Course: Psychology 459, Fall 2006, Generation 25
Instructor: Dr. Leon James
Introduction to Theistic Psychology www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1.htm
My Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/459f2006/inayoshi/lastname-home.htm
Class Home Page: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/classhome-g25.htm
Instructions for this Report: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy25/459-g25-weekly.htm
Proofs of Existence of God with Supporting Evidences
by Ryan Inayoshi
Report 3 For Section 1.1 to 1.1.4.3.1
The Historical and Scientific Proofs of God
Section 1.1 to 1.1.4.1.
Question 1. Study the Table that begins Section 1.1 "Three Levels of Thinking About God." Explain the history of your own development regarding the idea of God. Use the Table to describe your own thinking at each level. Can you guess about where will your thinking take you in the future?
Answer 1: My thinking in terms of the materialistic science Monism negative bias level was that I didn’t really believe in god because no one could really prove to me that someone upstairs was running everything that was happening here on earth. I think that in order for me to believe in something, I would just have needed to be persuaded, or just have read the bible. Even at that, how could someone believe that god told people what to write down in the bible? I think that when I was younger I believed in the concept of god, but I wasn’t raised in a religious household, so I was never forced to know more about anything dealing with god, religion, heaven, or hell. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole god concept, and thought I didn’t need to know about this till I got older. I was also taught that there were other gods in the world like Buddha and others. So I thought that if there is one god, there must be other gods too. I learned about the Hawaiian gods in school, but never learned about God, or Buddha in class. I think it is correct not to let children learn about god in school, but if parents want their kids to learn about that stuff, take them to church.
The second stage which is mystical religion was an enlightening time of my life. I had previously not believed in god. I thought that people just made it up so that they could have faith in something. I was invited to church one day by my friend, and I thought I’d give it a try since I had been curious to see what all of this was about. I went there with an open mind and wanted to be able to feel a connection with god. I remember the pasture taking me aside and talking to me about wanting god to come into my life, and I told him that I never really believed in god, but just wanted to see what this is all about. He told me to just keep an open mind, and be able to let god come into my life. I did that and actually felt like I became one of god’s children. It was a pretty amazing feeling! When I feel like talking to someone, I can talk to god, and ask him to help me in any way possible. I know that it sounds a little strange, but I feel better after I do. I feel closer when I have a relationship with god Sometimes I get what I ask for, sometimes I don’t. I learned that you can go to heaven or hell based on how you live your life here on earth. I try to live as positively as I can so tat I don’t have to worry about going to hell after I die. Even though I know some of my sins will be forgiven, I try not to live my life with hellish traits.
The last stage is theistic psychology. It’s a good thing that I went through the stages in the correct order, because now I can fully understand what’s going on. Because I had an open mind about religion, I learned how to be open with many different ideas. When I came into this class, I honestly did not expect to learn what I have been. It’s been tough at times to fully grasp the concepts of Swendenborg, but I’ve come to be able to acknowledge all of his ideas as possible. I like the concepts of the mental body, and how you can live up to the traits that will ultimately take you to heaven or hell. I think that if you expose a child to theistic psychology early enough, they can grow from there. I think if you wait too long for the child to get set in their ways, it will become difficult for them to understand theistic psychology later in life. I also like the fact that we are immortal and carry a lot of the stuff we learn here over to the mental world.
Question 2. Make
up a gain-loss sheet that lists and briefly explains what you could gain or
lose by adopting the negative vs. positive bias regarding God's existence as a
scientific reality.
Answer 2:
The Gains
The primary gain of adopting a positive bias, assumedly, is increased rationality, which gives people the ability to perceive good and truth. With this ability, people desire to release themselves from irrational patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving that cause dysfunction in their lives and make immediate gains in this area. The perception of good and truth provides a clear path for action and self development By seeing God’s existence as a scientific reality, a person is really seeing God’s existence as the ultimate reality, the principle and theory behind the way that the universe works and the ultimate principle and theory behind his life. The real quest, then, becomes finding God’s truth and goodness. Since that’s what determines the external environment and the inner life of the individual, by tuning in with that good and truth, a person really can not go wrong. They’re thoughts and actions grow in accordance with it, which gives the person all sorts of good feelings, like love of others and love of his work, which will make him successful in all his endeavors and keep him on the right track in his life and in his science.
If God is a scientific reality, we already have the answers because the answers flow into our minds as God communicates with us. Our only task is to create the right kind of mind so that we can receive them without distorting them and receive them with the fullest meaning that we are able to while our understanding is bound by time and space.
And the Losses
I think the biggest losses in regards to having a positive bias are related to other’s perception of the bias taker’s work and his relationship with colleagues. With a positive bias, research looses its solid footing in physical reality. Without that baseline agreement that we know things are real because we can physically sense them and measure them, people are afraid that science will be compromised with all sorts of imaginary things. Let’s say that physical reality is real and God is real, and they are both matter of science. We can’t directly measure God because he’s a rational concept, not a sensual experience. People can say whatever they want now. The poison of malicious people with political and moral agendas becomes science and invisible forces become the explanation for everything. It becomes rational to attribute a woman’s low desire for her husband on her sexual relationship with Satan, who has a three pronged, half steel penis, and people can start claiming that all sorts of things we can’t perceive are scientific. Science now is set up to avoid those scenarios and traps. In fact, it evolved against them. Whether it’s good or not, other people are going to reinvent ideas like that and start calling it science, and as irrational and unscientific as the ideas are, some people are going to believe those ideas. So, in a way, loosing the negative bias is a con to gaining a positive one in science.
Scientists and educated people see this and it discredits the positive biased person’s work in their minds. She’s talking about imaginary things. I didn’t know that delusional thinking was scientific! So, the credibility of the positive biased person’s work goes down the tubes, and a lot of straight minded, educated people probably won’t want to be associated with the positive biased person.
