That He ascends, however, is what, except for also that He beforehand would descend to the lower depths of the earth. 10. He who descends was the One who ascended higher than all, so as all heaven should be in submission to Him" (Ephesians 4: 6-10, Victor Alexander's translation from Aramaic, emphasis mine).

Man, as the manifestation of the Ineffable, would have to be the Ineffable. Says It: "I would have you be objective, and my Glory shall go with you; upon Its belly It shall manifest as you, eating the dust of your experience as the earth." That is, the sender desired objectivity, went as the sent, manifested as human . . . BUT FORGOT BEING THE SENDER WHEN IT GOT HERE! Dreaming the dream of a mud-man, It naturally knew things as a mud-man, and a mud-man is, well, dumb as mud. The reality and the presence, the power, wisdom and glory of the Ineffable got completely dumbed-out.

Rats. I hate it when that happens.

Not to worry, the sender who sent the sent, the spiritual "second son," will prevail to overthrow the dumbness of the earthly son and develop him into the perfection of the Ineffable. "Israel" means The Power-ruling-as-man: "I become what I become (I, and the world I dream in faith, become what I dream)."

Oh boy! Beer and pretzels and a big screen TV, feet up, the lottery and . . . .

No, no. "A disciplined consciousness responsible to the nature and character of the Ineffable He is from and of" -- the End Man, the Pattern-of-the-Ineffable (YHWH) made manifest. We need to keep Its Glory, our Glory, in our mind's eye, and appreciate Christ who has become us. The right Life has a sense of the necessity to conform to Its perfection, to have and exercise conscience.

"What would Jesus do?" is a good question to ask. Not the first-century man, but the power, wisdom and glory of the Ineffable who wants us and our world to be all that we can be -- all It can be -- to be: noble, perfect in love and honor and integrity to Its nature. He is the Most High God: immutable, glorious, and absolutely perfect. Christ is a high calling.

All the shenanigans happening down here are not mutation of the Ineffable. When It dreamed Itself in manifestation, It was. And every point and perchance happening that happens getting to that perfection was created, also. It didn't make Its end without a path to that end. "Oh, darn! You mean I can't get there from here?" No, It made complete everything from beginning to end. Tomorrow already exists. Yesterday still exists, too, and every turn, start, stop and change. Every possibility is perfect, past, present and future. Else how could it be, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow" (Isaiah 1: 18)? The End is everything perfect.

(This is one of those "tick . . tock" moments. I'll wait.)

Our consciousness, our "imagination" if you will, is It, the Ineffable -- Jesus Christ. WE are making it right. Yesterday's argument, we can redo, and will undo, by re-visioning. That failing grade, we will undo. Today's missed bus, we will undo. We will revision, and by re-visioning we will recreate the past, undoing every wrong -- to right.

"What the heck good would that do? I'm not going to be on today's bus tomorrow." But the cumulative effects from today's miss can, and will, disappear. That is healing, redemption of the time. That is something for us to do. We are commanded to do it. Take the assignment.

"I was only a child when I got this disease." Everything was "got" when we dreamed it. We can un-dream it. Jesus Christ is the God of our dreams, of every thought and intent of our hearts. HE is the one who dreamed it, and HE can take it away. The second part of his name, of his saving nature, is destroyer: he destroys the present wrong and provides what is right in its place. THAT is salvation. We go back to the moment before wrong/sin was got, and the wrong is not got. What went wrong doesn't happen. So wrong's effects disappear. Oh, did I mention that to each one of us, He gave us grace according to our measure in appreciating Christ? (Thank you, Victor). Gave. The healing is already given; it only awaits the appreciation.

Mount up and appreciate him. Love him because he first loved you, loved you so much he became you, cursed to suffer your sufferings -- that he might redeem you and lift you the Perfection. Think about what Christ has done for you. Stretch your mind a bit. He has hid eternity -- Himself -- in your heart, and only awaits recognition.

"Come to me, all you mourners and carriers of burdens, and I shall give you peace. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, as I am easy and gentle of heart, and you shall find peace in your souls. For my yoke is pleasant and my burden is light" (Matthew 11: 28-30, Victor Alexander). We don't go "up" to him, we go in to him. We have two imaginations in us. Let them be undivided.

Response to Florence C.'s Inquiry: Roughly, My View.

