Silas Leger
Psychology 499,
Dr. James, Instructor
8.8.03
The Lord’s
Divine Providence
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
About Swedenborg and Scientific Dualism 3
Background on Swedenborg 3
Findings 5
Understanding the Dual Universe 6
The discrete
separation between nature and spirit 11
The ancient Human race 12
The present Human race 14
As-of self freedom 15
A map of the universe and the human mind 16
Our life from God – The rational idea of
as-of self 20
Permissions of Evil 24
Another map of universe and the Human mind 36
The spiritual societies of Heaven and Hell 38
Introduction
This essay is
a map of my understanding of God’s work in our universe and his role in our
lives. I have gained my understanding of God’s function from reading Divine
Providence written by Emanuel Swedenborg along with A Man of the Field
and Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg: Three Steps in
Rational Spirituality, by Leon James. In addition I had weekly
consultation with professor Leon James, to gather
information on the subject of God’s role in our universe. The subject of God is
normally placed in terms of religion, but Swedenborg’s Divine Providence
is a scientific examination of God and His function in our universe.
The specific
details of what God’s role in our universe are only sensible from a theistic
viewpoint, which establishes the existence of God. The theistic viewpoint
Swedenborg formulated is scientific theism. This is science that accepts God
and understands His relationship and interaction in our lives. If an atheistic
standpoint were introduced it would simply deny the existence of God and
therefore his role in the universe.
This strain of thinking leads us to conclude that natural occurrences created the universe and that humans evolved over billions of years from their ancient predecessors. The theistic viewpoint maintains that God created the universe and everything in it, including the human race. Emanuel Swedenborg was a scientific expert on the subject of theism and he made scientific discoveries about God, human life, our spirits and the human mind.
Before
embarking on this journey of scientific spiritual questioning about God’s role
in our reality, I was unsure as to the answer I might find. The answer that I
found was nothing I could have imagined. The truths about humans revealed in
the book are useful to all humans.
About Swedenborg and Scientific Dualism
At age 57, Swedenborg a serious Christian, was visited by
Jesus Christ and instructed to write the last testament of the Bible. To
achieve the writing of such a Scripture, Swedenborg was granted the special
privilege of dual consciousness – that is he was allowed mental consciousness
of both the natural world, and the spiritual world. Humans are not consciously
aware of the spiritual world until they depart from their bodies on earth. Once
the physical body dies, the mental consciousness of humans is awakened in the
spiritual world, and there in the spiritual world the person lives on
eternally. Jesus also granted Swedenborg the ability to interact with the
spirits in the spiritual world. Since Swedenborg was an avid and distinguished
physical scientist on earth, Jesus gave Swedenborg a spiritual laboratory for
him to carry out scientific experiments to learn more about the spiritual
world.
Background on Swedenborg
Swedenborg (1688 – 1772) was a scientist who worked for the
government of
With his special ability to access the
spiritual world on demand, Swedenborg learned the truth about life and God’s
Divine
Swedenborg’s work involving his
consciousness of the spiritual world is a boon to the human race because no one
else has ever produced this information. The spiritual information that
Swedenborg presents to the scientific community on earth are new findings about
the existence and creation of the universe as well as detailed descriptions of
the spiritual world and its God managed connection to the physical world. The
spiritual scientific laboratory that God granted Swedenborg brought a new wave
of information into our natural world.
Prior to Swedenborg humans created various explanations of
how they thought the world came about, but with the scientific spiritual
discoveries Swedenborg made, humans were no longer in need of creating a theory
for the creation of the universe, because Swedenborg verified that God created
and forever powers the universe and all of it components. Swedenborg provides a
scientific report of the laws by which God manages the phenomena in the natural
and spiritual worlds. His account of the spiritual world is based on His first
hand experience of and objective data collection from, the spiritual world.
During his dual consciousness whereby he
had direct consciousness and observation of the spiritual world, Swedenborg
authored a total of 27 volumes in which he shares his collected scientific data
from the spiritual world. Swedenborg proved that the observable phenomena in
the spiritual world appear as natural phenomena, just as in the natural world or
in our mental world of dreams where space, time and matter appear to be natural
while they are only spiritual imageries. Swedenborg also discovered that the
New and Old Testaments were full of spiritual meaning undiscovered yet because
the laws of correspondence governing the relationship between the spiritual
world sense and the natural sense were not unknown to humans and so they could
not decode the spiritual from the physical. The book Divine Providence
is one of the 27 volumes Swedenborg wrote as his series of scientific
investigations in the spiritual world.