This is also a positive to keeping the negative bias. In the negative bias, people’s work and ideas fit into science as it is currently accepted. In our culture, people won’t look down on someone or be dismissive of them because he has a positive bias. It makes getting along without criticism and being made fun of more likely, because people look at what the negative biased person is doing, and they think that’s okay because it’s what they also do, and that’s acceptable and safe. People in general want others to have a negative bias and they do what they can to keep others in line with the generally accepted outlook by shaming them or ostracizing them. It’s agreeable because you’re communicating and thinking on the same level as everyone else. When people are on different levels, the negative biased person can’t understand, so there is a communication barrier.
Question 3. Why does God allow people to be in the negative bias and survive as well as those who are in the positive bias?
Answer 3: Those who reject the objectivity
of rational spirituality have evolved a subjective mystical spirituality of God
that depends on the idea of a nonduality between God
and human beings. This is the idea that in our deepest and highest core, we
human beings are each the Divine. The ultimate and highest evolution of a human
being is to reach the consciousness of this Divine Being. In other words, what
they call God or Divine is of the same basic substance as human beings. Human
beings and God are the same substance and state. This is a self-realization we
attain when we are able to let go of the illusion and delusion that we are each
individual human beings struggling on a planet to survive
Question 4. Explain
the difference between mystical religion and theistic psychology.
Answer 4: The main difference between mystical religion and theistic
psychology is that mystical religion is not rational, while theistic psychology
is rational. Mystical religion is not rational because it is necessary for
followers to accept a doctrine, and a way of life based on the doctrine, on the
basis of faith. Faith is not rational. People believe all sorts of nonsense
because it’s part of the religious doctrine that they accept. Not only does
religion require us to believe logically impossible ideas that were made up by
some guy in Church history, but it also does not have set rules. People go
about re-interpreting religious texts and older doctrine through new lenses
based on newer doctrine, so that new concepts that were never there are read
back into the past.
Most religions teach that their doctrine the right one and they teach the followers of other faiths are on the wrong path, on a path that’s not as good, or even that followers of other religions will be punished in the afterlife. All religions have the same underlying truth, but many followers of religion do not see the underlying truths, which is why so few followers of religions reach enlightenment. They follow the culture based doctrine, which in many cases is related more to politics, current social issues and maintaining the status quo and controlling others than it is about achieving any spiritual goal. For some reason, people seem to mistake the two. The spiritual truths behind religion do not promote conflict and condemnation, or even violence, like many religions do. The spiritual truths would allow people to understand and appreciate everyone for whatever level they’re on, and in many cases feel compassion and understanding for people who aren’t doing the right thing. It would also allow people to see the spiritual truths in other religions. These perceptions would promote positive feelings towards other people and other religions, which is what happens in theistic psychology.
God and Daily Living
Theistic psychology is not about the literal, cultural meanings of Sacred Scripture that people make up, interpret many different ways, and fight about, like mystical religion is. Theistic psychology is about finding rational, scientific truth from God that probably underlies most religons, but is not bound by culture, time and place, and the social and political climate. It’s not about rules. It’s about discovering God’s good and truth in Sacred Scripture and in all we do, and then live by it and apply it from moment to moment. It’s personal, and although everyone’s theistic psychology will be the same, and the meanings will be the same, everyone’s path to God and relationship with God is going to be different because we have different challenges and different lives in which the good and truth will be expressed. It’s still operating on the same good and truth, however, and that good and truth will be recognized by everyone who lives according to it. It’s about discovering how God manages the universe and manages our minds, and with that understanding, people can discover how to live their lives the best way possible, growing closer and closer to God and underlying reality.
Question 5. Prove rationally that if God exists, then He must be a Divine Human Person whose creation must be Perfect.
Answer 5: God is a perfect, omnipotent being that created the universe and manages it. Humans are beings who God created in his image. If we were created in God’s image, we must function like God does. Since we are people, and we were created in God’s image and function the way that God does, God must be a person. It is our goal as humans to choose to live up to our potential. We have the ability to function like God, in that we’d live in accordance with God’s will, the good and truth that creates and operates our minds and the universe. Our greatest potential is achieved when we decide to do this.
The world is perfect because it has the potential to be perfect, based on the choices that human beings decide to make. Things that are not perfect are the way they are to teach us lessons about how to make them perfect. Once people can make the best choices, which are rational choices that accord with the underlying nature of reality, we are perfect ourselves and we are living in heaven. If we didn’t have the ability to learn to be perfect, we would not understand it, we would not value it, it would not be something that was truly ours and truly in our hearts. We’d be miniature robots of God, not people who understand, love, and choose. Our learning to go along with the underlying reality is God’s plan, and the purpose of God’s plan, what would make God really happy, is for us to be happy. The only way for people to be happy is to want to make God happy by rationally and lovingly going along with his plan, which is to live according to essential reality. Essential reality is good and truth and essential reality is perfect. Since it comes from God, he must also be perfect.
When we successfully live according to essential reality, we are like God. Since we are people, we cannot be like God unless God is a person. God has a cognitive organ an effective organ just like ours. His are complete because each of his mental organs not only contains both good and truth, but they produce the good and truth that creates the universe. God must use his sensorimotor organ to create the universe moment by moment. We are in our most perfect state when we are in a conjugial marriage and will in accordance with God’s will. Only in conjugial marriage do people receive good in both organs and truth in both organs. We use our sensiorimor organ to make actions that direct the form God’s good and truth takes, either perfection or a lesson to eventually cultivate perfection. So, in this way, God’s creation is perfect, which means God must be perfect. Since people are part of God’s creation, we have the potential to be perfect, and we are sort of co-directors of the universe, too in a way, because we direct the energy that God gives the world and determine what form it takes. When we’re all in accordance with God, all in accordance with good and truth, the world will be perfect.
Question 6. Describe
what the two worlds are that God created and maintains in rational order.
