Return as Twenty-Something: Will Researches And Ruminates Revision
A heavy-duty reader named Will left some comments on my post, Restored to Life as Twenty-something Without a Childhood? I Think Not, February 01, 2017, which deserve their own post. A lot of people do not usually care to scroll down and read the misspelled silly, trollish comments and vitriol that one usually finds in comments sections. Will is on another level, as you will see. I didn't want you to miss it. In it I make a few edits and clarifying remarks.
___________________________
Hello, Dan,
(Quoting Neville) "[...] fully awake and aware of where I was and what I was doing, I visited Jack."
Here I think he was talking about an "OBE" (out-of-body-experience, or more like an "interdimensional experience"), and "fully awake and aware of where I was and what I was doing" means it wasn't a mere dream. This was his attempt to explain the experience to people who were not familiar whith the concept of OBE or lucid dreaming.
About the whole "being restored to life as a twenty-something", well, first, I don't remember reading him ever saying that there would be no childhood. Maybe twenty-something is the time when the restoration is complete, according to many (most?) spiritualist beliefs, the development of man is divided into seven-year periods, each marked by the appearence of a new power or quality. These periods are the birth and coming to completion of the etheric body at the age of seven years, marked by the second dentition, full incarnation of the astral or desire body at fourteen years, marked by puberty, while the mental body which completes the man doesn't come into full activity until the age of twenty-one (the full incarnation of "I").
Second, have you heard about the "Cheating the Ferryman" theory? Besides Anthony Peake's, there are more old works that touch on this topic, and I'm quite sure Neville was aquainted with them, like Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe, J.W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time, and J. B. Priestley's Time Plays.
If you decide to take a more in-depth look at the concept of Eternal Return (I should've mentioned that along the Cheating the Ferryman theory), I think Anthony Peake's Is There Life After Death? is a good introduction, and for an introduction to Ouspensky's take on the subject there is his wonderful novel Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, if you don't mind that genre. For more heavy stuff, there are the works I've already mentioned plus Dunne's The Serial Universe.
Ah, and let me clarify something: I am not claiming to have completely understood what Neville was trying to say, or that I'm sure that Neville was certainly speaking about Eternal Return; I just think it's something to consider. Take a look (again?) at these really interesting passages from Neville's lecture Where Are You From?:
(After citing Eccl. 1:9-11 [KJV] [YLT]):
"Well, who would accept that! The conventional view completely denies it; it couldn't possibly be. He is telling me that I have a memory of my youth. I can't quite remember the moment of my physical birth. I vividly remember the moment of my spiritual birth. But he is telling me it has been - that I do know. And everyone here - without memory of that physical birth - they can't deny by observation of other people being born, that they, too, must have been born in a similar manner; so they say it has been. Now he tells me: that which has been done (which is my birth) is that which will be done. That I am moving towards that same thing on a wheel of recurrence, that same thing in this world of Caesar, and only divine mercy can redeem me from the wheel."
After telling the story of the woman who foresaw the assassination of John F. Kennedy:
"But everything is here and that bullet in the brain of Kennedy is part of the eternal structure of God's world, and God conceived it. And so is the one who pulled it [the trigger] - God conceived it. And that's a part to be played - and played over and over and over. And man can't quite see the garment, because it doesn't make sense, because he thinks it's here. It isn't here. This is forever, as the play."
"So when you go through it [trouble], know it has happened and happened and happened, but you have no memory. In some strange way, this lady in ten days, within one block - it so passed from memory that even when the radios began to blare and the TV, and even the weeping and cursing and talking, she is prodding herself to remember a dream. And only when the facts of a paper were placed before her and she saw the green page with the headline: KENNEDY SHOT did the whole thing run into her mind like some photographic plate. And she remembered the intersection where she saw these four papers on a rack, three the normal black and white, and the fourth one the green with this headline; then the struggle with herself as she crossed the intersection which only took two or three seconds. Then all of sudden it rushed into the mind."
