A woman sees Neville clothed in golden light as God
Description
Neville reads a letter from a woman present that evening who, meditating alone in her living room after her husband retired with a toothache, felt the Presence of God, looked up and saw Neville standing in her dining room clothed in golden light, knowing him at once to be both Neville and God and altogether beautiful; Neville says this qualifies her for apostleship, as Paul made having seen the Risen Lord the prerequisite.
Authored by
Anonymous (not verified)
Told
10 May 1959
(refuted)
10 May 1959
(refuted)
18 June 1971
(probable)
Sources
- Source: Who Paul Really Is ¶29 (“Neville, I was sitting in my living room. My husband had a toothache, and he retired. I thought, Well, I would just sit and meditate. I was meditating in my living room, and suddenly I felt the Presence of God! I looked up, and there in my dining room .…)
Lecture catalog #100 — text: HAVE
Neville tells his audience that he had read, in that same morning's newspaper, a new Vatican document reaffirming Church guidelines, including the tradition of Mary's perpetual virginity.
He returns to the same experience later in the lecture, restating that he has experienced the Crucifixion as sheer ecstasy through six whirling vortices and repeating the words of the voice that laid
In passing he remarks on his own physical condition, saying he is not a strong man today, in contrast to the two-hundred-pound author he says he could not throw far.
Neville describes reading that morning's newspaper report of a new Vatican paper insisting on the perpetual virginity of Mary and papal infallibility, which he says he could hardly believe and calls s
Woman dreams and writes to Neville in June 1959
Description
A woman new to Neville's meetings, who had not yet met him in person, wrote him a letter describing a dream from two nights before. In it she stood at a streetcar stop letting buses pass, then found herself boarding a long black train past a crowd weeping over a coffin, and saw a dead young woman -- her arm eaten away -- begin to stir and come back to life. Waking briefly to record the dream, she fell back asleep and dreamed she was among a crowd hurrying to hear Neville because word had spread that he was about to die; she watched him lay down in a ditch, crawl through a tunnel into a cave, and then rise and return the way he came with an effortlessness the others, following the same pattern, struggled and only partly managed to match.
Authored by
Anonymous (not verified)
Date (happened)
9 June 1959
(probable)
9 June 1971
(probable)
A new attendee dreams of death, rebirth, and following Neville through a tunnel
Description
Neville reads out a letter from a woman new to his meetings who could not understand his books until she heard him speak, and who dreamed of letting buses pass, boarding a long black train, seeing a dead young woman restored to life and a man in white rising from a coffin, then of a crowd hurrying to be with Neville because he was about to die, and of Neville robing himself, lying in a ditch, crawling effortlessly through a small tunnel into a cave and back out again while the others struggled to follow.
Authored by
Anonymous (not verified)
Date (happened)
9 June 1959
9 June 1971
(probable)
Told
10 May 1959
(refuted)
10 May 1959
(refuted)
18 June 1971
(probable)
Sources
- Source: Who Paul Really Is ¶13 (I do not think the lady is here tonight . . she has been coming here recently, and she wrote me a letter, and she said, “I did not understand your books; they were given recently to me by a lady who brought me to your meetings.)
Lecture catalog #101 — text: HAVE
Lecture catalog #102 — text: HAVE
before 16 June 1959
(possible)
Neville tells his audience he had just been reading an unnamed scholarly work on psychology that argued the past has ceased to exist as such but still shapes the present through memory.
c. 16 June 1959
(probable)
Neville says he had just been reading a master work on psychology which claims the past has ceased to be and can only influence the present through memory, a claim he rejects.
Neville's earlier limitations of understanding began to lift in July 1959, when he underwent a mystical rebirth or resurrection from within the womb of his own skull.
Neville dated his canonical 'birth from above' mystical experience to July 1959, often described as lasting twenty minutes at Sea Cliff, retold in lectures through 1972.
Neville's resurrection schema begins with awakening within his skull and emergence from it, followed immediately by the birth-from-above sign; he dates this first fulfillment to July 1959.
Neville recalls that although he had first stood in the presence of God about thirty years earlier, that experience of being 'embraced by him' did not come to him with real understanding until July of
Neville recalls that when he left this audience two months earlier he asked them to test with him what he had heard and told them, and says he has since seen for himself what he had only heard.