Answer 6:
Natural
World vs Spiritual World
God created the two worlds, Natural World and
Spiritual World. We are all dual citizen in the Natural World and Spiritual
World and God created these two worlds. These two worlds can not mix but not
separate. These two worlds are corresponded each other by laws of
correspondence under the God’s thought. As we discussed several times, Sacred
Scripture is based on what God wanted and thought. We do not conscious about Spiritual
World until our physical body died, but we have to develop or improve our
rational sense in our mind in our Natural World. This is what God wants us to
do. For example, every human has a conscience what we know good and bad
naturally and it seems natural or inherited; however, our conscience reflects
to God’s Love. We do something good with our conscience, the thoughts and
feelings are from our mind and these thoughts and feelings relate to God’s
thinking. And we behave something good from what we think and feel in our mind.
These facts show the relation between Spiritual World and Natural World from
God.
Rational
Order of Those Two Worlds
According to the textbook, it stated three levels of
our rational thinking of Sacred Scripture.
(1) unconsciously,
in the background; in the form of rationality;
(2) consciously,
in the form of conscience, insight, inspiration;
(3) consciously,
in the form of doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture.
Let’s delve into each level of meaning. First, we are
unconscious about any God, Sacred Scripture, and Spiritual World in the Natural
World. We can learn about the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture as “learned”.
However, we can not be conscious about the true meaning of it. In this level,
the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture creates religions, lower aspects and so
on. These are just outside or external environment around us. Therefore, these
do not have much power and effect to our inner mind. The next step is our inner
mind which God naturally gave us to think or feel that way as conscience. We do
not create conscience, insight, and inspiration from own mind but from God.
These things help us to think rationally and these things help to improve our
heavenly traits. We also can conscious about them if we better understand the
Sacred Scripture deeper than literal meaning. The last level is a celestial
level of understanding Sacred Scripture. Definitely people know hidden or true
meanings of Sacred Scripture other than just the literal meaning in this level.
Divine Speech, Divine Meaning, and Divine order are reflected in this level.
We Must
Follow the Order!
We must follow this order because we have to take
steps to understand more rationally about the Sacred Scripture. God created
these orders, so we have to follow. We can not jump or skip one level to the
other. We have to obey the order because God wants to obey the order from
people. We can not do anything against God’s thinking because God expect
everything and God prepare everything. If one seems to against God, it is still
in His mind. Anything God created, we have to follow and obey his order. This
is very important to think because we are living in order to His thinking.
Question 7. Prove
rationally that our mental world is the world of eternity. What will be the
consequences for society when this knowledge becomes known?
Answer 7:
What is
Mental World?
The mental world is based on thoughts and feelings. It
is no time-space and matter. We can think and feel as much as we want and we
can create imagination whatever we want. Unlikely physical world contains
time-space and it is temporal. Our physical body is temporally because we have
beginning and end to live physically. The mental world is eternity because no time-space
and no end mean it is eternity! Let’s think about dream. What do you think
about dream? Does it just come up from our imagination while we sleep? Does it
have any meaning? Here is rational thinking. When we dream whether it is good
dream or nightmare, these are from our mind. On the other word, the dream comes
from our inside of thoughts and feeling and it is real in the Mental World. The
dream is from our spiritual organs which are affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor organs. This proved that dreams are operated
by Spiritual Mind and it is eternity because it is created in our no time-space
matter of mind.
Heavenly
Traits and Hellish Traits
All we do and think is based on heavenly traits or
hellish traits. Anything we do or choose to do something, the answer or
behavior is always heavenly or hellish traits. In our mind, we know what good
and bad with conscience. The conscience is created by God into our inner
spiritual mind. These heavenly and hellish traits are created by what we think
and feel every minutes or seconds. Let’s think about it. When your friend is
crying and she seems to have a problem with her boyfriend. What will you do?
You may want to talk to her and give some advice before you talk to her. This
is heavenly trait. When you get F on a mid-term, you may get really upset. This
is hellish traits because if you study enough for the exam, you might be able
to get better grade, so you should not get mad on you. These daily happenings
are also based on heavenly and hellish traits.
Society
Will Be Better Once People Notice These Things
When people get knowledge about these heavenly and
hellish traits, the society much be better because they now know every their
choices and behaviors are based on heavenly and hellish traits. And these choices
and behaviors are based on own conscience from God. Then, people might make
effort to choose heavenly traits. Even one has hellish traits all the time, if
other people notice the hellish traits, they will lead the person to heavenly
traits. We have to think rationally about the purpose of our daily life and our
existences are from God. Our daily lives are very challenging for having better
rational thinking about anything. Once we were born, we have equal opportunity
to train our mind to be good person and healthy mental state. If you see a
person who always has hellish traits, you can lead him to heavenly traits and
if you want to do that, it is your heavenly traits.
My Opinion
The concepts of heavenly and hellish traits and the
construction of society is very powerful. I have to be
aware about each choice which has meaning of hellish and heavenly traits. No
one except God is perfect, so I would make mistake to choose heavenly traits
many times through my life. However, if I choose hellish traits, it is not
really important. More importance is I have to notice it is hellish and I have
to cover or overcome the hellish traits turning to heavenly traits. On the
other word, I can choose heavenly traits eventually if I notice what hellish
traits are. And I hope all people notice this thinking and I want people to
become happier and peace.
Question 8. How
are humans different from animals? What makes us human? Justify the statement
that we are human because we are rational. Explain why animals are not
immortal. How do you react to this knowledge? Look up what Swedenborg
said about animals (you can use google).
Answer 8:
Humans Are Different From Animals
We all know that humans are different from animals, we can walk on two legs, talk in complex languages, and are not covered in multicolored fur or feathers, but that is not what we are talking about here. Humans are different from animals because we have a rational mind above our natural mind. Like humans animals have a natural mind which is capable of learning from experiences and adapting to change in the conditions of the environment. Unlike animals we have a rational mind which is above our natural mind which allows us to do complex things like make plans for a family vacation or build computers.
Our Rational Mind Makes Us Human
The most important aspect that makes us human is the fact our rational mind. Because we have a rational mind this enables us “to have dominion” over our “lusts and fantasies”. With a rational mind we have the power to control, we are able to realize and understand what we cannot at a lower level. In a human being the rational self has an automatic dominance or power over the rational self. This is why animals have such basic needs and priorities. They do not have a rational mind only a natural mind.