"The Law - yes. I still say, within the framework of God's grand dream there is another dream - my dream, your dream. And these that have unnumbered experiences - we aren't going to change His dream for us, but we can modify and change within the framework of His dream the things that we will encounter. And if I use the Law wisely I will avoid repetition tomorrow when the wheel turns again. I won't break the foot the next time; I won't have the distorted arm the next time; I won't have anything the next time if now I revise it. So I say: if there is one thing I have been brought into this world to tell you, it is the secret of revision: that if something today is unpleasant, you don't like it, don't let it slip by.
The Bible speaks of redeeming the time. Every moment, if it is unpleasant, it should be redeemed, because you are going to meet it tomorrow as the wheel turns. So don't let the night descend and catch you with the unredeemed day. Take the day and redeem it. You may produce the results now, in the immediate present. But if you don't redeem it, when the wheel turns because you haven't yet hatched out (or as Blake says, For hatching ripe he breaks the shell,) - but if the shell isn't yet broken by the series of events which detaches you from this wheel of recurrence, then revise the day. So that next time when the wheel comes around you aren't going to relive the unpleasant thing of this moment in time."
"[...] But I can tell you - through the one thing I have brought to tell you, which is revision - it isn't hopeless. You can, if the day is unpleasant, revise it. And if tomorrow the results are not before you, and the next week and the next month, they are not before you, I know that by your revision you will change the events, when once again you must come to that moment in time. And so you will change the pattern, for the wheel is turning and you can't stop it."
"[...] You will change it only in one way; if you know the art of revision. But you will change it only to the extent when you reach that point in time - which is forever - you do not encounter (again) what to you was unpleasant. When you encounter that moment in time, it's the completed circle."
Well, I guess he didn't go into much detail about that subject in other lectures because he had already committed himself to teaching how to interpret the Bible properly, but he was on to something.
Till next time,
Will
_____________________________
This is great mystery, Will, maybe the Great Mystery. Consciousness is the Ineffable's working Its way into manifestation. And this "consciousness" is Imagination, with a capital 'I'. That, the Imagination/Son/YHWH-action of the Ineffable, is "God" to us, and it is us. We are Its -- the Ineffable's -- Manifestation in potential being worked out, fixing our unlike-Him's bit by bit. Whether it is linear time or repeating cycles of the same time, but different, is an enchanting question. I AM NOT SURE IT MATTERS. What matters is that we focus on getting it right. Per Neville, we are the Father of the Christ, Milta or "Manifestation" of the Ineffable. I.e., we are the Imagination, the consciousness. Kind of heavy.
If we do not work enough out to graduate from this level, we are restored to this grave to try again. No limit to the do-overs. And there is wailing (as a baby?) and the gnashing of teeth (adulthood?). Maybe this life again, maybe not. There are a lot of could have, should have, would have's I'd like to change into did have's. Can have, in revision. Redeeming the time in this manner may be why Neville could say, "I am not coming back here again."
___________________________
Hello, Dan,
(Quoting Neville) "[...] fully awake and aware of where I was and what I was doing, I visited Jack."
Here I think he was talking about an "OBE" (out-of-body-experience, or more like an "interdimensional experience"), and "fully awake and aware of where I was and what I was doing" means it wasn't a mere dream. This was his attempt to explain the experience to people who were not familiar whith the concept of OBE or lucid dreaming.
About the whole "being restored to life as a twenty-something", well, first, I don't remember reading him ever saying that there would be no childhood. Maybe twenty-something is the time when the restoration is complete, according to many (most?) spiritualist beliefs, the development of man is divided into seven-year periods, each marked by the appearence of a new power or quality. These periods are the birth and coming to completion of the etheric body at the age of seven years, marked by the second dentition, full incarnation of the astral or desire body at fourteen years, marked by puberty, while the mental body which completes the man doesn't come into full activity until the age of twenty-one (the full incarnation of "I").
