Messages 2008
Whitman’s Persona as Poet and Person.
April 28th, 2008
Santa Cruz, California
Received by FAB
I am here, Walt Whitman.
Let me elaborate on my channeling of January 4, 2005. I said there, “Whereas I was in fact different in real life from the individual portrayed in Leaves of Grass, nevertheless in essence I was one and the same with the rhapsodic lover of humanity described. That is, in my heart, I did truly love humanity and life very much. So, even though I may not have outwardly manifested my personality in the same way as in my poems, nevertheless that literary creation was true to my intention as a creature of God passionately in love with the drama of history and the beauty of the cosmos and its Creator.”
I wish to make two points: firstly, that this was not complete, as I found out over here, and secondly, this new person evolved in the years previous to the first appearance of Leaves of Grass in 1855.
By the time I was ready to publish my book, my view of myself had evolved as a result of reading Ralph Waldo Emerson, and also because of having had more than one experience of love. As I got older, I began to reevaluate my relationship to my time and my country, and I saw that a new poetry was needed and also a new type of man. But I was not able to manifest in a complete way this new poetic self, even though, as I said, inwardly, that’s how I felt.
And then, over here, I noticed certain negativities in myself that I hadn’t been aware of on earth. So even though I identified sincerely with the person in my poems, because I was only a mortal, I could not completely merge with this identity until I came here. And in this process in spirit, some of my basic ideas about life were altered to adjust to the truth as I perceived on this side of life.
So what I originally channeled is all true, but not completely so, because of earth imperfections.