From Marek, and To Marek: Response to a French Catholic's Inquiry

-----Original Message-----
From: Marek
To: imagicworldview imagicworldview@aol.com
Sent: Mon, Feb 22, 2016 3:18 pm
Subject: Regular visitor of your blog

Hi Dan,

I have come across your blog very recently (through this post) and after reading all the old posts with absolutely consuming interest over a couple days, I can now call myself a regular. Not only is the subject seriously mind-bending stuff to me, but your writing style cracks me up! I love it. In my initial enthusiasm I started drafting a mail to you to discuss a few things, but left it unfinished for lack of time. But then you published a "send me an e-mail" post, so I kinda took it personally.

I am a French engineer living in London. I have recently stumbled onto Neville Goddard by way of this reddit, and have been reading a lot of his stuff, practically all I could get my hands on. Your blog has been very helpful in shedding light of some of the more opaque concepts.

I enjoy a lot of Neville's stuff, but being a practicing Catholic, I must be honest and say there remains a lot of things that don't sit too well with me - to put it mildly. The first thought I had about Neville's teachings is that this stuff is, indeed...heretical! I wanted to see what others said and thought about it, and that's what led me to the post linked to at the beginning of this mail. Very simply, the whole "Jesus was never a physical person" I do not accept (as a Catholic, it is easy to understand why). I do, however, completely believe in Mark 11:23.

Another thing that is ringing huge alarm bells for me is Abdullah's "brothers" that foretold Neville's visit. Who would those invisible "brothers" be, in your opinion? When I read "ascended master" (as I read suggested elsewhere), I tend to hear "demon"....not unlike the one you slammed the door onto!

It would not be the first, or the 100th time that deceiving spirits spread false teachings to gullible humans.

So... I'd like to know where this all came from.

Another things that I am uneasy with is that most websites that reference Neville are of the "Law of Attraction", how-to-attract-riches, I-have-a-method-to-sell-you variety. Said otherwise: garbage for the brain and for the soul. I was happy to find that you do not associate with these.

I know that you do not believe any of the characters of the Bible to be literal. However, I wanted to ask you: would you not consider that said characters should be taken BOTH literally (as Vic Alexander believes) and symbolically (as Neville believes) ? Why have to chose? It is very difficult for me to believe the strictly symbolic reading. Simply because I think that the Living God could not, in any way, let so many humans remain in such a state of misunderstanding, for so long!

Anyway, I am looking forward to your new posts, and perhaps a dialogue.

I'll see you on the blog.

All the best,

Marek

PS: Thanks for introducing me indirectly to Vic Alexander's work. Super interesting stuff.

_________________________________________

Dear Marek,

Thank you for writing. Most interesting stuff. The link to reddit scared me - so many people discussing things they admittedly do not understand AS ANSWERS to sincerely asked questions. Were to God we could go to our priests or pastors to get knowledgeable explanations. We usually cannot. We have to get input and construct the knowledge ourselves. Many happily discern God's orchestrating activity in this endeavor.

Let me refer you to an interesting book, The Worship of the Dead by Col. J. Garnier. You can download a PDF to read: https://archive.org/details/worshipdeadoror00garngoog. George Stanley Faber's Origin of Pagan Idolatries, vol. III, too https://archive.org/details/originofpaganido03fabe. I mention these because they support your hypothesis that both the literal and the symbolic are true, at least to some extent. They also deal with demonic influences. The historic events and heros, well known to the audience to be literal, are utilized to present the author's symbolic theses.

Faber discusses the literal, historical Moses around page 600. Gerald Massey discusses how the mythical Moses image of Egyptian scripture became the symbolic Moses of Hebrew scripture even though the historic Moses was something else. I'd have to dig up the reference for that. So, while there may have been people as the basis of the stories, the stories are not about them. They are about you. Because the scripture are about God, and YOU are God -- the inside you who plans to go to Heaven when you die.

In the case of Jesus, I am quite vested in the symbolic interpretation of spiritual truth as revealed in scripture, yet HE  SPOKE TO ME. That voice, His voice, is my eye in the rock, my anchor in the bedrock of my faith. I believe that both the un-ignoranced Christ AND the ignoranced Christ dwell in me, God AS my imagination, Christs (one, actually) reconciling. I am the thoroughly ignoranced Christ: "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of your life" (Genesis 3: 14 KJV). The un-ignoranced Christ is here in me, and in you also, trying to lift our imagining, which is Eve. Thus the enmity. Thus also the un-ignoranced Christ could speak directly to me through the hearing lobe of my brain.

Could God who imagines he is me-thinking-that-"I"-am-thinking not also manifest physically as himself-thinking-that-he-is-him-thinking? He could. Did he? I do not know: I was not there. I am not sure the report "who hath believed?" is that he did (though I would not put it past him to do it just to say that he did). The report in Isaiah 53 is not about a coming man but is a status report on the project. THAT is true prophecy. The He and Him in Isaiah is the third person in Exodus 3: 14! That which we -- God(!) -- are becoming -- the Ineffable manifest! "I Myself absolutely come by causative imagining His becoming." (May I refer you to the name of this blog?)

In either case the whole and absolute all of the kerugma is true. The "symbolic" is literal and true in manifest reality in the medium of the spirit we are. The "literal-historical" is symbolic of the spiritually true. I think we need to cut through all of this to what IS: "Because God's plan for me is the risen Christ, I am saved," and go with that.

Abdullah's "brothers" are a mystery of ignorance. They raised red flags with me, also, initially, but I have matured a bit since then. And I am not sure his explanation was really meant the way it has been taken. He was at a level, though, where it could have been unincarnate spirits of God (either what we were before we flipped into incarnation, or what we will become when we develop to a higher realm; remember the sunflowers in Unless I Go Away), or it might simply have been his having heard the ideas of students and/or associates who were trying to get Neville to attend Abdullah's lectures.

"I think that the Living God could not, in any way, let so many humans remain in such a state of misunderstanding, for so long!" We are not humans. We entered this sphere of "death" -- forgetting -- eons ago in order to be generated into the pure manifestation of the Ineffable. We keep forgetting -- getting "ignoranced" -- life after life. Generation is "here a little, there a little," in a long, long project. Our part of eternity is less than a speck of His eternity. Ray Summer sums it up so well: Worthy is the Lamb!

Thanks again for reading and responding to my request for e-mails.

Dan Steele