Second, have you heard about the "Cheating the Ferryman" theory? Besides Anthony Peake's, there are more old works that touch on this topic, and I'm quite sure Neville was aquainted with them, like Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe, J.W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time, and J. B. Priestley's Time Plays.
If you decide to take a more in-depth look at the concept of Eternal Return (I should've mentioned that along the Cheating the Ferryman theory), I think Anthony Peake's Is There Life After Death? is a good introduction, and for an introduction to Ouspensky's take on the subject there is his wonderful novel Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, if you don't mind that genre. For more heavy stuff, there are the works I've already mentioned plus Dunne's The Serial Universe.
Ah, and let me clarify something: I am not claiming to have completely understood what Neville was trying to say, or that I'm sure that Neville was certainly speaking about Eternal Return; I just think it's something to consider. Take a look (again?) at these really interesting passages from Neville's lecture Where Are You From?:
(After citing Eccl. 1:9-11 [KJV] [YLT]):
"Well, who would accept that! The conventional view completely denies it; it couldn't possibly be. He is telling me that I have a memory of my youth. I can't quite remember the moment of my physical birth. I vividly remember the moment of my spiritual birth. But he is telling me it has been - that I do know. And everyone here - without memory of that physical birth - they can't deny by observation of other people being born, that they, too, must have been born in a similar manner; so they say it has been. Now he tells me: that which has been done (which is my birth) is that which will be done. That I am moving towards that same thing on a wheel of recurrence, that same thing in this world of Caesar, and only divine mercy can redeem me from the wheel."
After telling the story of the woman who foresaw the assassination of John F. Kennedy:
"But everything is here and that bullet in the brain of Kennedy is part of the eternal structure of God's world, and God conceived it. And so is the one who pulled it [the trigger] - God conceived it. And that's a part to be played - and played over and over and over. And man can't quite see the garment, because it doesn't make sense, because he thinks it's here. It isn't here. This is forever, as the play."
"So when you go through it [trouble], know it has happened and happened and happened, but you have no memory. In some strange way, this lady in ten days, within one block - it so passed from memory that even when the radios began to blare and the TV, and even the weeping and cursing and talking, she is prodding herself to remember a dream. And only when the facts of a paper were placed before her and she saw the green page with the headline: KENNEDY SHOT did the whole thing run into her mind like some photographic plate. And she remembered the intersection where she saw these four papers on a rack, three the normal black and white, and the fourth one the green with this headline; then the struggle with herself as she crossed the intersection which only took two or three seconds. Then all of sudden it rushed into the mind."
"The Law - yes. I still say, within the framework of God's grand dream there is another dream - my dream, your dream. And these that have unnumbered experiences - we aren't going to change His dream for us, but we can modify and change within the framework of His dream the things that we will encounter. And if I use the Law wisely I will avoid repetition tomorrow when the wheel turns again. I won't break the foot the next time; I won't have the distorted arm the next time; I won't have anything the next time if now I revise it. So I say: if there is one thing I have been brought into this world to tell you, it is the secret of revision: that if something today is unpleasant, you don't like it, don't let it slip by.
The Bible speaks of redeeming the time. Every moment, if it is unpleasant, it should be redeemed, because you are going to meet it tomorrow as the wheel turns. So don't let the night descend and catch you with the unredeemed day. Take the day and redeem it. You may produce the results now, in the immediate present. But if you don't redeem it, when the wheel turns because you haven't yet hatched out (or as Blake says, For hatching ripe he breaks the shell,) - but if the shell isn't yet broken by the series of events which detaches you from this wheel of recurrence, then revise the day. So that next time when the wheel comes around you aren't going to relive the unpleasant thing of this moment in time."
"[...] But I can tell you - through the one thing I have brought to tell you, which is revision - it isn't hopeless. You can, if the day is unpleasant, revise it. And if tomorrow the results are not before you, and the next week and the next month, they are not before you, I know that by your revision you will change the events, when once again you must come to that moment in time. And so you will change the pattern, for the wheel is turning and you can't stop it."
