Selections from Theistic Psychology by Leon James
Which is online at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic
That I Summarized in My Report 2
Which is online at:
http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leon/459s2006/bulda/bulda-459-g24-report2.htm
Selections for Question 1
Level 1 is to be able to replicate the diagram in its essential features so that you have it in long term memory, and then to be able to create a rational explanation or account of its elements and how they fit together. Then at Level 2 progresses to the positive bias, but not yet at the scientific level. In other words, in relation to the elements in Diagram A, we believe that there is a God, that we have an affective organ and a cognitive organ, that there is heaven and hell and eternity, but we are not yet sure that this diagram, representing Swedenborg's version. Level 3 progresses to the theistic psychology phase of thinking about the Diagram.
6.3.1.1.1 (VIII) Divine Speech Descends Through the Discrete Degrees of Every Mind, and Forms Them
We know that we are struggling to gain personal freedom when we begin to specify and justify what we believe in, what we are willing to struggle for, and perhaps die for. It is the understanding of truth that gains us spiritual freedom and it is the willing of that truth that maintains that freedom forever, as long as we keep willing that truth.
It is our rational understanding of Divine Truth in Divine Speech that brings on the mental state of reformation in adulthood, when we begin to define what we want and what we believe. We become enlightened by the understanding of that truth in a rational way. It is the rational that is the basis for being human. Until our rational is activated, we are not fully human and have no spiritual freedom.
1.0.2 What is Substantive Dualism in Science
In substantive dualism, thoughts and sensations cannot exist unless they are made of some stuff that can operate somewhere in some functioning spiritual or mental organ. This stuff is a substance that forms the rational ether around the Spiritual Sun in the spiritual world. In order to understand this more concretely, think of the universe as "dual." The outside of it is made of physical space created by the natural suns or stars that populate this outer (physical) portion of the universe. The inner (spiritual) portion of the universe is not visible to the outer physical world. It is created by means of the Spiritual Sun which creates a spiritual or rational atmosphere around itself. The substance of this atmosphere can be called "rational ether."
1.0.5 Topic 5: Sensuous vs. Rational Spirituality
The whole-brained celestial race had a united will (affective organ) and understanding (cognitive organ), unlike us who have the will and the understanding capable of acting independently. We, the split-brained spiritual race, are capable of thinking one thing (corresponding to the left brain) and willing its opposite (right brain correspondence). We can learn with our understanding what is the right way to think and act, and we can ignore this with our will and do the opposite.
Back to My Report (Link)
Selections for Question 3
2.14 What is Applied Theistic Psychology?
a) The goal in applied theistic psychology is to enhance the life of individuals and society by teaching people how to think rationally about themselves and their projects. To think rationally is defined in accordance with the content of theistic psychology. In other words, reality is constructed by God on a rational basis. When thinking rationally people modify their thoughts and feelings as they proceed with daily activities and involvements. This systematic self-modification process is called the "regeneration of character."
b) Regeneration is the most important area of concern for every individual given that every human being born today inherits many negative affective traits. As stated earlier, affective traits are spiritual, and therefore permanent. When the physical body "dies" and is separated from the mind (or spiritual body), conscious awareness is then originating with the spiritual body. The spiritual body is surrounded by a spiritual environment and every individual continues life in that state forever
6.3.1.1.1 (X) Character Reformation and the Psychology of Cooperation
a) We cooperate with the Divine Psychologist by the daily practice of self-witnessing (see Section xx). This may be called a spiritual practice because it involves the motivation of doing for the purpose of our character reformation, and this is the central topic of theistic psychology. Self-witnessing is the self-observation of our feelings, intentions, thoughts, perceptions, focus of attention, social appearance, and actions or movements of the body, hands, legs, eyes, etc. These are the procedures that every individual accomplishes in the course of their minute by minute life in a group or community. These procedures can be observed by our self-monitoring skills, when we are fully motivated by the spiritual discipline.
b) Our task in cooperating with the Divine Psychologist is to exert the mental effort of
- (a) examining our inner life;
- (b) judging it by means of the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture;
- (c) cease doing what is not allowed or condemned thereby;
- (d) Start doing what is allowed or commanded.
