Death of Jack, Neville's Secretary

Date (happened)
1948
unresolved
  1. 1948 stated · preferred
    Source Baptism Into One Body ("Truth, the Word of God") ¶10"in the year 1948", told in Baptism Into One Body ("Truth, the Word of God") (nid 1310)
  2. c. 1948 stated · probable
    Source Thy Dead Shall Live ¶14"many years ago, while I was here in this city, the first year I came here", told in Thy Dead Shall Live (nid 1171)
  3. between 1948 and 1949 stated · probable
    Source Imagination Plus Faith ¶54"Six months after Jack died", told in Imagination Plus Faith (nid 1783)
  4. Well, he died in August relative · probable
    Source I Am Reality Called Imagination ¶37"Well, he died in August", told in I Am Reality Called Imagination (nid 3955)
    Said as Well, he died in August
    counted from I Am Reality Called Imagination
  5. 1948 stated · probable
    Source Baptism Into One Body ("Truth, the Word of God") ¶10
    Why M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 010)
    Reasoning Borrowed from event 1401's certain, age-arithmetic-backed dating of the same secretary's death (born 1898, died at 50 = 1948).
  6. August 1948 stated · probable
    Source The Dweller on the Threshold ¶17
    Why CloudThree H008
    Reasoning The month is missing as a claim. The sources say August repeatedly: 528417 'late August', 532025 'one hot August day', 542053 'a hot day in the month of August', 556137 'he died in August'. It agrees with the chronology record 8779 (1948-08). The year comes from the preferred 1948 claim (passage:536679).
  7. 1946 stated · refuted
    Source They Did Not Die ¶10"Two years later", told in They Did Not Die (nid 1162)
    Why pm-actor-525: refuted by the M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 010): Contradicted by the age-arithmetic anchor (born 1898, died at 50 = 1948); '2 years later' is evidently reckoned from a different, unstated starting point.
  8. c. 22 May 1964 stated · refuted
    Source Thy Dead Shall Live ¶16"Six months went by after Jack died.", told in Thy Dead Shall Live (nid 1171)
    Why pm-actor-525: refuted by the M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 010): Corresponds to no date in the passage or to nid 1171's actual delivery date (1964-11-13); appears to be a miscomputed artifact, not evidence.
Show all 13 claims
  1. between August 1970 and February 1971 stated · refuted
    Source The Dweller on the Threshold ¶17"he died last August ... And when I met him six months later", told in The Dweller on the Threshold (nid 1532)
    Why pm-actor-525: refuted by the M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 010): Irreconcilable with 'born in '98, died at 50' (1948); 'died last August' is retold loosely decades later, not a literal 1970 date.
  2. 1947 stated · refuted
    Source Standing Order ¶18"back in 1946 it was. I came out here in ’45. No, it was ’47.", told in Standing Order (nid 1962)
    Why pm-actor-525: refuted by the M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 010): From a passage where Neville audibly self-corrects ('45/'46/'47); superseded by the age-arithmetic 1948.
  3. c. July 1942 stated · refuted
    Source Immortal Man ¶40"when I met him eight months later", told in Immortal Man (nid 2137)
    Why pm-actor-525: refuted by the M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 010): Same irreconcilability with the age arithmetic; a distorted decades-later recollection.
  4. 1946 stated · refuted
    Source derived from the event's own title: "Death of Jack Butler in 1946"
    Why pm-actor-525: CloudThree H008 (judge + check): Title-derived claim ('derived from the event's own title: "Death of Jack Butler in 1946"'). The event is now titled 'Death of Jack, Neville's Secretary', with no year, so the claim's stated basis no longer exists. This is very likely the claim the reader edit pointed at. It also carries no source document, and its year contradicts the preferred 1948 claim.
    Reasoning The event held NO date claim of any kind; its own title states 1946 (year precision, parsed as "year only"). ⚠ A title in this corpus is a DERIVED artefact — an earlier pass wrote it from the passage text — so this claim is title-derived and is marked as such rather than cited as a source document; the underlying text remains the real evidence and would supersede it. Confidence `probable`, never `certain`, for that reason. Precision is never inflated beyond the title's own wording. CALIBRATION (run v1.1/l1.4/titledate, against the 489 events that already hold an independent preferred date): day 96.1%, month 94.1% agreement. Titles naming a REFERENCE event rather than the event itself ("before", "after", "during the week of", "per ... lecture") are refused outright and never reach this write — reading an anchor as the date is the same laundering phase3b committed when it wrote telling dates onto events.