The collection of these volumes is commonly referred to as
The Writings. These books are the word of God written through Swedenborg and
represent the final Word to be given to the human race by God. Most of the
books are Bible analyses that decode the hidden spiritual sense of the stories
in the previous Testaments. My task while reading the book was to understand
and relate back in essay form how God manages the universe.
Findings
My discovery of how God manages the
universe is simplistic and positive. God’s management of the universe is based
on His Divine
In the spiritual world God’s operation of
Divine Providence is everywhere and evident to spirits there, but for human on
planet earth, we can not detect God’s operation of Divine Providence because it
is not a physical operation, rather a spiritual operation, working on our
minds. Divine
Understanding
the Dual Universe
God is independent of the universe and
chose to create the universe and to support its life and function forever. This
is within God’s reach and ability because theistic
science accepts that He is omnipotent and infinitely able in multi-tasking. The
created universe is a composite of two worlds: the natural world and the
spiritual world. Reality is a combination of these two worlds acting in unison.
These two worlds make up the universe. If you think about the universe in terms
of an object, the natural world is the exterior of the object relative
to our external physical senses, and the spiritual world is the interior of the
object having relation to our mind, spirit, or soul. The natural world is
physical matter or made of “material” things, while the spiritual world is
“substantive” made of love and truth which form the substances of our thoughts,
and feelings.
That the
spiritual world is inside or the interior of the natural world, is not
meant in common terms as in physically inside, I mean rather that the purpose,
power and existence of the natural world comes from within it from a different
source other then itself– that there is something inside the physical that is
not physical but substantive—that which is the sub-stratum of the physical and
is its “substance.” The source of the substances that form the interior
framework of physical matter and space, is the
spiritual world, that is, the Sun of the spiritual world that Swedenborg was
able to see whenever he entered the spiritual world in his mind. The spiritual world is not like the natural world. The
spiritual world is infinite and has no time or space. It is the interior
portion of the universe and is where our minds live. In the spiritual world our
minds image an exterior body that looks exactly like the natural body, only our
mental image of our body is perfect because it is thought based and not limited
by nature. The source of natural phenomena is the spiritual world since
whatever phenomena occur in the spiritual world act into corresponding
phenomena in the natural world. This how the natural is generated, is it
because of its spiritual cause. Hence the spiritual world phenomena are the
actual causes of natural phenomena. Swedenborg published a lot of material on these
“laws of correspondences.”
At the center of
the universe in the most interior point of the spiritual world is God
amidst the spiritual Sun. God is an omnipotent and infinite spiritual Human
Person, in whose Form and Image human beings were created, and supplies all the
necessities of life moment by moment. There, amidst the spiritual sun, God radiates
spiritual substances that power our minds to think and direct our physical
and spiritual selves. Just like our physical bodies
need nutrients and energy to subsist, our minds in the spiritual world
need power and activation to think and have feelings. The mind relies on the
spiritual organs of the will and the understanding to complete mental activity.
Both of these spiritual organs are in-filled by God’s love and truth streaming
continuously into the spiritual or mental receptors called the will (for love)
and the understanding (for truth). The spiritual organ of the will requires the
inflow of love to will anything and the spiritual organ of the understanding
requires the inflow of truth to understand or think anything.
These spiritual
substances (love and truth) are real things in the spiritual world. They are
mental substances that form the concepts that power
our thoughts. The spiritual substances of love and truth are the building block
of the universe from the inmost (spiritual Sun) to the outmost (natural
sun and earths). At first upon their dispersion from God these substances are
spiritual, later when these substances have reached the end of the spiritual
world they become are transformed by correspondence into natural phenomena
natural and form the physical matter in the natural world.
God as Creator of the universe has
established a systematic way of maintaining the
universe according to His goal and intention of creating an ever-expanding
heaven from the human race. The initial structuring of the universe into a
two-world system is God’s architecture for achieving this great goal. God
created the universe to function in a particular fashion, with spiritual or
mental activity causing physical reality. The relationship between the two
worlds is one of cause and effect – the spiritual world is the cause of the
natural world or the natural world is the effect of the spiritual world.