5.1.1.11 Regeneration or the Adult Mind
a) Altruistic loves and the truths of doctrine from Sacred Scripture cannot be appropriated by the inherited "old will" which must first be reformed and regenerated. We must suffer ourselves to undergo temptations and to battle them with the truth of doctrine from Sacred Scripture. Then we acquire a "new will" which is suitable to react by correspondence to the remains in our unconscious spiritual mind. Then only do these remains become ours, part of the new proprium by which we can enter the heavens in our mind (see Section xx).
b) Regeneration is therefore an orderly process of the growth of the human mind. Every descending step in the conscious mind is matched by an ascending step in the unconscious mind until the entire mind is regenerated and made heavenly through influx. The entire process is managed by God and requires the conscious voluntary cooperation of the individual. This cooperation requires two steps: (a) acquiring the truth of doctrine from Sacred Scripture; and (b) applying it to our thinking and willing in daily activities.
6.3.1.1.1 (VI) Societal Consequences of Individual Effort
a) The natural hells are built up every time we are willing evil and thinking falsity along with it, to justify it in our mind, which means to make it all right to do, that is, not really evil. The natural heavens are built up in our natural mind every time we are willing good and thinking truth according to Divine Speech.
b) These are located in the individual level of effort in daily experience, we oscillate between our heavenly and hellish traits. These are located in completely separate and isolated parts of our natural mind, as shown in the the first diagram in this Section. At the collective level, good and truth are received as a collectivity that is managed and maintained by the Divine Psychologist as a venue for human experiences and mental development. Experiences occasion remains of innocence, which are preserved in the spiritual mind where the eternal heavens are built out of them. The human race is variegated and getting more and more so, as the evolution of the mind progresses into the endless future (see Section xx).
6.3.1.1.1 (VII) The Economics of Immortality
His process involves the person in becoming fully and explicitly conscious of their deepest loves and xx). This process involves the person in becoming fully and explicitly conscious of their deepest loves and affections which are ruled and determined by one ruling love (see Section xx). This chief of our loves determines what happens in our second death, that is, whether we can give up the collectivities of affections called heaven, or else those that are called hell. There is no balance. It is a zero-sum economics in which the person ends up with all bad and no good, or else, all good and no bad
Anything that we do, think, or enjoy for the sake of self is governed by our ruling love that is hellish. Anything we do, think, or enjoy for the sake of others or God is governed by our ruling love that is heavenly.
Selections for Question 4
1.0.1.3 Revelation: Divine Speech Exteriorizing as Sacred Scripture
We first become conscious of Divine Speech in our natural mind when we read Sacred Scripture, or are exposed to derivative forms of it such as prayers, songs, stories, lessons, instructions. At this point we understand Divine Speech in a natural way, in the way we understand the instructions or explanations of teachers and parents. As we grow older and we are able to read Sacred Scripture on our own, we begin to form more abstract notions of God, though not yet spiritual notions.
3.7.2 Correspondences in Sacred Scripture and Divine Speech
God creates and manages the universe by means of love and truth. Divine Speech is always about love and truth, the very source and structure of all reality, including worlds, atoms, and minds. The good and truth we receive form the basis of our mind, our immortality, our conjugial happiness, and our ability to make others happy from ourselves. God gives the human race love and truth in many different ways. One of the ways involves our conscious rationality as human beings. God uses Divine Speech to elevate the consciousness of human beings. Divine Truth in Divine Speech is the primary and most powerful agent of creation. The Divine Truth in Divine Speech is expressed in meanings called correspondences.
3.7.1 The Science of Correspondence
In contrast, the code of correspondences Swedenborg discovered provides us with a systematic, rational, and replicable method of extracting meaning and data about the spiritual world and God. It is like hiding ordinary text by substituting every word in the original with a new word according to a dictionary list
But in fact the laws of correspondences are objective laws by which the universe has been created and is being managed by God today.
