From Exalted Minds to Dust

Neville's Inner Vision

Think of the verse as a map of your inner weather. The man who 'excellency mount up to the heavens' is the ego enthroned in thought—the image you entertain of yourself as separate, above the ordinary, defined by what others call success. The line 'his head reach unto the clouds' speaks to that airy, ungrounded pride that forgets the simple truth: you are the I AM awakening in every moment. Then the decree, 'Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung,' reveals a natural law: identification with form dissolves when you refuse to live by appearances. The dung is the waste product of a life anchored to image; when awareness turns inward, the imagined self collapses back into consciousness and is not seen by the true I AM. In this light, the crowd’s question—'Where is he?'—is what happens to any false self when the inner state of unity is claimed. Your task is to practice from the end: imagine you are already the I AM, not the promoted self; revise any memory of failure or status as merely transient projections.