A vision Neville never wrote down and could not forget, and whose meaning took him years. He was shown an enormous field of sunflowers in which every great flower was a human face, rooted in the earth and moving in concert: if one smiled they all smiled, if one moved they all moved. Watching, he knew that he enjoyed a greater freedom than all of them together, and yet could not compare with such beauty. Beside the field was an enormous ditch, a dump where all the garbage of the world was thrown, and in it a huge rat, which he caught and caged. The reading: the flowers are what we were in the state called heaven - innocent, unreflective, incapable of initiating a thought, puppets moved by God's command - and God wants persons, not puppets. So we are detached from the field, sent through the dump, and awaken as God. He adds that psychiatrists offered him interpretations of the rat and had it entirely wrong, and that an unpleasant sign is not necessarily an unpleasant message.
Kind
Story
Interpretive layers
Experiential narrative
Psychological interpretation
Collections
Lectures
Own wordings
We were puppets, and God wants persons, not puppets
If one smiled, they all smiled; if one moved, they all moved
Occurrences
LectureThe Fourfold Gospel
They moved in concert, and I had freedom of movement even though my motion was not in harmony. I had freedom of choice even if I made the wrong choice.
Span from: 294
to: 445
Passage revision:
592852
LectureThe Fourfold Gospel
suddenly I saw this fabulous field, and consciousness followed vision. I entered the field. It had no limit; it was infinite. At first I thought them to be flowers, long, tall flowers, like sunflowers, huge, big flowers.
Span from: 305
to: 525
Passage revision:
592851
Span from: -1
to: -1
Passage revision:
599420
Span from: -1
to: -1
Passage revision:
599422
Span from: -1
to: -1
Passage revision:
599431
Span from: -1
to: -1
Passage revision:
599442
LectureUnless I Go Away
Here I was shown an enormous field of sunflowers, and every flower, the enormous flower, was the human face — but it was a flower, stationed in the earth.
Span from: 50
to: 204
Passage revision:
618994
LectureUnless I Go Away
we were just like the flowers, the sunflowers with the human faces, pastured and moving in rhythm, through God’s command. We were puppets, and God wants persons, not puppets.
Span from: 136
to: 310
Passage revision:
618997
LectureUnless I Go Away
we are going to detach ourselves from this field of beautiful sunflowers, of human faces, and then pass through that horrible state, which I saw as a dump with the rat
Span from: 225
to: 392
Passage revision:
619009
LectureUnless I Go Away
yet I was infinitely more free being one in that environment than I would have been as one of an infinite number of beautiful flowers that merely faced it
Span from: 766
to: 920
Passage revision:
619067