6.3.1.1.1 (VIII) Divine Speech Descends Through the Discrete Degrees of Every Mind, and Forms Them
It is our rational understanding of Divine Truth in Divine Speech that brings on the mental state of reformation in adulthood, when we begin to define what we want and what we believe. We become enlightened by the understanding of that truth in a rational way. It is the rational that is the basis for being human (see Section xx). Until our rational is activated, we are not fully human and have no spiritual freedom. That means that we are not fully human until early adulthood, when we have the full capacity for rationality and spiritual choice. Our rational understanding of truth in Divine Speech allows us to perceive our evil enjoyments and life. We then make the spiritually free choice of struggling against what we enjoy when it is evil, even if it is so familiar and forms such a central part of our daily life.
6.3.1.1.1(IX) Correspondences to Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture
a) The purpose and function of every concept in theistic psychology is to develop and open up the interior-spiritual organ, that is, to do
our thinking and reasoning through spiritual-rational concepts Divine Speech rather than through natural-rational concepts of Divine Speech (see Section xx).
b) Take for instance the phrase we have been discussing: "there was a famine in the land." Here, we want to apply the method of correspondences with enlightenment to figuring out the spiritual-natural correspondences that lie hidden within this text, which is written in natural-rational correspondences, as explained (see Section xx). This is not an easy or simple process and requires research and study. An example of how we transform or translate these natural-rational ideas into spiritual-natural correspondences, is provided by the diagrams in theistic psychology, such as the diagrams in this Section.
Selections for Question 5
2.6 What's the relation between the body, the mind, and the spiritual world?
a) (1) The scientific laws of correspondence between natural events and their spiritual causes were known in prehistoric times on this planet, but were subsequently forgotten due to evolutionary and ecological changes described in the Writings (see the "Science of Correspondences" in Chapter xx). For example, there is a correspondence between the circulatory system of the body and the affective mind, and between the respiratory system and the cognitive mind. This parallelism indicates that the mind is a biological organ and has an anatomy that can be described. The mind has two organs made of spiritual substances (not natural). There is an exact correspondence between how the natural sun produces the heart and the lungs, and how the Spiritual Sun produces the affective and cognitive mind.
b) (2) Every human being is born simultaneously with a physical body and a spiritual body (see "dual citizenship" in Chapter xx). The mind with its affective and cognitive organs is located in the spiritual body while the brain is located in the physical body. Whatever happens to the physical body on earth we can sensate and feel in our spiritual body in the spiritual world. Since sensations. Thoughts, and feelings are not physical objects, they cannot be located in the material brain which is physical.
c) (3) Natural objects, like the physical body and brain, have a temporary life or existence, but spiritual objects, like the mind or spiritual body, are permanent (immortal or eternal). In other words, sensations, thoughts, and feelings are immortal parts of human beings. Thus every thought and feeling we have is recorded permanently in our interior memory, which is in the spiritual body. Swedenborg demonstrated that people in the spiritual world are able to recall every single detail of their lives on earth.
12.0.3 The Mind is Not in Physical Space
The fundamental formula given above expresses the identity relation between the mental world and the spiritual world. It means that the mind of every individual born human is immortal and exists forever in the same spiritual world or eternal state of life. The mind is fixed, unmovable, and immortal because it is not born in physical space and time, like the physical body. Only material objects in space and time can move, like the electrical operations within our brain cells--they move. But the sensations and perceptions of them in the mind does not move, cannot move because sensations and perceptions are not in space and time.
2.17 How Can You Do Research on God in Psychology?
a) Actually the task is not as difficult as one might at first think as soon as we consider that the spiritual world overlaps completely with the mental world, and that God reveals many facts about the spiritual world and about how the world is managed through the universal laws of rational correspondences. Theistic psychology cannot be seen as a reasonable and valid approach if one does not allow the dualist concept of "scientific revelations" by God. The scientific revelations God has given in the Writings of Swedenborg give us the details about how God intervenes in phenomena and manages them according to strict laws of rational order.
b) Further, what Swedenborg saw and heard, every individual sees and hears when our conscious awareness switches venue from the natural mind to the spiritual mind. The natural mind contains the experiences built up through our physical body interacting with the natural world. The natural mind and the brain are closely tied functionally by the laws and mechanisms of correspondences. But the spiritual mind receives input from the spiritual world. Though we are unconscious of its operation. The spiritual mind has a strong influence on the rational mind, which is intermediate between the natural mind and the spiritual mind. The rational mind is capable of assimilating information from both the natural mind (and world) and the spiritual mind (and world). When fully developed, the rational mind has two components, outer and inner. The outer component is called the natural-rational mind while the inner component is called the spiritual-rational mind.
