Report 2:
My Understanding of
Theistic Psychology
By Owen Sonoda
Instructions for this report are at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/459-g23-report2.htm
I am answering Questions 1, 2, 3, 6,
and 7
Section A: My Own Summary of the
Selections
For the
first portion of this report I am asked to summarize a bunch of selections
from Theistic Psychology that I feel are relevant to the questions I am to
answer later.
a) When thinking
of mental biology, the concept of discrete degrees must be understood. We need to think of the brain and the mind as
two separate uses; one being natural and one spiritual. The brain is physical; it has its place in
the natural world and can be measured and touched physically. The mind, on the other hand, is of a totally
different degree than the brain.
The mind
exists rationally and is thought of in its relationship to the brain. The mind is who we are, but cannot touch it
nor can we see it with our physical eyes.
In this respect, the mind is the rational portion of the brain. It is what exists as a relationship to the
whole. With this in mind, you can see
that the brain and mind are two different degrees of the same object.
b) Another term
that we run across when looking at mental biology is that of substantive
dualism. Substantive dualism is
believing the writings of Swedenborg and allowing the concept of God into our
understanding of all that is science.
The approach would say that the mind and the brain are two different
entities operating differently, one in the natural world and one in the
spiritual.
Before this
approach, the idea was that the brain was physical because we could see it and
experiment with it; and the mind was a phenomenon. We couldn’t measure the mind with our tools,
so it became a product of the brain, but not different from it. In order to understand mental biology, we need
to see the mind as different. That the
mind is not just a phenomenon, it was created by God and is controlled by Him
through his divine love.
c) The Divine
Psychologist is the key to understanding Theistic Psychology’s role in today’s
society. Depending on our thoughts and
actions in the Spiritual World, we can be sent to the heaven or hells of our
mind. What the Divine Psychologist does
is try to test us with our hellish thoughts to make us stronger within the
heavens of our mind. It is through Him
that we can make ourselves better people and to understand our limitations and
to embrace them.
The Divine
Psychologist is there to guide us and to challenge us. He is the one who allows us to become better
than we currently are and be in a state of always trying to improve
ourselves. It is because of Him that we
are able to live in the heavens of our mind, if we are willing to accept what
He has to give us.
d) In order for
someone to believe in the value of the teachings of Theistic Psychology, you
must take on the positive bias. All that
the positive bias asks is that you, as a student of Theistic Psychology,
consider the possibility that the writings of Swedenborg are empirical and can
be proven- just not in the natural world.
By taking
on the positive bias, the student can reap the full benefits of all that
Theistic Psychology is teaching. It may
be difficult because we are taught through science that we need physical
evidence that things happen in order for us to believe it. That is the negative bias.
In the
natural world we can have no physical evidence of the Spiritual World because
the Spiritual World is not physical, so it cannot exist in the physical
world. This makes perfect sense once you
adopt the positive bias and believe in the possibility that God exists and is
responsible for all that happens.
e) The vertical
community that exists in the Spiritual World is very important to
understand. Like horizontal communities
in the physical world, the vertical community is where the spirits live. Those of the highest community are closest to
God and his love. From there they work
downward into the hells.
The
vertical community is a relationship in and of itself. It is where the spirits communicate and live
and how they influence the people on Earth.
It is through God’s love that we can ignore the hells of our mind and
allow us to ascend to the vertical community of heaven, bringing us closer to
God Himself.
Section B: My Answers to the Five
Questions
The Question I am
Answering is Question 1:
(a) Explain in your own words how you understand the
phrase "mental biology" in theistic psychology. What makes theistic
psychology "mental" and what makes it "biological"? You
will need to include several related concepts to give an adequate explanation:
e.g., evolution of consciousness, discrete degrees, and substantive
dualism. You will need to explain these related terms as well before the
whole is comprehensible. Is it important for a theory in psychology to be
biological?
In order for any student of
Theistic Psychology to understand its true meaning, we will have to understand
the concept of mental biology. Mental
biology is the layout of your mind as it is influenced in the Spiritual World. Through the Law of Correspondences, we can
relate each portion of the mind to something of the natural world.
For example, the Spiritual
Sun that gives our mental body its life is equal to that of the natural
sun. Like in the natural world, the
Spiritual Sun sends out God’s love which is taken in by our mental bodies and
used as energy to let us carry on with our life.