Having only a natural mind is why it is so easy to make our pets happy. As long as you feed them, give them a warm place to sleep, and play with them they will be your best friend. If they are given the chance to mate, which is a basic need of the natural mind, they will be ecstatic and take every opportunity given. This is not the same as a girlfriend or a child; it requires way more effort to make her happy then food and sleep!
To justify the statement that we are human because we are rational all we need to understand is that we are rational because we posses a rational mind that can set limits and control the wants of our natural mind that animals and other species cannot. Since we posses a rational mind and animals do not, we therefore can define being human because we are rational because that is one of the aspects where we are different from animals.
Animals Are Not Immortal
Animals are not immortal because they are not created as dual citizens. However, since the feelings and thoughts we have of our beloved pets are immortal our pets can appear in the mental world of eternity when we are consciously thinking about them, but then they disappear when we stop thinking about them.
My reaction to hearing this knowledge was acceptance. I was always taught that there are animals in eternity but was never given any explanation on that subject. The way that Swedenborg states it makes sense to me that they are there only when we think about them. I am not an avid animal lover, but I did have some pets that I would like to see again in the afterlife. It is comforting to hear that I will be able to see them whenever I think about them like all other things in eternity.
Question 9. When
people do something bad that they enjoy doing, it seems to them that it is
good. Explain this phenomenon. You might want to check the word "hellish
traits" in the Index Volume 18 to find other discussions on this.
Answer 9:
The Phenomenon of Falsified Appearances
The backbone of this phenomenon of falsified appearances is the very definition of heaven and hell. Heaven is feeling good from doing good, and feeling bad from doing bad, while hell is feeling god from doing bad, and feeling bad from doing good. As one can see in hell our feelings appear to be good but are really bad.
The reason why bad acts appear to be good to us when we are in the hells of our mind is because doing bad is a sensorimotor act that follows the conjunctive action between a prior affective act and a corresponding cognitive act. To say this in a more simple way, the prior affective act of bad intentions must be accompanied by a corresponding cognitive act which is the act that justifies the evil intentions by reasoning that it is good in this case despite what it looks like. This distorted form of reasoning is what gives us permission to carry out the bad act.
Example
The example Dr. James uses is when you have been furiously looking for a parking space and when you finally find an open stall on of the cars is parked so crooked your car cannot fit in that stall. Enraged against the inconsiderate driver you use your key to scratch the side of the offending car. Doing that makes you feel a lot better as you drive away.
What happened in this situation is that you were in the hell of our mind when you felt angry you could not park there. However, you justified the evil thought of scratching the car possibly by telling yourself that the driver deserves to be taught a lesson or that somehow everyone will benefit in the future by you teaching this person a lesson now. This justification is distorted because you are in the hells of our mind and no good can come when you are in that low state.
Report Three for Sections 1.1.4.2 to 1.1.4.3.1
Question One: Explain how we become spiritually enlightened by studying theistic psychology. What is the difference between natural and spiritual enlightenment? Who do you know that is enlightened, either personally or by reputation?
Answer 1:
Enlightenment
Someone is referred to as being enlightened when her cognitive functioning is elevated beyond what is normally achieved. In other words, and enlightened person is an expert at something. People can be naturally enlightened and spiritually enlightened. Natural enlightenment occurs when a person’s natural-rational mind is elevated. When a person has achieved expertise in an area, after many years of practice, she is naturally enlightened in that area.
An expert personal trainer, an expert teacher or researcher, an expert billiards player, and an expert horse trainer would all be examples of people who have achieved enlightenment in their natural-rational mind. Natural enlightenment is good because it takes love and persistence and focus to gain expertise in any area, and those traits are heavenly. Experts also have skills and knowledge with which they can benefit the world, and that’s heavenly, too.
Elevate your Mind
Spiritual enlightenment occurs when a person’s spiritual-rational mind is elevated, or in other words, when someone is living in their heaven. Living in heaven is enlightenment in the mental body, and this happens when a person’s natural mind functions in agreement with the spiritual mind. The enlightened person is aware of the good and truth in the universe and has aligned her thinking and behavior according to it.
Understanding of correspondent meaning of Sacred Scripture enlightens our spiritual mind so we can reach this level. People can become spiritually enlightened by studying theistic psychology because theistic psychology is living and thinking in accordance with the good and truth from God that creates our mind and is the underlying reality of the universe and of ourselves.
Living in accordance with the good and truth of God is spiritual enlightenment, and theistic psychology is sort of like a guide about how to do this. So, by studying theistic psychology and achieving the theistic psychology level of thinking, people become enlightened.
Natural Enlightenment and Spiritual Enlightenment
I know lots of people who are naturally enlightened. By the time a person is in middle adulthood, it is usual to be naturally enlightened in one area or another. I’m not sure that I know anyone who is spiritually enlightened, though.
Maybe my grandmother is. She lives a very simple life, and enjoys gardening, birds, and baking. All little children love her. In my entire life, I’ve never seen her be sad or angry, no matter what, ever, but when she laughs, it seems like she lights the entire world. I think she embodies the concept of usefulness.
Maybe my other grandmother is enlightened, too, but she’s really different from the grandmother I just described. She is out more in the world, teaching kids as a reading specialist and driving around from aunt’s house to aunt’s house. She does live life with God, and he is her explanation for everything. She says that God reveals all sorts of things to her when she asks about it, like meanings in the Bible, but I don’t think she understands correspondent meanings. Still, I’ve never seen anyone’s sheer volume of prayers answered the way that my Nana’s are, probably because she loves God and always has heavenly intentions.
Actually, I think both of my grandmothers are good, but I don’t think they’re enlightened. There is also this extraordinary person I used to work with named Mohammed who very well might have been enlightened, or is well on his way to being so, but I don’t know. By reputation, I guess the only people I know of who are enlightened are people like Jesus and the Buddha.
Question Two: Explain how our spiritual development depends on our willingness to fight our temptations. What happens after we are victorious? What you have observed about your own temptations in the past?
