Neville tells his audience that he has repeatedly assured a close friend -- who had written describing a vision of a young, straight tree growing from the crown of his own skull -- that he was already born from above, even though the friend has no conscious memory of the experience. Neville reads the tree's reported age (three or four years) as an index of how many of the four great mystical events (resurrection, discovery of sonship, the rending of the veil, and the descent of the dove) the friend has yet to recall, and he continued reassuring him of this over several months.