I AM THAT I AM - Dr Joseph Murphy

"I AM THAT I AM." A verbatim recording of a lecture given by Dr Joseph Murphy. Date unknown but probably 1970s. All rights reserved.

Divine Science minister, lecturer and author Dr Joseph Murphy was one of the giants of the New Thought Movement. His most famous book is The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963).

During the many years that Dr Murphy was Minister-Director of the Church of Divine Science in Los Angeles, thousands of people would crowd into the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre to hear his message, and millions tuned in to his daily radio program. He also lectured throughout the world, including making two lecture trips to my country Australia in 1955 and 1962-63 under the auspices of New Thought Centres, Australia.

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In the Bible we read that Moses, standing before the burning bush, asked God His name, so he could tell the Israelites who sent him. God replied:

‘I AM THAT I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I AM has sent me to you.” God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you. This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.’” (Ex 3:14-15)

God is pure Be-ing, the Great ‘I AM’—timeless, spaceless, ageless, and without face, form or figure. This Be-ing, the metaphysical name of which is ‘I AM THAT I AM’, is forever becoming, entering into time and space as each and every living thing, taking shape and form in and as each and every thing. This Be-ing is what it becomes, hence, I AM THAT I AM. The ancient Hebrews, for the most part, had a very tribal concept of God, one that is often quite unattractive, but at times we find in the Hebrew Bible something much more profound –and we have it here, namely, an understanding of the Divine as the Great I AM. 'I AM THAT I AM.'

In Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible, which is generally closer to the Hebrew than most of the other well-known English versions of the Bible, the phrase ‘I AM THAT I AM’ is rendered 'I AM THAT WHICH I AM'. The Great I AM—Life itself—becomes in and out of Itself the ‘I AM-ness’ (‘AM ness’) of all that it becomes. In so doing, this Great I AM never exhausts Itself, for It is much, much more than that which It becomes. It is indeed all that It becomes, but that is not all that there is of It. In other words, this inexhaustible Be-ing is the very Be-ing-ness or livingness—self-livingness, in fact—of life itself. It is the very ground of all being—and all beings.