Neville Goddard's Riddle: How Are We Restored as Twenty-year-olds?

Hi Dan,

I hope you are well. You may remember we exchanged a couple e-mails before. Love your recent posts - as it happens, I have been reading a LOT of Neville lately. There is one thing that Neville repeats every now and then, and it puzzles me greatly. I would like to ask for your take on it. It is the "being restored as a 20 year old" thing.

A couple mentions I have highlighted in lectures:

(From: http://realneville.com/txt/creation_faith.htm) "Death does not finish the work God began in you, for the world does not terminate at the point where your senses cease to register it. You may no longer hear, touch, or see, the one you love; but when you leave this body you are instantly restored to one which is as solid and real as the one you now wear. You will be about twenty years old, in an environment best suited to the work yet to be done in you"

(From: http://realneville.com/txt/awake_o_sleeper.htm) "Your body is your emanation. Cut off its head and - believing you are it - you will instantly renew the same body, but with no missing parts. You will step out of the garment you now wear and men will call you dead; but you will have just stepped into another garment with no bridgework, no fillings in your teeth, no grey hair, no need to wear glasses or a hearing aid, to discover you are a young man (or woman) about twenty years of age. You will be in a terrestrial world just as real as this one, and continue your journey until you awaken."

(Also from the same) "Your death is over. When you go through the gate called death, you don't die, but instantly emanate a young, unaccountably new body. Most of those who go through the gate do not even know it. They simply take their young body for granted, just as they do everything here."

I was wondering if you had reflected on that at all, and if you could make anything of it. Where is this coming from? Very puzzling to me. If you had a minute to spare, it would be great to hear what you think because I don't know what to make of this.

Thanks in advance for your views, Dan, and all the best,
Marek

PS: on the subject of Neville, I found this interesting "how-to" doc compiled by a guy named Shawn Regan, not sure if you know it. I found it quite handy - look at http://www.nirvikalpa.com/CorrectPrayer.doc

PPS: Thank you for the bibliographical references you've been dropping here and there. My copy of "God Is a Verb" is on the way. Curious to read this one.
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Thank you, Marek.

I caught all those comments by Neville in his lectures and puzzled over them for a long while. I REALLY APPRECIATE your writing them down for a closer look and analysis. The first thing I wondered when Neville said we come back as twenty-year-olds was: what about kids? Then, what about our childhood memories? are they all false? You brought out something wonderful by typing the quotes out: they are not about the cycle of life we are in in this state of "death."

As you know, Christ crucified himself to become us on this flesh. We are in the three days of hades -- the grave -- a perfect, complete time. This state is "death." Living spirits call it "Woodland."

We are waking up through an unknown number of lives in this death. Like I said in my latest post, the Ineffable is in no hurry. It is the quality of the job he is after. Neville is saying that this cycle of lives in this state of death isn't the full treatment. Becoming like the incomprehensible Ineffable is going to take more. We are just in kindergarten, and are reborn here until we can graduate. When we graduate from this death of forgetting we won't have to be born into this terrestrial experience again, but we will be mature enough to do whatever we do in the next terrestrial sphere as persons about twenty years old, for we will have remembered. You might liken this to heaven, the next stage of mind/imagination development in our becoming the Ineffable. Remembering is not full awakening.

I would like to point out that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it entered into the mind of man what God has in store for those who love him, for we shall become him. If we know we will next exist as twenty-year-olds, this "heaven" is still not the end of the process.

Dan

PS: Reflecting on my own life and development, I note that while my body has matured and my intelligence has grown (too much and too little, respectively), I still look through my eyes and think with the same mental perspective I did when I was a child. The spirit I am inside is the same guy without change after all these years. It -- I -- was born "ignoranced" of what it really is, and is still learning. "I" do not age, despite the body aches. Interesting. I am, and shall become, what I love. I guess that is the way to go.

And thanks for the link.