It is difficult for many to
understand a concept such as mental biology because we can only explain things
within the limits of our understanding.
When I talk about life in the Spiritual World it is a little different
than life in the natural world, but without actually going to the Spiritual
World I cannot fully describe what it is like.
When studying about mental
biology, we come across discrete degrees.
This is a very useful term in terms of trying to fully comprehend what
mental biology actually means.
What discrete degrees tell
us is that there are multiple levels to everything. There is the natural and the rational or
spiritual level. The natural is like
what we can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear in the natural world. A rock in the natural world is a rock but
that rock also has another degree to it, the rational degree.
The rational degree is what
we can relate to that belonging to the Spiritual World. Although a rock is not alive and has no form
of cognition, it still has a degree which relates it to the Spiritual
World. The rational degree is the
relationship the rock has with the Spiritual World, its uses. A rock is a rock but it has many uses and
those uses are what we come to understand as the rational degree of it.
Just like our mind. In the natural world we have a brain and the
brain is something we can sense.
However, we also can see that we have a mind. The mind is what allows us to feel emotion and
to come up with our ideas, whether good or evil. The mind is what exists in the Spiritual
World, it is the rational degree of our brain.
This makes perfect sense
because when studying atheistic psychology; we are taught that the workings of
the brain are a phenomenon because we cannot hold it and sense it to
study. We know that human cognition is
complex and it is much more than just the brain. Theistic Psychology lets us understand that
the mind isn’t just a phenomenon, it has a life of its own and it just doesn’t
exist in the natural world.
On that note we are now
required to think of mental biology as a dualist science. What dualism teaches is that there can be
science and a God. Monist science leaves
God out. In order to fully understand
mental biology we need to see that God exists and is what is controlling us and
giving us everything that is us.
We have certain thoughts
because God gave it to us; we do certain things because God made us do it. This is the idea that the dualist approach teaches. And this is represented in mental biology
through the influence the Spiritual Sun has on both the affective and cognitive
organs.
Through the Law of
Correspondences, we know that the affective organ is like our circulatory
system and the cognitive organ is like the respiratory system. Without either, we cannot exist in the
Spiritual and the natural worlds. And it
is God through His love that allows the affective and cognitive organs to
function.
The major idea that we all
must understand is that the spiritual equals the mental. So, in the case of Theistic Psychology, the
Spiritual World is the mental world.
Therefore, mental biology shows us what the mental is all about.
We are creatures of thought
and the fact that the spiritual equals the mental supports this idea. After we die, we move on to the Spiritual
World. There we enter a world entirely
of our mind. It is because of this that
Theistic Psychology needs to teach about all things that relate to the
mental.
Then, you might ask how
does biology play a role in Theistic Psychology? Well we then turn to the Law of
Correspondences that defines a lot of what Theistic Psychology teaches
about. The law tells us that that there
are correspondences between the rational and the natural. This makes perfect sense because can we not
see ourselves in our mind’s eye? So our
arm in the natural world is our arm in the rational or spiritual. Biology is the study of living organisms and
we are living both in the natural and spiritual.
The biology portion allows
us to see the make-up of the Spiritual World because it exists in our
minds. We can learn how it is structured
and influenced and through the Law of Correspondences we know that there exists
both a cognitive (respiratory system) and affective (circulatory system) organ
that gives the mental us life in the mental world.
So by putting these two
terms together we get mental biology which is the structure of our mental
bodies in the mental world. Mental
biology will teach us about how the mental body works because when we die, we
enter a completely different world than that we left. By understanding how our mental bodies are
influenced we can better understand how our natural bodies are influenced by
using the Law of Correspondences. Once
we understand that, we can see that God is an important aspect in science and
He is the one responsible for all that we are.
Because psychology studies
the human it is very important for any theory to be biological. It has to deal with an organism, whether
natural or mental, and it has to study it.
If this theory weren’t biological in nature, then Theistic Psychology
will have nothing to build its teachings on.
It is now a science when we can relate what we learn to the biological.
(b) Diagram A in Section 6.3.1.1.1 is a portrayal of mental
biology. Explain what elements of the diagram are useful for you, bringing out
new aspects you haven't thought of yet. And what elements are problematic for
you and why: Is the idea too vague? Does it contradict something you believe?
In the diagram, I found the
Spiritual Sun and its effect on the cognitive and affective organs very
useful. We can see through the diagram
that the Spiritual Sun sends out its warmth to the cognitive and affective organs
at the same time. This warmth is what
fuels both organs, allowing us to exist in the mental.