  5. 1946 stated · refuted
    Source Keep the Sabbath ¶23
    Why pm-actor-525: CloudThree H008 (judge + check): Neville's 'he died in '46, Jack Butler' (Keep the Sabbath, nid 1827) is a genuine first-person statement. It is the odd one out against passage:536679, where he corrects himself ''48 or '49, I think it was '48, yes, '48' and reasons 'born in '98 and just fifty'. It also conflicts with the August 1948 death record in the chronology (8779, 1948-08) and with the M7 refutations of the other 1946, 1947 and 1942 figures. The 1946 figure fits the loose 'two years after 1944' and '45/'46/'47' recollections that were already refuted. The same 1946 slip appears in 17914 ('dead since 1946'). Refute it as the date of the death, not as a record of what he said.
    Reasoning Passage 545833 (nid 1827, 'Keep the Sabbath', pos 23) has Neville state in first person: 'My secretary, who is now gone for quite a few years, in fact, he died in ’ 46, Jack Butler.' This is independent, direct first-person testimony naming 1946, not the title-derived guess the existing claim rests on -- it upgrades that derived claim to a witnessed one. Held at probable rather than certain because the packet's own prior npr rows (92261, 92480, 92507) record a separate, more heavily corroborated first-person account elsewhere (passages 536679/536681, cited on sibling events 6935/8779) placing the same Jack Butler's death in August 1948 with supporting age arithmetic (born '98, died at fifty) -- a genuine conflict between two of Neville's own statements about the same death.
Place
New York City
Persons
Jack Butler
Neville Goddard
Jack (Neville's secretary)
Al (Neville's sister-in-law)
Alice ("Al"), Neville's sister-in-law
Jack
Told / reported
  1. 28 April 1964 stated
    Source They Did Not DieThey Did Not Die (nid 1162), telling 1162-2, told 1964-04-28
  2. 13 November 1964 stated
    Source Thy Dead Shall LiveThy Dead Shall Live (nid 1171), telling 1171-2, told 1964-11-13
  3. 13 November 1964 stated
    Source Thy Dead Shall LiveThy Dead Shall Live (nid 1171), telling 1171-4, told 1964-11-13
  4. 24 November 1967 stated
    Source Baptism Into One Body ("Truth, the Word of God")Baptism Into One Body ("Truth, the Word of God") (nid 1310), telling 1310-2, told 1967-11-24
  5. 14 June 1971 stated
    Source The Dweller on the ThresholdThe Dweller on the Threshold (nid 1532), telling 1532-3, told 1971-06-14
  6. 19 July 1971 stated
    Source Imagination Plus FaithImagination Plus Faith (nid 1783), telling 1783-12, told 1971-07-19
  7. 9 April 1971 stated
    Source Standing OrderStanding Order (nid 1962), telling 1962-3, told 1971-04-09
  8. 24 November 1967 stated
    Source Truth Word GodTruth Word God (nid 2089), telling 2089-5, told 1967-11-24
Show all 12 claims
  1. 1972 stated · probable
    Source Immortal ManImmortal Man (nid 2137), telling 2137-12, told 1972
  2. 1970 estimated
    Source The Divine Bodynid 1036 surviving delivery claim after refutation. All claims: 1957-??-?? refuted; 1968-5-10 refuted; 1970-??-?? certain (preferred)
    Why Lane L7 (#2354) re-derivation. Supersedes in substance, not in storage, the refuted-date told claim(s) on this event; those rows stand per append-only.
    Reasoning Re-derived, not walked down. The existing told claim(s) on this event took their date from a delivery claim on node 1036 that the corpus has since REFUTED, so the corpus was asserting that Neville told this on a day it separately says he did not lecture. That is a contradiction rather than an over-confidence, and lowering the confidence would have hidden it instead of resolving it. The refutation stands and the told claim is the wrong side of it. Node 1036 surviving (non-refuted) claim: 1970-??-?? at `certain`. All claims on the node: 1957-??-?? refuted; 1968-5-10 refuted; 1970-??-?? certain (preferred). Superseded here: delta 0: 1968-05-10 at `certain` (run `corpus v1 / phase3b`). The telling is dated by its lecture, so with the refuted date removed from consideration the surviving claim is what the telling inherits, at that claim own confidence and no higher.