In our natural
bodies we are temporary, but in our spiritual bodies (our minds) we are
immortal and eternal. The life our spirit body as well as our natural body
receives is the life that is radiated by God from amidst the spiritual Sun. The
order of flow of God’s radiated life is key to gaining
insight into the geography of the spiritual world and its relationship with the
natural world. There are maps of the universe later that will explain the
ordered flow of God in throughout the universe from firsts to lasts.
God’s life is what the entire universe is
constructed out of. His life of love and truth are spiritual substances that
form our mind and are required by our minds (our spiritual bodies) for feeling
and rational thought. God’s life radiates first from
Himself and into the closest area of the spiritual world then into areas of the
spiritual world that are successively more distant from God. Finally once the
life reaches the external layer of the universe it manifests itself into
physical form. This manifestation is not magic it is simply a function
of the spiritual world interacting functionally with the natural world in
accordance with the Laws of Correspondences that have now been revealed to
science through Swedenborg. Our brains are physical matter and do not do our
thinking. Instead our thoughts are produced by the
interior portion of us which is our mind existing within us in the spiritual
world. The exterior of the universe is caused by the interior, since the flow
of life is from inmost to outmost, and the exterior is the outermost.
Ultimately, God
is the cause of the universe from the moment of its inception to its every
moment of existence thereafter. The universe and all its contents are held in
existence by repeatedly receiving life from God at every moment. This life is
directly from God. This categorizes God as the source of all things in the
universe, since from him everything has received, and still currently receives
its cause. If there were no God we would not exist nor would the universe we
live in. God is the creator and maintenance worker of the universe. God is the
power plant of the universe; if he were to shut down operations the universe
would cease to exist, due to its dependence on the power of life it receives
from God. The existence of anything, including the universe, is the
continual re-creation of that thing by God at each moment of life. This is also
true of events and occurrences.
God manages the vast amount of details
related to the history and biography of objects, people, and civilization
continuously. Without His management of these details and drama of all
events, everything would collapse into chaos, then into nothingness,
disappearing forever. The orderliness and rationality of human events are
therefore to be attributed to God’s direct and perpetual intercession, and not
to the rationality and competence of human beings, even though Human do enjoy the benefits of rationality and an ordered reality.
God implants the appearance or illusion of
self-determination, and independence in all living things for the sake of
giving each individual the feeling of freedom, hence happiness.
This is true of
all things, spiritual or natural. The acceptance of God as the manager of the
universe shows us that he is in control of things at every level not just a
macro level. He is directing and managing generals as well as details of life.
Not one thought or thing is outside of God’s control and he is involved in
every action that we take. It is not true that God only acts on the large scale
of management, only handling things like the weather patterns and political
structures of present governments and other macro level things, because His
work is everywhere not just as overseer from afar.
For anything to
exist, be it a mental thought or a physical object, it is approved by God for
existence and then given existence in the form of life influx from God. The
natural world is caused into effect by the spiritual world. Our spiritual
orientation to life is presented to us in physical form, and this is the
effect of our spiritual life. The translation and presentation and our mental
reality into physical reality is the basis of our physical life. Our entire
physical life is based on this principle because the spiritual causes the
natural. Our natural life is caused by
our spiritual life in accordance with discoverable scientific principles called
the “laws of correspondences.” This runs contrary to modern day science which
points to the cause of mental life as being a mass of
brains cells “collectively” starting to think and life. Obviously modern day science is unaware of
the truth and the dual nature of the universe.
The
discrete separation between nature and spirit
The separation of
the spiritual and natural worlds is discrete in description. This means that on
a single scale of measure both of the worlds could not be measured accurately.
The physics of each world is drastically different, and their cause and effect relationship
is not simple or plain, rather governed by Divine Laws of correspondence, which
are part of God’s functional structure of the universe. These laws of
correspondence are the interlocking codes that translate spiritual reality or
phenomena, into physical reality or phenomena. The laws of correspondence are
important to humans because they allow us to decode the spiritual meaning (cause) of physical events and phenomenon.
The reason for
the construction of the universe into a two-world system is to establish a
reality that perpetuates the growth of Heaven from human spirits. The physical
life that humans live is the starting point of human awareness and
consciousness. At the beginning or our lives we are introduced to the exterior
of the universe – The natural world. Although, unaware of it, at birth we have
a spiritual body born in the spiritual world, which is inside of us on a
discrete degree of existence, inside which is God at the center of the
spiritual world supporting life in a non-stop fashion.
We associate life
with the effects of the spiritual operations and thoughts that take place
within the interior of the universe. This is to say that humans are not, during
physical life, aware of their own mind. This awareness is disallowed in us.