Like any natural system, if
we lose the cognitive or affective we cease to exist. So the love of God has to reach both organs
in order for us to be alive. This is
also how He affects us and controls us.
It is through his love that we feel what we feel and we think what we
think. Once I understood that idea, the
rest of the teachings fell into place.
As with all classes I take,
I entered this class with no preconceptions.
I guess you could say I took the positive bias before I even learned
about it. My only hesitation was in the
idea about God. I don’t agree with the
Christian or Catholic ideas about God and their opinions about how God loves
everyone but yet they judge people.
When taking this class, I
had to put aside my ideas about this Christian/Catholic God and listen to what
Swedenborg reported. It was refreshing
to then hear that his empirical evidence held truer than anything a priest
could teach. I guess you could say the
idea of God contradicted my ideas, but in a good way.
The Question I am
Answering is Question 2:
(a) Discuss the concept of the Divine Psychologist.
Explain it. Is this concept an essential feature of theistic psychology or
should it be omitted for the sake of greater acceptance?
As I understand it, the
Divine Psychologist is God in relation to Theistic Psychology. We need to consider the Divine Psychologist
when we study Theistic Psychology because it allows us to put the writings of
Swedenborg in a context relating to psychology, not just theology.
The Divine Psychologist is
the one we seek to better ourselves so that our life in the Spiritual World
will be one of a heavenly nature. He is
the one who controls our actions and thoughts but also allows us the freedom to
make our own path in life. It is His
divine love that allows our mental body to exist and keeps us alive in both the
natural and rational worlds.
Through the Divine
Psychologist we learn that we control our own actions through the freedom He
creates. We learn that our thoughts and
actions will create the Heaven or Hell in our minds that we will experience in
the Spiritual World. It is when our thoughts
are evil and selfish in nature, we are embracing the Hell in our minds. Theistic Psychology is there to give us the
knowledge to recognize when we are in the Hells of our mind and to change our
thoughts and actions to bring us back to the Heaven.
I think that without the
concept of the Divine Psychologist, the understanding of Theistic Psychology
will go down. It is the fact that there
is a Divine Psychologist that Theistic Psychology becomes meaningful to
psychology students. We can now take the
writings of Swedenborg and relate them to what we are studying; and the end result
is a greater knowledge of what to expect after death and how we control where
we end up.
(b) Is it possible for you to relate to it, or not? What
would need to change in your ideas before you could accept such an idea as
completely real in your life? What is the psychology of cooperation?
Could this be something important to you right now?
As a student of psychology,
I feel that there needs to be a concept such as the Divine Psychologist to
fully understand what Theistic Psychology is teaching. I can relate to that idea because it makes
sense to have such an omnipotent, omniscient psychologist.
Through the positive bias,
I am able to accept the concept as completely real. Although we cannot physically see the Divine
Psychologist, Swedenborg had empirical evidence that such a person exists. You can think that Swedenborg was crazy, but
it becomes irrational when you consider that he was talking to God and existing
in the Spiritual World while still being a very active member of society.
That fact alone was
evidence enough for me to believe that there is a Divine Psychologist out there
and, since accepting Him, I was able to recognize when I am in the Hells of my
mind and change my thoughts and actions to bring me back to my Heaven. Also, it makes studying Theistic Psychology
much easier when you consider there is a Divine Psychologist out there.
Psychology of cooperation
is our way of cooperating with the Divine Psychologist to prepare ourselves for
eternity. We need to learn from the
Divine Psychologist how our thoughts influence us and we need to make changes
to our thoughts to allow us to live in the heavens of our mind.
(c) In the spirit of the positive bias, pretend for a day
(or an hour) that you are talking in your mind to the Divine Psychologist,
assuming it is a real phenomenon in theistic psychology. Describe what
happened.
I believe that even an hour
with the Divine Psychologist would be enough to allow myself to see how I am in
reference to the whole scheme of things.
I would ask Him what I can do to stay within the Heaven of my mind. I would also ask him how I could help other
people understand what Theistic Psychology is teaching and allow them to live
better lives in both the natural and rational worlds.
The two of us would be sitting
in a quiet room having a nice conversation.
As a student of psychology, it is my goal to try to understand humans
better. I also want to be able to help
people in any way possible and one of the best ways is to give them the
knowledge necessary to live in Heaven both in the natural and Spiritual
worlds. I would ask Him these types of
questions.