  3. 3 March 1967 estimated
    Source Keep the Sabbath
    Reasoning Passage 545833 sits inside lecture node 1827, 'Keep the Sabbath', whose delivery date is established at certain confidence (catalog #344, the transcript's own removed chrome dateline '3/3/67', and a Friday weekday cross-check against the sabbath content). That is the date Neville told the Jack Butler story recorded here. || v1.1 type repair: written as `stated` by run v1.1/l4/actor417/8000-9999-b2, retyped `estimated` — the claim cites node 1827, not a passage, so it is this lane's inference rather than something Neville said in so many words (#2117).
  4. 10 May 1968 stated · refuted
    Source The Divine BodyThe Divine Body (nid 1036), telling 1036-0, told 1968-05-10
    Reasoning || v1.1/l7/told-close: the delivery claim this was derived from (nid 1036, 1968-5-10) was refuted by the L7 adjudication (#2363). The corrected told claim from the same lecture stands at 1970-?-?. This row is retired rather than deleted so the derivation history remains readable.
Sources

Source

  • The Divine Body ¶5 (I said to Jack, “I gave you a good, wonderful, Catholic funeral, Jack, in Haverstraw where you were. And your body was put down in a grave. By now, it’s all decayed right in that little bit of earth. If it hasn’t yet, it will soon decay and turn to dust,…)
  • They Did Not Die ¶10 (Two years later, I came west and received one morning a cable that my secretary who served me faithfully—he was like a brother to me—had died.)
  • Thy Dead Shall Live ¶14 (He simply died on one hot August day when I was out here, my first year. So I went back and took care of the funeral, buried him up in Haverstraw, New York.)
  • Thy Dead Shall Live ¶16 (I put my hand this way on his thigh and squeezed it. I said, “You see my hand doesn’t go through the thigh, he isn’t made of gossamer, he’s as solid as I am, as you are.)
  • Baptism Into One Body ("Truth, the Word of God") ¶10 (My secretary, Jack Butler, died quite suddenly in the year 1948, ’48 or ’49, I think it was ’48, yes, ’48, for he was born in ’98 and he was just fifty when he died. So I went back…I was here in California at the time, here on a lecture tour, still livin…)
  • The Dweller on the Threshold ¶17 (Here he is standing before me, and he is a strong, healthy, wonderful, young lad, and I am telling him I went to his funeral, gave him a nice Catholic funeral and put him in holy ground, and had the priest do all the little things for him as his sister d…)
  • Imagination Plus Faith ¶54 (I put my hand on his thigh, and I squeezed it, and it was solidly real just as flesh and blood. He looked at me and did exactly what he would have done here and said, “Take your hand off me!” just like that as I squeezed his thigh.)
  • Standing Order ¶18 (I said, “Jack, you died. I went to your funeral. I buried you. I got a good Catholic funeral for you in Haverstraw, New York, and put you all the way down and covered you up with a lot of sand,”)
  • Truth Word God ¶14 (“Jack, you are not dead, but you died. I gave you a good Catholic funeral and your body is buried in a Catholic cemetery.”)
  • Immortal Man ¶40 (Like Jack — when I said, “Well, Jack, you know, you died. I went to your funeral.” “So you’re crazy. I am not — I died, but I’m not dead.” I said, “Yes, you died but you’re not dead.”)
  • I Am the Truth ¶7 (How could I convince Jack that I came back from San Francisco — from Los Angeles, rather — and attended his funeral in Haverstraw, New York, and paid for his funeral and gave him a good Catholic funeral, because his sister demanded it?)
  • I Am Reality Called Imagination ¶37 (Well, I had a wonderful friend and secretary, he died suddenly at the age of 50 - when I was out there, I then lived in New York City, he was born in Harrisburg, New York, it is upstate New York - he lived in Manhattan and took care of my books and took …)