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The central point of all Neville’s work is the equation between human consciousness and the Creative Source.

In the first chapter of The Power of Awareness he states: “I AM is the self definition of the absolute” and “I AM is the self definition of God.” This he takes from Christian scripture. He made the intuitive jump: the “I AM” referred to is, in modern terms, a person’s wordless awareness of being. Neville elaborates this revelation in interpretive passages so elegantly consistent from one chapter to the next that they are scarcely refutable.

To help eradicate the self-defeating assumption that God is a terrifying omniscient authority, far exalted above what we take to be lowly earthly human existence, one thing mentioned by Neville in passing is very helpful: “God”, like every other character in scripture, is a personification, created by men who used allegory because they did not have psychological language at their disposal.

Take care: one’s understanding of “awareness of being” may at first go astray, because the risk is that, without specific instructions, a person can turn around in a series of mental associations, deluding himself that contemplation of the idea of awareness is equivalent to awareness. As Maurice Nicoll said, somewhere in the Commentaries (to paraphrase): “You must not think about self-remembering, you must actually self-remember.”

I point the reader to the best explication of self consciousness I have found from a book by Dr. Rolf Alexander. For background and links, including a pdf download of his instructive exercise, please go to Episode 1 of the Neville On Fire podcast. These instructions seem to be necessary because the art of self awareness as a prolonged state is not a naturally occurring idea. It comes to us, it seems, through an underground current going back to time immemorial.

How strange that the Absolute, what we thought to be an incomprehensible God, remote and external to us, is directly within our grasp. While the totality of infinite Mind, whatever it ultimately is, still lies beyond the surface level of personality, the mystery sought by men throughout the ages is one and the same as our own consciousness.