2.10 How is the mind or consciousness related to the spiritual world?
a) It can be understood rationally when you consider that the spiritual world is produced by the substances streaming out of the Spiritual Sun, where God can be seen as a Divine-Human appearing in the midst of that Sun. In God, infinite things are one. What is streaming out of God through the Spiritual Sun produces and creates spiritual events, which in turn produce natural events. God produces natural events through the intermediary of the Spiritual Sun. Therefore everything in the mind is also produced by means of the substances streaming out of the Spiritual Sun. In other words, all mental events are produced in the spiritual body by the Spiritual Sun. Feelings and thoughts are nothing but states of organic objects made of these substances from the Spiritual Sun.
b) Theistic psychology helps people realize what's at stake in this life. If we do not develop a genuine consciousness from scientific revelations we fall into distorted meanings which produce not a heaven, but a hellish life. People need to be educated and taught the ability to understand scientific revelations in a rational way. Then their mind becomes a heaven and they live out eternity in a heaven. Heaven in eternity is produced by Divine Truth in our rational mind. Without this genuine meaning, understood rationally, there is no heaven, but hell instead. Hell resides in distorted meanings of reality. If you arrive in the other life with distorted meanings, you discover that these distorted meanings are powered from within by disorderly feelings and motives called "evils."
6.3 The Vertical Community of Minds
But whereas the physical body can be born damaged or undergo damage later, there is no damage or blemish on the spiritual body, nor can there be to eternity, for it is made of eternal substances in an eternal arrangement. The spiritual body can be seen, heard, touched by other spiritual bodies in the spiritual world. Swedenborg confirms the fact that spirits can see the spiritual body of anyone who is still tied to the physical body. Our spiritual body appears to them like the physical body appears to us when it is in a coma. Swedenborg observed that there is a special aromatic aura that surrounds the area around each of those spiritual bodies, serving as a warning for the spirits not to come closer, and also as a protective shield from unwanted communication and influence.
7.3 The Role of the Sensorimotor Mind
We are never alone in our thoughts and feelings. For a single sensation, thought, or emotion to occur, our spiritual mind must be in communication with emissary spirits from different societies involving numberless people. Ultimately no thought or emotion in one human being can be contained, but instantly spreads and reverberates into the entire rational ether that constitutes the spiritual world. A feeling, thought, or sensation by one individual communicates itself to all other individuals in the spiritual world. This is because thought and feeling are spiritual substances that permeate the rational ether in which all human minds are born and carry on life to eternity.
12.6.4 The Role of Our Vertical Community
The passage above repeats once more that whatever the mental state are in, we depend on associations with others since no one "is able to will or to think from himself, but does so from others." This is the vertical community that interconnects, consciously and unconsciously, every human being with every other in the universe (see Section xx). No one is the source of thoughts and feelings since everyone depends on others for "influx" or unconscious communication of thoughts and emotions. Ultimately "each individual wills and thinks from the First Source of life, who is the Lord" which means that God initiates and manages every person's thoughts and feelings regardless of the state of mind they are in.
1.0.5.3 Part C: We are Dual Citizens in Discrete Layers
We are dual citizens, living in both worlds from birth until the death of the physical body. At that point the connection between our individual mind and the physical world, is broken or terminated forever. From then on all the proceeding input is spiritual, whereas before, it was spiritual and natural.