At the end of our
conversation, I would thank Him for the opportunity to meet him and to better
understand Theistic Psychology. Then I
would part knowing that I have bettered myself and hopefully those that I will
run into.
The Question I am
Answering is Question 3:
(a) Explain how you understand the concepts of heaven
and hell in theistic psychology. How does it relate to your ideas about
this prior to the course? Has there been a change in your attitude or
knowledge?
In Theistic Psychology
heaven is a place of pure happiness.
Angels exist and each knows their purpose in the Spiritual World. There are three separate heavens
corresponding to their ruling loves. The
lowest heaven is the place where the most natural world-like angels exist.
These angels accept the love of God but are still in need of certain Earthly
desires, like wanting to play sports or go to work. However, these desires are different than
what you would think of in the natural world.
Competition doesn’t happen in heaven, at least not in the same sense
that we think of on Earth.
The second heaven is in the
middle. These angels accept God’s love
and omnipotence but still want to have some sort of purpose. In terms of the lower heaven, the angels
living in the second heaven are closer to perfection and closer to the
Spiritual Sun.
The highest heaven is the
third heaven. There the angels are the
most perfect of all. They accept God’s love
and omnipotence unconditionally and live closest to the Spiritual Sun. This heaven is the brightest of all the
heavens.
In heaven everyone is happy
because they love God and others as well as the self. All angels in heaven live in truth and love and
that’s what allows them to be there.
Heaven as a whole is known as the Grand Human because it looks like a
large human from above. All the
societies in heaven have a purpose through the Law of Correspondences and each
function to give life to the Grand Human.
There is no conflict in heaven because you live among angels that have
the same thoughts as you and all of your limitations and differences make up
perfection as a whole.
On the other hand, hell
exists in the Spiritual World as well.
There are many hells each with little devils that are governed by their
ruling love. One main way you get to
hell is by not accepting the truth and love of God and living in your own false
reality. In hell these spirits are
constantly tortured and punished, but they do not realize it because they are
happy living in their little hells.
Getting to hell is as
simple as getting to heaven. All you
have to do is let your ruling love take over.
The ruling loves of hell are those like greed, hatred, irrational thoughts,
and not accepting God. From a heavenly
standpoint, hell is a place that no one wants to be but from hell things are
the way they should be. Spirits there
are happy too because they are living in their own false realities and even
taking up their lives as if they have never left the natural world. Hell as a whole is known as the Grand Monster
and can be related to such things as waste material and all things negative
that can correspond with the natural.
It seems that heaven and
hell aren’t too different from the stereotypical view that we have all been
given through religion. It seems that
heaven is bright and happy whereas hell is dark and scary. However, heaven is not a city in the sky
where the angels walk around on clouds, as so many shows portray it. Before this course I had no real images of
heaven because what religion tried to show didn’t make sense to me. If we die, how can we live above Earth on
clouds? That was just too irrational for
me.
This course has given me a
better idea of heaven and hell because what was said through the readings and
discussions in class painted a more rational picture. It makes sense that in heaven we are not in
the natural world and that we are close to God.
It also made sense that hell is a place that seems dark and scary from
the viewpoint of someone who does not want to be there. What I found really interesting was learning
how one gets to heaven or hell. Religion
has always made it known that you go to hell because you sinned and God put you
there when you die. It is reassuring to
know that we determine our own afterlife based on our ruling loves. It never made sense that an all-loving God
ever judged people because He is supposed to love us regardless of what we do
and who we are; another contradiction in religious teaching.
(b) Discuss how you relate to the concept of the economics
of immortality.
What the economics of
immortality tells us is how we can get to our own heaven or hell. The main focus of the chart is our self in
relation to others and God and how we go about loving each of them. It is important to note that you can still
get to heaven by loving oneself in addition to others and/or God. But loving oneself for the sake of oneself is
a guaranteed way to get to hell. By
following the chart we see that the more we love the higher in heaven we can
ascend.
By loving God, others or
self for the sake of God (and self) you can make your way to the highest heaven
because you accept God’s truth and love unconditionally. If you love God, others or self for the sake
of others (and self) you can make it to the middle heaven because you are not
being selfish in your ruling love.
However, if you love anything for the sake of self then you will be sent
to hell because you are being selfish and loving material things, like your
life in the natural world.