See Section 1.1.4.2.2 to 1.1.4.2.3
Answer 2:
Resist your urges
Spiritual development depends on our willingness to fight temptations because the essential temptation is to view the world or something about it irrationally on the basis of an illusion or deception, while enlightenment is a challenge to see reality as it really is. Spiritual development begins with natural temptations.
There are some things that are just basically right, like to work hard, do the best job that they can do, and help people. People are tempted all the time, however, to act selfishly and negatively impact the lives of others. We’re tempted to be lazy and rude and to lie, steal, and deceive and manipulate and take what we should not take. If we have not achieved a level of understanding to not do those things, we can’t begin working on our spiritual development.
Imagine someone who does everything wrong in the book, someone who would collect money from her own daughter in the name of someone else, and then stick it in her pocket, and think that it’s okay to do. That’s lying and stealing, by the way, which hurts all parties involved. What is even worse is the perception of a false reality and the delusions that make this sort of behavior a life pattern that is acceptable to the person doing it.
Instead of coming up with all sorts of justifications for this sort of deception, she needs to get out of the tangle of her illusions so that she can see what’s good and true and start fighting these natural temptations. When she stops doing things like that because she sees that it’s not good and true, she is victorious over natural temptations. When she sees enough good and truth to become enlightened, she can start working on spiritual temptations. At this level, people are said to be spiritually empowered.
Bust a move
We start using our understanding of God’s good and truth to view the world, and we are faced with the temptations in our hells to abandon this understanding, even just for a moment, to do something that goes against what we know but feels good. If we go along with it, it causes us to revert back to the previous state where we can’t see good and truth and must work again to cultivate it. If we do resist the temptation and stick by what we know to be good and true by clinging to God, we experience rational ecstasy, or our heaven. God increases our depth of perception of good and truth and our rationality and our heaven grows closer to God.
Recently, as a result of taking this class, I’d been perceiving good and truth. I really started separating the things that people were doing wrong and loving them and feeling compassion for them that they feel they need to do the hellish things they’re doing. For a few weeks, my perception was really characterized by love and understanding, and I always felt joyful and secure. Not hating people who hurt others was something that I’ve never been able to do before.
I realized that I needed to quit swearing because I saw that it really wasn’t good and it’s such a mentally unhealthy attachment that I have, besides all the other reasons that people shouldn’t swear that we all know. I decided it wasn’t pleasant for people to hear. I went two days without swearing. It was Sunday night and I was at work, but I had this really rude customer. I got frustrated, and I thought that all I needed to do was smoke to be able to calm myself down, but I didn’t. I walked outside to calm myself down, and try to relax so I wouldn’t be cussing in the restaurant. After I felt better, and went back to finish my job. However, I bet on games and I know betting is a very bad habit, but when the teams I bet on lose, I get upset. I try not to swear, but thinking of all that money going down the drain really gets me angry. Maybe it’s God’s way of telling me I’m not suppose to be betting in the first place!
Question Three: When and how did Sacred Scripture reveal that heaven in eternity is the mental world? Why do you think that this knowledge remains unknown or disbelieved?
Answer 3:
Yesterday’s News
In the Old Testament, it’s written, “God created the heavens and the earth.” This literally means that God created two worlds, a spiritual world and a physical world. That a mental world and a physical world exist, and that the spiritual world of eternity is actually our mental world was revealed in the New Testament Sacred Scripture thousands of years ago, when Jesus said, “ … behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
People
can look for it outside themselves all they want, but they’re not going to find
it there. We can’t perceive heaven with our physical senses because there is no
literal place that it exists. It is saying that the
The revelation that heaven in eternity is actually the mental world is pretty old news. People can only receive information from Sacred Scripture according to our level of understanding, though, and it wasn’t until relatively recently that humans developed the rational capacity to understand that the mental world equals eternity. Until a certain point, people hadn’t developed the innovations of thought necessary to think about God abstractly.
Smart
People
All
knowledge builds over the ages. We’re so smart today because we take for
granted all the ideas of old philosophers that are just inherent in our
language and world view. Someone like John Locke had to think about property.
Someone like
Before the 18th Century, people were still developing systematic, rational thought necessary to have a rational understanding of God. Understanding of God developed with the development of modern science, then. Thinkers weren’t able to understand it because rational thought was still sort of being invented, or rational thought wasn’t developed enough for people to gather from Sacred Scripture that heaven, hell, and eternity are in the mind, and our perception of good and truth is sort of a person’s soul.
Use your mind
This knowledge is still generally either unknown or misbelieved because too many people don not examine their thoughts, feelings, and monitor other things going in within themselves enough to even realize that they feel like hell, let alone rationally examine situations enough to know that there is a simple way out of feeling like that and to feel like heaven instead. People still do not commonly use their rationality.
Question Four: Explain the principle that "individual biography recapitulates human evolution and history." How does this influence the way you see yourself?
Answer 4:
Getting to the next level
Saying that individual biography recapitulates human evolution and history means that the story of an individual’s development follows the same pattern that the development of humanity as a whole has taken. The same pattern of learning occurs at the level of the individual that occurs with humanity’s general understanding of the world.
We have learned that there are three levels of thinking that people experience. The first level of thinking is the materialist, negative bias perspective. At this level, people understand rules and consequences. Second level thinking is mystical religion, in which they focus on religious doctrine and things don’t have to be rational. At this level, people understand a sensual experience of God. The third level of thinking is theistic psychology, in which people perceive principles of good and truth. They understand god in a rational sense.
This does follow human development as a whole. First, religion was earth based and materialistic. Religion could not be separated from the rules and generally accepted beliefs of cultures. Rulers were religious leaders in ancient civilizations, gods were in nature, and culture was religion. Second level thinking might be like Europe during the Middle Ages when Church doctrine was developed through illogical reasoning and people were trying to convert others and persecuting each other for holding different beliefs, and coming up with all this nonsense about witches.