"[...] You will change it only in one way; if you know the art of revision. But you will change it only to the extent when you reach that point in time - which is forever - you do not encounter (again) what to you was unpleasant. When you encounter that moment in time, it's the completed circle."
Well, I guess he didn't go into much detail about that subject in other lectures because he had already committed himself to teaching how to interpret the Bible properly, but he was on to something.
Till next time,
Will
_____________________________
This is great mystery, Will, maybe the Great Mystery. Consciousness is the Ineffable's working Its way into manifestation. And this "consciousness" is Imagination, with a capital 'I'. That, the Imagination/Son/YHWH-action of the Ineffable, is "God" to us, and it is us. We are Its -- the Ineffable's -- Manifestation in potential being worked out, fixing our unlike-Him's bit by bit. Whether it is linear time or repeating cycles of the same time, but different, is an enchanting question. I AM NOT SURE IT MATTERS. What matters is that we focus on getting it right. Per Neville, we are the Father of the Christ, Milta or "Manifestation" of the Ineffable. I.e., we are the Imagination, the consciousness. Kind of heavy.
If we do not work enough out to graduate from this level, we are restored to this grave to try again. No limit to the do-overs. And there is wailing (as a baby?) and the gnashing of teeth (adulthood?). Maybe this life again, maybe not. There are a lot of could have, should have, would have's I'd like to change into did have's. Can have, in revision. Redeeming the time in this manner may be why Neville could say, "I am not coming back here again."
posted by Daniel C. Branham-Steele at
2:24 PM
4 Comments:
That's pretty neat, I don't have too much to add, really, just that if Eternal Recurrence is the truth, I think it's great that Neville presented us with the practical work of revision (purgatory?), so, until we learn what's really going on, let us not let the night descend and catch us with the unredeemed day, that's what really matters, and Neville himself made it seem even heavier by saying "if there is one thing I have been brought into this world to tell you, it is the secret of revision".
I'll probably keep doing some more research and ruminating on the side, though :-)
By
Will, at 7:03 PM
I am sure you have heard/read Neville say that one learns, and then is responsible to teach others. Thanks for doing it.
By
Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 12:13 AM
Neville surely knew Ouspensky's concept of Recurrence:
From the chapter on Eternal Recurrence in Ouspensky's A New Model of the Universe:
Evolution, i.e. improvement, must come from the past. It is not enough to evolve in the future, even if this were possible. We cannot leave behind us the sins of our past. We must not forget that nothing disappears. Everything is eternal. Everything that has been is still in existence. The whole history of humanity is " the history of crime ", and the material for this history continually grows. We cannot go far forward with such a past as ours. The past still exists, and it gives and will give its results, creating new and ever new crimes. Evil begets evil. In order to destroy the evil-consequence it is necessary to destroy the evil-cause. If the cause of the evil lies in the past, it is useless to look for it in the present. And man must go back, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they may lie. It is only in this idea that a hint of the possibility of a general evolution can be found.
From Neville Goddard's The Law and the Promise:
Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the facts which have been conserved and still operate below the threshold of his surface mind. For him it is merely history. For him it seems unalterable — a dead and firmly fixed past. But for itself, it is living — it is part of the living age. He cannot leave behind him the mistakes of the past, for nothing disappears. Everything that has been is still in existence. The past still exists, and it gives — and still gives — its results. Man must go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they lie. This going into the past and replaying a scene of the past in imagination as it ought to have been played the first time, I call revision — and revision results in repeal.
Changing your life means changing the past. The causes of any present evil are the unrevised scenes of the past. The past and the present form the whole structure of man; they are carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and future.
Live nobly — so that mind can store a past well worthy of recall. Should you fail to do so, remember, the first act of correction or cure is always — "revise."
By
Anonymous, at 5:21 PM
Anonymous, please see my response at
https://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2019/08/observations.html
And thank you for reading and responding with your observation.
By
Daniel C. Branham-Steele, at 11:58 PM
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