The economics of
immortality is a nice way of showing how you can recognize your ruling loves
and warn you if you need to change your ways.
If you find you are doing things for God or others for personal gain,
then you know you are on your way to hell.
But as long as you do things for the sake of others in addition to self,
then your ruling love is that of a heavenly nature. I now know that I must do things in life for
the sake of others and/or God in addition to myself in order to ascend to
heaven when I die. This makes perfect
sense to me and, I believe, that I have been doing a lot of heavenly things in
the past and hope to continue to do many in the future.
(c) Explain your idea of what is the vertical community
to which we are connected. How is this related to heaven and hell? How is this
concept in theistic psychology different from what psychologists think of
"delusions" when talking about "spirits"? What needs to
change in psychology before the idea of the vertical community can be presented
as a method of therapy?
In the natural world we see many horizontal
communities where we live next to each other.
In the Spiritual World there exists a vertical community and this
relates to the levels of heaven and hell.
The higher you go in the vertical community, the closer to God and the
Spiritual Sun you get and closer to perfection.
If we deny truth and live in our fantasies, we are descending to the
lowest parts of the vertical community; the hells. So by knowing and understanding what the
vertical community is, we can enter heaven by accepting all that is rational
and spiritual.
Everyone living in the vertical community accepts
some form of rationality be it real or false.
In a way delusions and spirits can be associated if we are accepting the
hell of our mind because delusions are false truths. In psychology when we see spirits as
delusions we are seeing false truths and that could be dangerous in terms of
the vertical community. The vertical
community can be a useful therapeutic tool in that it can teach people to fight
those delusions by accepting God’s truth and love. The patient must understand that those
delusions are not real, they aren’t rational or truths and they need to search
for what is the rational basis for those delusions.
The Question I am
Answering is Question 6:
(a) What is the relation between mind and the spiritual
world?
The mind and the Spiritual
World is the same thing. According
Swedenborg, the spiritual equals the mental and our mind exists in the
spiritual where our brain exists in the natural.
It is because our mind
exists in the spiritual that we are then immortal. Our mental selves will live on through
eternity in the Spiritual World and are mental self corresponds to our physical
self.
(b) How does theistic psychology show their relation?
Theistic Psychology shows
the relationship between the spiritual and the mental through the use of mental
biology. By looking at the chart we see
that when we leave the natural world through death, we enter the Spiritual
World which is a world of the minds. Our
bodies are left in the natural to decay but our mind lives on forever. It tells us that we take our thoughts with us
and we meet other spirits who are in the same frame of mind as us. It is there that we live together as one
perfect mind made up of individual minds.
The second death is the key
to the mental and the spiritual. Once
our natural body dies and we start to become our mental self, we begin the process
of our second birth which will determine whether we will spend the rest of
eternity in heaven or hell. All of our
thoughts and experiences that helped to shape ourselves in the natural world
will also help to shape us in the mental or Spiritual World. We bring our mental qualities to the
spiritual when we die.
(c) How can the human mind be immortal?
Since the human mind does
not exist in the natural world, it does not decay like the natural body and
brain. As a result, the mind lives on
forever and is the true source of immortality.
When we die, the brain which is the natural case for the mind is what is
left in the world.
Our mind; our thoughts,
move on into the Spiritual World where we will exits as a being of
thought. Swedenborg showed us that the
language of angels is that of thoughts and the Spiritual World is a world of
thoughts. All we have to do is think about
being someplace and we are instantly there because time and space don’t exist
there either.
(d) Why should people be concerned about the afterlife?
Since the human mind is
immortal once it awakens and you arrive in the Spiritual World, what you do
then will determine how you will spend the rest of eternity. If you are someone who loves all things
natural and love to live in fantasy, you will spend your immortal life in
hell. If you are someone who does things
for the sake of others and/or God and accepts God’s divine love and truth, you
will live eternity in heaven. It is your
thoughts and ideas that determine where you will end up in the afterlife and
you can start working on that in the natural world if you do not want to end up
in hell for the rest of eternity.
I think that a lot about
the fear of death has to deal with what lies beyond the natural world. If people start to learn about the Spiritual
World and how they can start to take control of their lives in the natural
world, then maybe the fear of death might go away. Once we realize that we can determine what
happens to us in eternity by changing our thoughts and actions now, we start to
lose a lot of the feeling of helplessness that death may invoke in people.