During the 18th Century, science became the dominant outlook and people began logically and systematically evaluating things and the scientific method was invented. So, we see the pattern of materialism, doctrine, and science, which is the same as materialism, mystical religion, and theistic psychology.
I can see clearly now
People are generally only able to think up the level that the world operates on during the time of their lives, probably, because, as I mentioned in response to the last question, humanity’s knowledge builds on previous knowledge and methods of thinking are discovered. Before there was a scientific method, most people would not have that sort of understanding to think scientifically, for instance, because that just was not part of the world view.
Sometimes it’s hard to read really old philosophical stuff because it’s hard to understand why these people are so confusedly explaining the crap out of something that everyone just knows. If a lecturer were to talk for an hour and half about what a cat is, something everyone knows, a lot people would probably leave feeling confused about the idea of a cat. It’s the same thing. So, we just operate on these assumptions that were not always so obvious.
We have the people’s new thoughts in the past as our foundation for general knowledge. On a smaller level, this principle says we go through the same process of developing our rationality, but it happens quicker and it’s easy to develop to the point that the world view is currently at. When enough people take it a level further, we advance in our understanding as a world society.
According to this principle, we’re really a part of a much larger, cohesive pattern moving towards a more accurate general understanding of the world, globally and individually.
Question Five: In your own words explain chart 1 in Section 1.1.4.3.1. Do not just guess. You will need to do some research in Volume 18 to find the explanations and clarifications: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/#Searching_for_something
Answer 5:
God
of War
The first chart shows what happens when Divine Speech affects the human mind at different levels of thinking. When we are living in our hellish traits and living according to our own will, but begin paying attention to Divine Speech, it penetrates our sensuous consciousness and we are can understand the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture.
Understanding at this level cultivates mystical spirituality. This type of spirituality is not very desirable in many cases, as it breeds literalism and fundamentalism, and the sort of 700 Club cults that con little old ladies out of their money so they can try to take over politics in our country. At this level of spirituality, people buy into a mystical, sensual idea of God, which for many people involves things like visions, voices, miracles, superstitions, and other types of magical sorts of thinking.
Mystical spirituality stops there, and because it stops there, it can be a kind of trap that prevents people from growing further if they are not actively looking for good and truth from God. People tend to continue to use irrational thinking and justifications for bad behavior on this level of spirituality because they are not looking for God’s truth. They’re getting religion confused with politics and trying to influence the political climate instead of building a relationship with God, or they are too caught up looking for answers in crystal balls to look for truth and reality.
Learn from your mistakes
I think there is something to crystal ball type stuff, but the experiences we have from it are really just distractions because it doesn’t show us how we should live and what we need to improve. It gives a fleeting sense of peace, but that’s an illusion because it can’t be applied to daily life, doesn’t help people get out of destructive patterns, and any sense of being “in tune” with the universe shatters when we try to make sense of it or if something happens to disrupt the state. Anything that isn’t lasting isn’t worth much, especially when it doesn’t have any sort of practical meaning.
Love and Truth
On the other hand, something different happens when we search for good and truth and use our rationality to make God happy, like we would for a person we love. When we understand good and truth, Divine Speech is understood through the rational consciousness, so we understand Divine Speech as the correspondent spiritual meanings in Sacred Scripture.
The effect this has on the human being is really different from what happens while people are still using their own wills. People get rational spirituality, or theistic psychology. This causes people to further understand the underlying good and truth of reality. This understanding breaks apart illusions and delusions and irrational justifications, and we can see with clarity.
When we understand truth, we’re given spiritual challenges so that we can regenerate our will so we will more like God and exist in a new heaven that is even closer to him. But that’s not the end. This process keeps occurring until we achieve an understanding that is as perfect as possible.
So, this first chart illustrates the different ways that the mind reacts to Sacred Speech and causes a new will to develop.
Question Six: In your own words explain chart 2 in Section 1.1.4.3.1. Do not just guess. You will need to do some research in Volume 18 to find the explanations and clarifications: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/#Searching_for_something
Answer 6:
Heaven
This second chart explains how good and truth flow through human consciousness. The Divine Human powers the Spiritual Sun, which gives off good and truth as its heat and light. It first illuminates the celestial heaven, which receives good and truth in the most pure form that it can be understood by a human mind.
People who live in this heaven or this state of ultimate closeness with God are called celestial angels. They are concerned with loving God. Next, it flows through the second heaven, illuminating the minds of the spiritual level angels who live there. The good and truth that enters their heaven is a layer removed from the fullest meaning that humans can receive in the third heaven.
The form it takes is based according to the understanding of the people in the second heaven. This heaven focuses on learning and ideas. Next, good and truth penetrate the first heaven, where people who get the most pleasure just from living good, orderly lives exist in the afterlife. Good and truth here, too, take the form that the people can understand and appreciate.
Each of these heavens corresponds with a level of heavenly human consciousness that the people who live there find most pleasing.
After good and truth has filtered through the heavens, which correspond with a level of each person’s spiritual mind, it goes into creating the natural world and illuminating the natural minds of humans on earth. It is during this time that people either build their heavens or build their hells, and most of us are doing both. After death, we choose which one we’re going to live in.
Hell
People in their heavens have already made a choice to extinguish their hellish traits and cannot be tempted by them any longer. People who still have a physical existence, though, are currently facing temptations that will determine whether they choose to live in heaven in the afterlife. If they try to be good people and live according to good and truth, letting go of delusions and harmful habits day by day, they’ll choose heaven when the time comes.
If they are not accustomed to fighting their spiritual battles and making those good choices according to reality, however, they probably will not let go of their selfish, animalistic attachments, and choose to live in their hells with what they love. I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, well, if there is no whatever bad thing that I like in heaven, I don’t want to go there.’ And that’s exactly the case. So, they don’t go there. They live in the hell of their minds after death with the attachment that they love and the pain and torture that the unhealthy attachment and associated delusion causes for them. And that’s what hell is.
The people who live there are called devils. Next, God’s good and truth penetrates the hells, where it is twisted and distorted in the minds of the devils there to create their false conceptions of reality.
