Gathered Unto My People

Neville's Inner Vision

Jacob’s charge encodes a perennial truth: the burying of a plan in a field is the mind placing a belief into a definite place of consciousness. When he says, I am to be gathered unto my people, he is not seeking a tomb but a state. The cave of Machpelah, before Mamre in Canaan, is a symbol of the mind’s interior property - a sanctuary where images can rest and be remembered as part of the covenant lineage. Abraham bought it for a burying place; in Neville’s language, a mental dwelling where our thoughts are stewarded as a possession. Leah, Sarah, Rebekah, and the others appear as aspects of the self—reminding us that unity within the family of consciousness creates stability. Jacob’s end, yielding the ghost, is the soul’s consent to be identified with this inner community. The true gathering is not a crowd but the steadfast recognition that one’s life is the expression of an unchanging I AM, a covenant that holds through birth and death. Thus, the outer ritual mirrors an inner alignment: fidelity to the seed of awareness that cannot perish.