(e) What is the
"vertical community" and why should people focus on their "dual
citizenship"?
The
vertical community is the make up of the Spiritual World. It consists of the heavens and the hells and
the interactions between all the spirits.
The more of God’s truth and love you accept the higher you will go
within the vertical community until you reach the top level, closest to the
Spiritual Sun and God Himself. If you
like to live your life in falsity and fantasy, then you will descend through
the vertical community until you reach the appropriate hell to which pleases
your mental fantasy. The vertical
community is an important concept to understand because it helps you to realize
how your thoughts and actions in the natural world can influence where you will
end up after you die.
People
are born into the natural and spiritual worlds; this is what Theistic
Psychology calls dual citizenship. After
you leave the natural world through death, you are reborn within the Spiritual
World where you will spend the rest of eternity. By focusing on your dual citizenship, you can
change your thoughts and actions in the natural world so that when you are
reborn in the spiritual, you will be able to live within one of the heavenly
societies. This is important because
when you die you take your thoughts and ideas with you. These thoughts and ideas are what allow you
to accept God’s divine love and truth and place you within one of the upper
communities of heaven. If you lived a
life of fantasy and selfishness, then you will turn away from God’s divine love
and truth in the Spiritual World and descend to one of the levels of hell.
The Question I am
Answering is Question 7:
(a) Discuss the concept of the "as-of self."
The as-of-self is the self
we are in the Spiritual World. It is the
mental self that God created. Our
as-of-self is different from our self because it is mental and is our rational
self. It is controlled by God through
his omnipotence and omniscience. He uses
his divine truth and love to influence our affective and cognitive organs which
in turn make up our as-of-self.
The as-of-self differs from
the self because it isn’t influenced by the natural. In the Spiritual World we cannot think and
act differently, our self can as we witness in the natural world. If our as-of-self does act differently than
what it thinks then we are actually acting on a falsity and living in the hells
of our mind, which will then show our rational self.
(b) Why is it difficult for people to accept his idea?
The main reason why people
find it difficult to accept the idea of an as-of-self is that it implies that
God controls us. This is true because
through His omnipotence he controls our actions and creates everything that we
experience. We don’t like to think that
we are puppets being controlled by a higher being, but in the mental world
everything is influenced by God’s divine truth and love.
It is the same reason that
people start to say that God judges people and you
will go to hell because you have sinned, that people have a hard time accepting
the idea of an as-of-self. It is just
another irrational fear that comes about through false beliefs. If people can accept the fact that God is
omnipotent, He controls us but gives us freedom, and he loves everyone then we
start to see things rationally and the as-of-self starts to become an idea that
makes perfect sense.
(c) Does the concept of as-of self
imply that we don't really have true freedom as human beings?
The as-of-self concept does
not imply that we do not have true freedom as human beings. What people forget when they hear that God’s
divine truth and love control us is that God Himself is omnipotent. What that omnipotence means is that He
creates everything, including freedom.
Freedom is something that
we aren’t able to hold or touch in the natural world so when
people think that God created everything, the always picture the world
and people, but they forget that freedom is a thing as well. If God did create all, then it is within His
power to create the freedom which we experience in our life. So although our as-of-self can give people in
image of a puppet on a string, we also get freedom created. The key point is that God created everything,
including the freedom we experience.
(d) Is human freedom compatible with the concept of God's
omnipotence?
As I stated earlier, it is
because God is omnipotent that we actually have human freedom. It is totally compatible with the concept of
God’s omnipotence. It can be thought of
a little bubble around us that is created by God and controlled by God, which He
can do because of the fact that He is omnipotent. It sounds like a contradiction but it is
completely rational when you think about it.
Omnipotent beings create all, therefore God created everything and all
things. Freedom is a thing so God
created freedom as well.
(e) How do you react to this concept? Can you accept it?
Does it make a difference whether you accept it or not?
Once you remember that God
is omnipotent and created everything, it is easy to realize what the as-of-self
is. It may be a little puzzling at first
because it is hard to say that humans have freedom but are being controlled by
God at the same time. But if you analyze
everything, you realize that it is totally rational for God to control us and
yet give us freedom because of his omnipotence.
I don’t think it would make too much of a difference if you accept
freedom as a part of God’s control because it is within your freedom to do so,
but it will make learning about the as-of-self a whole lot easier.