And in Between
Both heaven and hell is pulling on the minds in the natural world, just as people’s hellish traits and heavenly traits pull on their minds. Our thoughts and what exists in our consciousness are supported by our vertical community, that is the spirits in the afterlife who share our the state that we’re currently living in.
Our vertical community changes throughout our lives, and even from moment to moment according to what changes in our consciousness. Sometimes we are linked up with devils and we should fight the temptations, emotions and patterns that they present to us during those times because it is irrational and delusional, and it does not lead to good things and will cause us pain. Other times we are connected with angels, and we ought to try to stay in that state and develop according their guidance and the insights that we are given during this time. We will be happy and productive if we do this, and build the heavens in our minds.
That’s how consciousness works according to the second chart.
Question Seven: In your own words explain chart 3 in Section 1.1.4.3.1. Do not just guess. You will need to do some research in Volume 18 to find the explanations and clarifications: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/#Searching_for_something
Answer 7:
How the mind works
The third chart also starts with God who powers the Spiritual Sun. The Spiritual Sun radiates infinite goodness and rationality into the mental world of humans. Love, or goodness, flows into the affective organ of the spiritual mind. Truth flows into the cognitive organ of the spiritual mind. These organs are unconscious while people are living, but the spiritual heavens exist in the spiritual affective organ, and people are conscious in this spiritual mind in eternity. The spiritual mind is receptive to spiritual good and truth, and is connected with the conscious natural mind.
The good and truth from the Spiritual Sun continues to flow into the natural mind of which we are conscious while we are alive in the physical world, or while we have physical bodies. The natural effective organ produces our natural desires and intentions, whether they are heavenly or hellish, and the natural cognitive organ produces our thoughts and reasoning, whether it is rational or not.
Our personality and culture exist within our natural understanding, and the natural mind is receptive to other natural things like science and religion. And receives input only from the physical world through the natural senses and has the ability to use rational thought, but can only consider ideas from a limited, time and space bound understanding, characteristic of the physical world it lives in.
The two minds don’t process the same information, so they can’t communicate clearly. The nature of the two minds is entirely different, so they can’t really understand each other. The spiritual mind is so much closer to good and truth than the natural mind is. It is where we live our mental existence, where all the immaterial parts of ourselves exist.
These aspects of ourselves continue to exist for eternity, and the mental state we choose according to the mental organs we’ve developed becomes our experience in eternity, either one of the three levels of heaven or a certain type of hell that matches the irrational, destructive loves that the person can not let go of.
Because everything mental is spiritual, and everything mental/spiritual is eternal, and mental world is just another tern for spiritual world, which is the experience we become conscious of in the after life, mental is equal to spiritual which is equal to eternity.
How the World of the Mind Works
These heavens and hells in our minds are personal, but they are not private. Everyone shares the same mental world in eternity. So, within the heaven and hells inside ourselves exist communities of heavenly sprits and communities of hellish spirits, the type of which depends on the state we keep in our minds.
In eternity, we can only see and interact with people and things that share the same nature and perspective that we do. We can experience people and things if we’re “on the same wavelength.” When we are not on the same wavelength, the person or thing is simply not in our world. If we were interacting with him, her, or it but something changes about the nature of the state one of them is in, it seems to the other that they disappeared. Really, they’re just part of another community for now that one of the parties is currently incompatible with, so they’re not part of each other’s experience any longer.
In the physical world, we are linked up to one of these communities at any given time. Just as in the mental world, what we are linked us with depends on our mental state. What we are linked up with helps us create our thoughts and we are influenced by it and share the thoughts and feelings of the community we’re attached to.
You’re the devil in disguise
When we feel depressed, anxious, or angry, we’re linked up with devils and should change those thoughts and feelings that we’re having. When we are feeling good and altruistic, we’re attached to angels in heaven and should try to learn from them how to cultivate our heavens.
Because this takes place in different locations or operations or senses of our mental anatomy, also known as spiritual geography because mental anatomy describes the experience of the individual, but there is a whole, shared world there, too, so we also call mental anatomy spiritual geography. Spiritual geography lines up with the experience of the individual and also with the experience of the public mental world everyone exists in, as the afterlife.
Where we are currently located in the spiritual geography determines the vertical community that we have. Since the vertical community is in eternity, part of eternity, and they create our thoughts which are eternal, the vertical community. Vertical communities can be thought of as populated places the mental/spiritual world, where people share similar outlooks. They’re also eternity. So, mental anatomy is the same as spiritual geography, which is really mental states or vertical communities, and it’s all the same as the eternity.
Question Eight: In your own words explain chart 4 in Section 1.1.4.3.1. Do not just guess. You will need to do some research in Volume 18 to find the explanations and clarifications: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/#Searching_for_something
Answer
8:
Electricity
The fourth chart explains that humans are dual citizens. At the top, the chart shows God, or the Divine Human standing behind the Spiritual Sun, which he powers. What is actually coming out of the Spiritual Sun is Divine Speech from God. Divine Speech, or the energy of the Spiritual Sun, consists of the spiritual substances of divine good and truth. So, good and truth are spiritual substances, just like particles and waves are material substances. Good and truth come from the Divine Human’s Divine Speech, which powers the Spiritual Sun. Good from God’s Speech is perceived in the mental world as the heat of the Spiritual Sun. Truth from God’s Speech is perceived as the light of the Spiritual Sun.
The good and truth radiating from the Spiritual Sun creates and powers the mental world and the human mind. The Spiritual Sun’s energy flows through the three heavens in the mental world, powering each of them as it travels down the layers. The levels of the heavens have equivalent levels of understanding in the human mind. Good and truth also flow through these layers of the human mind, creating and powering them as it moves through them. It is like electricity powering an appliance. Without the constant flow of electricity an appliance won’t function or turn on. Well, without the good and truth of the Spiritual Sun, there would be nothing to power the human mind or the mental world, and they would stop functioning. They would be dead.