Hello,

I should warn you, I am long-winded in type. I should warn you also, researching outside of the controlled literature is like getting caught up in a tornado - you suddenly realize that you are not in Kansas anymore. You may come to know better, be wiser, believe more accurately and intensely - but those who haven't grown as much as you will consider you a heretic, a dangerous heretic. I read the Bible differently now, trying to translate the proper names and understand the scripture's fuller meaning. "Moses" has a message for us.

You know the story in Exodus, that Moses killed a man and hid his body in the sand. The thing became known, and Moses fled to the wilderness. Moses didn't kill a man; he was just "a son born" into being a Hebrew. The word 'Hebrew' means to cross over (a river/barrier) and to go on your way - to expand. 'Egypt' is pretty much the opposite - to oppress, narrow, constrict. Moses didn't kill the man, he (maturing and expanding in perception) disputed with a narrow-minded, immature blockhead and "killed" the man's constricted views with wisdom, with his enlightened worldview.

Unfortunately, the blockhead held the prevailing cult's view and Moses exposed himself as a heretic, a dangerous heretic. Oops. Withdrawing to the wilderness means he learned to keep his big mouth shut and to contemplate these things in his mind while he played the cult's game. You can do that as long as you can stand it. When you speak the truth, they will drive you out.

What Moses contemplated, by the way, was Jethro, the jutting-over, abundant goodness that just seems to work to your advantage, kind of miraculously. Where is that coming from? Who or what is orchestrating it? These ideas were the "flocks" of Jethro. Moses found out, and THAT is what Genesis is about. Moses didn't give a rat's behind about ancient history, but what God is and what He is doing.

We are what he is doing. Adam, his "rib" (desire, the fount of creative power), Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth and Enosh through Noah and to Joseph is what God is doing in us. They weren't people, they are what God is doing in us. Translate their names and you'll see they are the story of each of us - states of being and consciousness we pass through cumulatively as we mature. Which is why the church doesn't translate their names; they can't give what they haven't got.

Third (or is this the fourth?) warning: I use a lot of references, not easy reading. We can't have big enough of an understanding, a vision vast enough of the ineffable Most High God. Rabbi David A. Cooper discusses Ein Sof - "that without end" - in God is a Verb. I had to read his book and listen to his guided meditations a number of times to grasp the depth of Jewish spirituality. Another book I keep on my shelf just to see the title (I don't really recommend reading it) is J. B. Phillips Your God is Too Small - a good point to take to heart. Cooper points out that the Ineffable is that being beyond Ein Sof.

And I say, not quite. The Ineffable is everything in every dimension AND that beyond Ein Sof. The Ineffable is one, a spectral continuing from the incomprehensible No-Thing to every quantum particle. All - the whole kit and caboodle - is Life, Light, and Love, consciousness and spirit. That is my opinion, anyway.

There is no division or separation, in reality, between any two points - a quantum particle in a piece of dust floating by and a single wave of light in space are as the heart of the infinite and eternal God. But still we can make dissections and distinctions of what he is and of what we are. Conceptual divisions are all right - that's what all those personal names are in scripture.

In rough terms, there is animal life on this earth. Primates, including man, are a part of this "natural" life. Holding in mind that there is natural, organic life on the earth, and life itself is a feature of God, we can suppose that God wants his life/consciousness on earth's level to progress to become life/consciousness on his level, thereby becoming his image. He desired form. The six-day creation is the goal. He imagined what he would become – for him, that is as good as done. He is the Becoming God, and we are on the road to his-leveldom.

That is a tough row to hoe for any form of natural life. How can life on this level progress to his level? "How about I give you a boost?" asks God. "And God formed man of the dust of the earth - a natural, organic man running around - and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life - the spirit of his own consciousness." Spirit, or God's consciousness, imbued the natural mind of man with God-level perception, mind and speech. We, God's spirit, latched onto man's spirit to develop it to where we came from. Like I said, we are the sent ones, alien invaders who forgot what we were doing half-way through the act. But we are not alone. The one who sent us is achieving what he willed. We had to forget what we were to become man, but when we grow up a bit, he slaps us upside along the head and says, "Come on, let's go!" And his goodness drags us along to the discovery of Jesus Christ and the meaning of life, to spiritual maturity and development - with man's spirit in tow - to God's level.

Is man trichotomous, dichotomous? Who's counting? Okay, I will: one. There is nothing but the infinite, eternal, ineffable, incomprehensible Most High God in this world and all beyond. It is him with whom we have to do, and he is the one doing. He isn't distant or even "near." "Immanent" is the wrong concept. Look inside and see "is." That breath from God, Jesus Christ, is now in you as your imagination. Yeah, right there. "Wait, I can't see that." Try looking in the mirror. Right there behind the eyes is the Almighty with-whom-we-have-to-do. Or, by-whom-we-are-being-done.