Section C: My Analysis of Prior Generations in the
Generational Curriculum
(i)
It
seems that Theistic Psychology has helped Jennifer to see God rationally. Like me, she had a hard time with the
religions out there condemning people to a life in hell if they did not
convert; claiming that it was God’s will to do so. It seemed like she accepted the positive bias
and benefited from believing in the possibility of an omnipotent God. After learning about divine truth and love
and sacred scripture, she feels she can now live in the heavens of her mind.
(ii)
Jennifer
thought of Theistic Psychology as a way to unify the world’s religion and
possibly end a lot of the hatred out there.
She thinks that Theistic Psychology is a powerful tool in helping people
to get rid of their hells and live in the heavens of their mind.
(iii)
Jennifer
concluded that she can now work on eliminating her hellish loves. She also now sees religion differently
because Theistic Psychology gave her a clear, rational view of God that no
other religion offered. Theistic
Psychology seemed to quite a lot of the questions she had about religion.
(iv)
Jennifer’s
insights seem to be very similar to mine.
Like me, she accepted the positive bias.
By accepting the positive bias, the questions we had about religion were
answered and we saw what it would be like when we believe in the existence of
an omnipotent God.
(i)
It
appears that Patrick Greer had his own ideas and intentions going into and
coming out of this class. He seems to
take all the teachings with resistance and criticizes how other students were
in the negative bias at the beginning of the class and then switched over to
the positive bias. He does understand
how powerful religion is just by witnessing his fellow students in how quickly
they changed their thinking.
(ii)
Patrick
seems to think Theistic Psychology is important when we study the mind. He did not like what atheistic psychology was
proposing, nor did he like the fact that everything had to be physically
measurable before it could be accepted.
He agrees with many things but feels that certain things like conjugial
marriage and the as-of-self as a road block in the study of Theistic
Psychology.
(iii)
It
seems that he neither accepted nor denied the positive bias. Patrick seems to be on some middle ground
accepting what agrees with his own ideas of religion and criticizing those
aspects that seem to disagree.
(iv)
By
reading his paper I can see how powerful irrational religion is. This is the religion that always gave me
problems before studying Theistic Psychology.
If anything, I can see what happens when you only take what you want out
of Theistic Psychology. In a sense,
Patrick is just like other religious people out there taking what they want out
of rational writings and teachings, interpreting those findings, and passing
them on as their own.
(i)
David
seems to have entered the class with the positive bias. He was looking to answer questions he had
about religion and, through his study of Theistic Psychology, found rational
answers to his questions. He looked at
the class as a great tool in the understanding God and our life in
eternity.
(ii)
David
seemed to think that Theistic Psychology is very important. He agreed with what it taught and had many of
his questions answered as a result. He
wants to continue to study Sacred Scripture in an attempt to gain a better
understanding of the afterlife. He sees
Theistic Psychology as an important tool and wants it taught in schools to give
people a rational approach to religion.
(iii)
David
agrees with Theistic Psychology. He
likes the rational approach to religion it provides and the many questions it
answers about God and the life in eternity.
He looked to different religions to answer his questions without
success, but he found rational answers to his questions though his study of
Theistic Psychology.
(iv)
David’s
conclusions about Theistic Psychology are very similar to mine. Like me, he didn’t understand what religion
was talking about but saw answers in the rational teaching of Theistic
Psychology. I can relate to David’s
findings because many of my questions were answered through reading about the
Spiritual World and the writings of Swedenborg.
Section D: My Advice to Future
Generations
In
this section I am asked to give my advice to future generations studying
Theistic Psychology. The first thing I
think any student of Theistic Psychology should know is to accept the positive
bias. All Dr. James asks is to accept
the possibility that God exists, he
does not say you have to believe in it.
Once you accept the possibility your studies in Theistic Psychology will
become much easier and then you can form your own beliefs once you gain enough
insight into what Theistic Psychology is telling you.
Another
important thing to know is not to wait until the last minute to do your 10
outlines and your two reports. Each assignment
requires a lot of reading and research to do and you will get much more out of
the assignments if you do them in small chunks allowing you to interpret the
information you just read.
The
final word of advice is to follow Dr. James’ instructions to the letter. For his assignments he spells out very
clearly how he would like it to appear.
If you follow the instructions word for word, you will be able to get
full marks because a part of this class is information literacy. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to
email Dr. James; he will be more than happy to clear things up.
Class Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/classhome-g23.htm
My Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/459f2005/sonoda/home.htm