But when the spiritual mind activates the natural mind, we become conscious of feelings, thoughts, and sensations. The memories we have of our life on earth are recorded in every single detail, in the natural mind where are located the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor organs of the natural mind. The experience we have is that these thoughts and feelings are “our very own” and that they originate in our conscious life in the natural mind.
Selections for Question 6
2.17.1 The As-of Self Revealed to Humankind
a) In the Writings of Swedenborg God reveals this method. It is called the "as-of self." In other words we do not actually have a self that has its own power, but we do have an as-of self, which is the real feeling that we act freely, from our own will, and not from God.
In a similar way God provides and intervenes at all levels of action and environment. No detail whatsoever is possible without God's immediate control. You can see from this that since God is the only power, and since God cannot give away power, therefore God is the most intimate partner we can ever have, far more intimate than any friend or family member.
b) God maintains the perfect balance of power in every feeling, thinking, sensing and moving. We do these things without our own power and yet because of the balance of power we can act without power as long as God cooperates and participates in every detail at every moment from conception to eternity. As a result of this we can continue to develop our as-of self character and always feel that it is us in freedom that creates it. At the same time God warns us in scientific revelations that we must not attribute this freedom and power to ourselves but only to God. In this way God can develop our mind and character to its full human potential. But when we deny that God is the participant-operator of all our life and experience, we fall into unreal and injurious states of mind called "hell" and our character becomes enamored of illusions and delusions that eventually lead us to a hellish life from which we are unwilling to escape to eternity.
6.0.1 The Conscious Self and the Development of the As-of Self
The essence of the inversion from a heavenly to a hellish proprium is that we are unwilling to be guided by God and prefer to be guided by self. There is therefore an opposition between our self and God. This perspective is a turn around from how the human race was created and lived prior to this event in history and evolution
But when people began pursuing loves and imaginations that were not consistent with conscience and Divine Commandment, the proprium or as-of self, turned itself away from God and good, inverting truth into falsity, and pursuing corrupted forms of love, thus creating hell in the human mind. This is called the Fall of the race.
6.3.1.1.1 (II) God's Omnipotence and the As-of-Self Free Will
a) But the concept of "as-of-self" in theistic psychology is the idea that God creates and manages the mental details of the individual in such a way as to create in the person the sense of a self-determined being we refer to as "I, me, myself." In reality, as revealed by Divine Speech, God has to create and manage the mental details that are held together just right to create a self-conscious human person that has the sense or feeling of being autonomous or inner existent. No sense of "self" would be possible by itself, as an autonomous natural or spiritual object unless it were put together and held together and driven to action, by the Divine Psychologist.
b) We must have freedom to choose what we desire or intend. We must have the freedom to think whatever thoughts we want to think. God will maintain this real freedom for us. For instance, you feel like rubbing your right eye. You must have the freedom to be able to lift your arm and touch your eye. God cooperates. You must have the freedom to think about whoever you want, and be able to remember their name or face or details from your memory. So God cooperates by bringing particular stuff from your memory to your awareness at the right instant you want it. This is omnipotence. But this also: you decide to rob a bank so you can live in luxury. God cooperates by giving you the reasoning process necessary for planning and executing such an illegal and evil act. God cooperates in the background, never letting you see directly that you are being managed.
c) It is necessary that every human being understand these two things:
- We have the real sense of as-of-self autonomy and self-determination, but it is God who creates it and maintains it
- We must strive as-of-self to struggle against temptations, knowing and understanding that it is God managing and overcoming for us.
These two propositions or "doctrines of truth," form the mental foundation stones of our eternal conjugial heavens.
12.6.1 Human Freedom--Heavenly and Hellish
Changing our character from hellish to heavenly involves compelling ourselves to act against our freedom, because we are in our infernal loves from heredity, and so we don't want to stop enjoying hellish things and start enjoying heavenly things. Regeneration is a painful process because it requires that we act against what we love when we love evil. We resist exchanging our evil enjoyments for heavenly ones because we feel that we are giving up our freedom to choose what we love. We feel oppressed and restrained, having to enjoy some heavenly love that we actually do not like. The only way we can accomplish a character makeover successfully is to compel ourselves to act according to our doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture.
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