Neville ties John 8:57 to his own life: born in February 1905, he was forty-nine and a half — 'not yet fifty years of age' — in July 1959 when the experience came, which he offers as proof that script
He dates his own realisation of the Promise to twelve years ago this coming month, which is why those who knew him before heard only the Law from him.
He recounts that until July 1959 he had taught the gospel only as law, with wonderful results from coast to coast in all the major cities, and had no idea it was literally true.
Neville recounts his own mystical experiences: God awaking within him, pushing the stone away and coming out of the tomb, holding the child and being called father by God's son, his body being torn fr
Ten years before this lecture, coming July, Christ - who so loved him - took on all his afflictions and awoke in him, and proved not to be another.
c. 8 July 1959
(probable)
Neville tells his audience that he had left them two months earlier, and that where before he had only heard of and believed the principle he taught, he can now say he has seen it directly.
Freedom Barry says Neville marked his "Birth from Above" experience in the margin of his own Bible with the date 7-16-59, i.e.
He could not wait to tell the vision, and told it to his San Francisco audience on his first night there; afterwards a man who was an authority on masters and adepts scoffed that he had talked about h
Marta's friend sees her in an inverted heart cage beside an enormous serpent
Description
Neville tells of his friend Marta's death on 19 July and of the vision another friend had within a week of it, in which Marta stood in an inverted heart-shaped cage divided from an enormous ringed serpent and asked how long until they became one.
Authored by
Anonymous (not verified)
Sources
- Source: God's Wisest Creature ¶4 (Our friend, Marta, departed this world on the 19th of July. Within a week after Marta’s departure, her friend who was with her when she died had this vision. She saw Marta, the same dear girl we all loved.)
Neville recalled speaking on Sunday morning, 19 July 1959, to an open, voluntary audience of roughly 1,000 to 1,200 people in San Francisco before dining and retiring at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.
Public Sunday morning series at Scottish Rite Auditorium, opening July 19 at 11 a.m., with further lectures July 26 and August 2.
A notice announces that Neville, a lecturer, teacher and author, opens his 1959 lecture series with a public lecture on July 19 at 11 a.m.
On July 20, 1959 in San Francisco, Neville experienced what he described as awakening from a tomb within his own skull, an event that marked a turning point in his lectures.
between 19 July 1959 and 20 July 1959
Neville's 'Birth from Above' awakening occurred, and that morning he spoke to a free open meeting of about a thousand people.
Place: Sir Francis Drake Hotel, San Francisco
Neville experienced a mystical awakening that he later marked as his spiritual "birthday", said to have occurred at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco.
This source collates Neville's repeated first-person accounts: he retired normally at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel and at about 4:00 a.m.
Returning from San Francisco where he had the 'Birth from Above' experience, Neville told the story in shockingly literal terms — being born through the skull of his head as a womb opens — to a full 300-seat hall, and the audience collapsed to thirty
Description
Returning from San Francisco where he had the 'Birth from Above' experience, Neville told the story in shockingly literal terms — being born through the skull of his head as a womb opens — to a full 300-seat hall, and the audience collapsed to thirty, then twelve, within a week; he kept telling it. [Date evidence: 1959 — after Neville's San Francisco fortnight; the vision itself is dated 7-16-59 in Neville's Bible margin per Barry] [Place: Fine Arts Auditorium at the Wilshire, Los Angeles]
Verbatim (witness's words)
he went to San Francisco, and that was where he had this “Birth from Above,” which changed the entire direction of his teaching. And that hall was full when he opened. It held three hundred people there in the Fine Arts Auditorium at the Wilshire in Los Angeles. That hall was full, and he told this shocking story in the most literal terms of being born through the skull of his head as a womb opens. And the next night, that was on Monday, the next Thursday, there were thirty people. The next Monday, there were twelve. He kept telling it
Date (happened)
between 20 July 1959 and 27 July 1959
(probable)
Neville tells his audience that the coming month will mark twelve years since his own mystical experience -- his 'birth from above' of July 1959 -- and uses the anniversary to affirm that everyone wil
between 20 July 1959 and 1 January 1963
Neville tells his audience that on July 20, 1959, he suddenly and unexpectedly awakened to find himself buried, entombed within his own skull -- an experience he compares to Paul's own awakening withi