I get a lot of this from Neville Goddard. I listen to his lectures on youtube.com (I have them on my mp3 player) and have read his books. I also love T. L. Osborn's crusade preaching on youtube, where you can SEE what God is doing (you have to fast-forward ten to twenty minutes to get to the preaching). The Dove-lady on youtube is such a lovely soul. Who else would think of reading Walter Russell's The Secret of Light? She reads some of Neville's books. My view of Moses was much formed by Gerald Massey's writings. Those writings may be harder to get without viruses - I think I got a virus from some Scribd.com downloads, but that was years ago. Massey is tough reading in any case.

And Victor Alexander's translation. It isn't that he "gets it," it is that he doesn't avoid it. What the Aramaic text says, he tries to just flat out say. I can't get very far reading his trans. without getting side-tracked on some exciting discovery. "It says THAT?!?!? OMG OMG OMG." He doesn't mean to, but he substantiates my weird understandings time after time.

Oh yes, will we need kitty litter in Heaven? I don't see Heaven and Hell as quasi-physical destinations anymore. Not since I discovered that the Ineffable created God, the Heavens and the Earth - but not as we think them. "God" isn't that God, but us God, the conglomeration of spirits of him, the echad (the "one made up of many" in Deuteronomy 6:4). Heaven is where the mind is, the original mind (his) and the mind in our skulls (also his). Earth is this organic life we have adopted and think that we are. Silly us, we think this isn't a dream just because we are "concrete." But God "dreams" to the state of concreteness! That is how he created everything that is becoming. He started it as a dream, and now it comes to pass. Mind well "dreaming to a state of concreteness." That is how we create, too.

Hell? We are restored to earth-sphere experience until this life we are develops more towards his level, the judgment. Remember, we have the human’s organic life in tow, too, because we so loved him we became him (or her). Restoration to this earthly plane is being sent to "hell." I suppose the animals keep being sent here, too. It isn't punishment, it is development - being generated into his likeness.

Jethro, the Magic Hat of God

(A peek over my shoulder as I write an old friend, Hopeful Anthony.)

Dear Hopeful, 

So glad to see that you are still alive, o quiet one. I am still dealing with the famine for the Word, for its meaning in me. Below is the repair I will be posting on The Becoming God blog tonight. I have to do a big repair on Unpoor Yourself, too. 

They ain'ts people in the Bible, they're concepts, perceptions of reality that seem "over there" even though they are in us. Growing is getting rid of the distance. The "people," all of them, are the reader. Everything we were supposed to learn from the Old Testament is "Jesus" speaking to us personally in the New. 

How is this retirement stuff? Any advice? I am 64 and the plant may close in 1-2 years. I should just make a full thirty by layoff date.

*************************************

Marvel at Jethro, the magic hat of God. 

Jethro is the overflowing goodness of God. It is like a magician's hat that an endless stream of rabbits keeps coming out of. YHWH, the flow of God into manifestation, just keeps coming! God's nature is goodness and love and power and wisdom, and these are demonstrated in his manifesting. 

"His excellence," Jethro's literal meaning in Hebrew, tells us that God is there. Those rabbits have to be coming from somewhere! 

All those rabbits are like a little bird up in a tree. You know it is there because you can hear it chirping. Where is it? You keep looking. I know it is there, I can hear it, I just can't see it. 

Jethro gives us indication that God is here. Though it is His excellence, Moses found that the spigot, if you will, of God's excellence was his own imagination! "I become (in manifestation) what I become (in imagination)!" 

Jethro is God. His excellence isn't something done by remote control, but is God's movement. That is, he doesn't rearrange something else, he rearranges himself.

Hmmmm (tick...tock...tick...tock...). Hey! Wait a minute! That means that I am him! 

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! 

Define your rabbits and hear them. We hear them by saying them. Our speech is in our minds, in our imaginations. "We call not out loud, but by an intense effort of intense attention. To listen attentively, as though you heard, is to create. The events and relationships of life are your Word made visible" (Neville Goddard, Mental Diets). 

"Let there be Light," the divine heard. The divine is the faith that it shall come to pass. This is the basis for the religion we know as Judaism. 

Jethro is the road of exodus. You are free to walk it.