It’s
all connected
The spiritual mind is only made of good and truth, and only good and truth lives there. The spiritual mind contains the human heavens. The spiritual mind could also be called a mental body because it has spiritual parts that correspond with each physical part of the body on earth. While they are conscious of the physical, we are not conscious of the spiritual, but we experience the spiritual. All our thoughts, feelings, and motivations, the immaterial qualities that people really identify as themselves, are immortal and make up the mental body.
Between the natural and unconscious spiritual mind, the rational mind exists. The rational mind can understand most of the spiritual and most of the physical and it mediates between the two minds, translating important information from the spiritual into natural concepts. We use our rational mind to think about God in theistic psychology. It sends the desire to act on a good impulse from the spiritual mind into the consciousness of the natural mind. It is where the voice of conscience exists. So, things like rationality, love, and cooperativeness exist in the mediating rational mind.
We are only aware of what is occurring in the natural mind, thought. The natural mind is the conscious mind that understanding earthbound concepts, like time and culture. It contains our developed skills, our intelligence, and memory.
Please Remove your Sun Glasses
The subconscious natural mind contains the human hells, or earthly attachments, motivations, and delusions that appear to bring satisfaction and pleasure, but really cause pain and torture to the self and to others. This is distorted good and truth. Just like heaven influences us to do good, hell influences us not just to do something bad, but to accept an associated delusion about reality relating to the habitual bad patterns we fall into.
These layers make up the human mental body. We can choose to develop rationally and love the good and truth that create the underlying reality of the universe, which will develop our heavens and raise our consciousness, or we can fall into the temptation of doing base, selfish, animalistic, irrational things and follow delusions that allow us to find it pleasing. The rationality degenerates as people build their hells instead.
The mental body and all the events there are connected to the physical body where it causes some kind of corresponding physical reaction based on its spiritual nature in the mental world. The two worlds are discretely separated, so they can’t touch or otherwise interact outside of correspondences. For all intents and purposes, one does not exist to the other, but people ought to be rationally aware of both.
There is a physical self that we see in the mirror or when we look around at others, but more significantly, there is a spiritual self separated from our awareness, that we experience as thoughts and feelings, which causes the effects we experience as our physical self or in our physical self.
Question Nine: In your own words explain chart 5 in Section 1.1.4.3.1. Do not just guess. You will need to do some research in Volume 18 to find the explanations and clarifications: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/#Searching_for_something
Answer 9:
Rise and Shine!
The Spiritual Sun heats and lights our heavens with good and truth. When we allow this good and truth the come into our natural mind by willing to act, think, and feel according to it, we gain enlightenment. Enlightenment is a state in which we are able to see clearly what is good and true.
This is not subjective good and truth. It is good and true because it is the infrastructure of the universe, so it is reality. When we can clearly see reality, we are enlightened and begin regeneration. This happens only by willing to act and think according to Divine Speech. In this state, we think rationally and act out of love and understanding. In this state, a person is living in her natural heaven.
When a person lives in their natural heaven, something is happening in their spiritual heaven as well. It grows and develops according to the good and truth from God that flows through it because the person is acting on this good and truth in her natural mind. This brings the person endless delight and joy in her natural mind.
No, really, Rise and Shine
Most people choose, sadly, to go in a different direction. We need to regenerate our characters, a process which happens as we choose good and truth and develop our heavens, because as a part of earthly life, we have inherited hellish traits in our natural mind. They come about through heredity and ancestry, just like genes, but they’re also encouraged by certain things.
Certain cultures find certain hellish traits acceptable, for instance. In American culture, profit at the expense of others is encouraged, for instance. That’s capitalism. Businesses don’t want to share clients, for instance. They want to profit, and that means monopolizing consumers. One business owner isn’t sad when his competitor goes out of business. Employers don’t pay employees what they are worth. The aim is to make a profit for the company, which means that the employee needs to make the company more money than what they’re paid.
This comes out in our relationships. I hear sibling rivalry in our culture is just extreme and awful compared to other people. I hear that it’s relatively common for American law students tear the pages out of reference books at the library so the other students doing the assignment can’t access the information for an exam as easily, which will put them ahead on the grade curve, and things of that nature. Most girls don’t want to share their beauty secrets because that might make the girl they tell just as pretty or more so, and most girls wouldn’t be happy for the other in that case.
Besides carrying particular hellish traits, cultures are sort of like literal Sacred Scripture. They are models of interpreting reality that is removed from reality like literal Sacred Scripture is. Not seeing beyond one’s culture causes similar problems as not seeing past literal sacred scripture does. People fight wars and hate each other over the sorts of misunderstandings that these systems can lead to if we allow them to dominate and limit our thinking.
Hellish traits are also perpetuated by our lifestyle choices. Someone with depression might choose to give into those feelings and lead a lifestyle of sitting at home undressed all day watching television. She is choosing a lifestyle that is perpetuating the hellish traits involved in depression, so her negative emotions and thoughts, her hell, is strengthened as long as she continues doing that.
Justification is a major part of this. Our justifications for continuing our hellish traits are probably the worst part about the whole business. It is the irrational rationalizations that become habits. Following those thinking habits leads to delusions about reality. If someone becomes so wrapped up in their delusional thinking to justify their negative attitudes, thoughts, and actions, they are cutting themselves off from good, truth, reality, and God.
Just like the heavens grow according to correspondences based on how we choose to think, so do the hells. What happens to our mental world that we create for ourselves just depends on how we choose the use the good and truth that enters our minds. We either want to change ourselves according to it or we think we want to change the truth in our minds to suit our desires.
In The End
When our physical bodies no longer work and lose their connection with the mental world, we experience physical death, but we continue existing in the mental world just the same. For a short while, our experience is just like it was on earth. It is during this time that we sort of break down into our characters according to what we’ve loved during our physical lives.
We make a choice between leaving behind all of our hellish loves to live in heaven and leaving behind our heavenly loves to live with our attachments in hell. If we choose the former, we experience a second death, that is, a death of all our earthly, hellish traits. If we choose the latter, we retain our attachments that we love more than the truth and continue to live with our delusions. In either case, we live with a community whose members’ loves align with ours.