His friend Benny Gould, told by a father that his six-month-old daughter had meningitis and would not live the week, scolded the man instead of sympathising, then hung up and heard the man's voice telling him the child had miraculously recovered; a woman later dreamt two nurses saying Benny had paid for the hospital.

He wrote his exact method of getting out of the Army to a Freudian friend still serving, who ignored the letter and stayed in for the duration; the same man used to attend Neville's New York meetings and told him he gripped his chair to keep hold of reality against Neville's theories.

He reports that at his two weekly Los Angeles meetings, dozens in the audience are having the experience of the birth from above.

He says that people whose spiritual eyes are opened have repeatedly met him and seen not the little man but the risen Being awake within him.

He tells of a lady who was told a certain colour was becoming to her and made it a law never to wear red, and would not eat onions − which he mocks by pointing to the red God splashes over a sunset and a garden.

A Los Angeles woman told Neville of a vision in which she sat alone in a glass-fronted marble interior, saw him step from a self-propelled carriage wearing an Inverness cape, speak only of Infinite Power without recognising her, and then re-enter the carriage and vanish; she kept saying it was Neville and it was God.

A second Los Angeles woman told Neville of a vision in which he stood robed in white on a beach before a vast crowd of every nationality, each hearing him in their own tongue, and she knew he was both Neville and Jesus.

Neville says dozens of people find him at night beyond the world of dreams teaching the Word of God, and know him at once as Neville and as Jesus and as the Power of God, while in this world he is as weak and fragile as anyone.

Neville says he was born among black people on Barbados, where there are blue-black people, and tells of Benny Gould, the blackest man he has ever seen, in his Los Angeles audience, who has had the birth from above and into whose arms was placed a blond, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked child - David, the Christ Child.

A woman who attends his lectures told him she lay down purposely to have a vision, saw an ordinary modern scene, froze it into statuary and then with effort reanimated it, concluding that this world too must be a vision she could stop and start.

A woman friend present at the lecture told Neville a dream in which she rode a horse, her mother died, and she took her mother's place; he reads it as the approach of the second birth.

A gentleman wrote to Neville that after falling asleep desiring to teach the Bible he felt enormous energy pouring from his head, flew from his third-floor apartment toward Jan's place, then to Marge's house, thought better of both and flew home to bed, fully conscious throughout.

A second gentleman, present that night, described finding himself in an ancient city to teach everyone to fly, making a swan dive and landing gently, being congratulated by his mother-in-law Jan dressed as a monk and looking twenty, then seeing his brother Paul beside him.

His mother would silently assume a trip to America — having her dresses made and sleeping in America imaginatively — and then let his father believe he had initiated the voyage and booked her passage; the family saw her off at the ship.

A woman wrote to Neville this week saying that after her daughter and their friend Jan had separate visions and told her to ask for confirmation, she thought of Neville before sleep, and on falling asleep again he appeared to her as the risen Christ and gave her the number twenty-six; Neville explains that twenty-six is the final Pe, the mouth of God, given to her as a voice of authority, and rebukes her for extending the number to November 13th.

The same correspondent told Neville that, passing a building where he knew nobody, he imagined being the boss there with his name on the insignia, and by 10:00 that morning an out-of-town agency working for that firm telephoned offering him the job, which he declined since he was only testing the principle.