Swedenborg was granted special permission by God to have dual consciousness,
but this was a rare permission that was necessary for forwarding spiritual
truths to the single consciousness of the humans living in the physical world.
The
Ancient Human Race
Swedenborg did
discover through his investigation of the spiritual world that not always was
the human race disallowed direct awareness of their mind in the spiritual
world. According to Swedenborg, there existed a race of humans that did have
dual consciousness. These people were capable of communicating with others in
the spiritual world and were aware of their spirit body (their mind), as well
as having physical awareness of the natural world. God gave this ancient race
of humans their ability of dual consciousness. The current human race is a
genetic divertive of the ancient human race. The physical difference between
the ancient and us is the state of our brain: ours is split and the ancient
brain was unified. The unification of the of the brain
allowed dual consciousness of the natural and spiritual worlds.
The ancient race
of humans who preceded us, experienced a fall and
their race eventually died out. Our race is the successor of the ancient
race. Our origin is from them, only we were born
differently than they were. The ancients were
gradually eliminated from earth by God disallowing them to reproduce, while
only allowing a few births toward the end of their existence of new humans with
split brains. The fall of the ancients was a result of them using spiritual
knowledge to intelligently acquire the goods of others in the natural world. We
as children of the fallen ancients, have as part of our mental inheritance,
built-in lust and desire of what others have as well as the desire to take it
away from them, including murdering them for it. This unfortunate
thinking is based on the animal mind within human mind and is clearly
pre-rational, and is a perversion or deflection contrary to God, love, and
truth.
From early
childhood we are aware of only the natural world and therefore we become
distorted in our mental construction of the universe, because without
consciousness of God we consider him nothing. This excerpt from Professor Leon
James puts into words the challenge, reward, and consequence humans face today.
“To progress into a race of Heaven, as in
olden times, we need to transform ourselves into rational human beings
motivated by love and arranging all things in accordance with the truth that
flows in from God. This personality modification from irrational to rational,
and from selfish to altruistic, is called ‘regeneration.’ Those who are willing
to put up this effort of conscience in their lives arrive at death into the
spiritual world prepared for a life in Heaven. But those who have not
regenerated themselves in this life arrive in the spiritual world and sink into
a low mental state called Hell. Life is very different for those who are in
Heavenly states of mind vs. those in Hellish states. Swedenborg was able to
confirm this by numerous explorations of those who live in these contrastive
states in the other life (or spiritual world).”
- Taken from essay revisions Dr.
James made of this paper.
To listen to our mind and heed what it
tells us is not an intelligent thing to do because
our ancestors became a fallen people following their own intelligence and since
we are based on their DNA we have inherited their genetic predisposition of
wanting to take the goods of others Slavery is a perfect example of taking the
goods of others. This is to say that each of us is born with a genetic impulse
to abuse and use others in inhumane ways.
The
present Human Race
The humans of
today are cut off from consciousness of their spirit body in the spiritual
world. We have physical consciousness so that we can navigate and negotiate the
physical environment. This means that the humans of today are unaware of the
spiritual interior of the universe and therefore are unknowledgeable of the
cause of the physical world. It is normal for the current race of humans to
establish natural thinking that prescribes the cause of the physical world as something
physical. This is the case with the scientific theory of the Big Bang, which
says that the universe comes from a special physical natural occurrence. This
is wrong, because we know now from The Writings of Swedenborg that the cause of
the natural world is the spiritual world, not some big bang.
Today science has
run into a major stumbling block due to our inability to have direct knowledge
of the spiritual world. We have fallen into the trap of only accepting a
reality that we can directly experience and measure. Even
though we know that not everything is physical, such as love, emotion, and
feelings. Concepts like these are spiritual and are not expressed as
physical things or objects. Due to human’s inability to have direct
consciousness of the spiritual world in which concepts are real, have substance
and govern the life there, we consider them pseudo-phenomena that is somehow
created by a neural network of natural brain cells.
For us being only
physically aware people, this creates a situation that allows only physical
data and observations as valid observable reality. This is a major problem,
because this is not the truth and will never lead to it. Our denial of the
spiritual world because we don’t have direct contact with it, has created a world
where the idea of God is optional not integral.
This could not be
more distant from the truth. The truth is that God is the creator and
maintainer of the universe. By design God has made the spiritual world as the
cause of the natural world. To fabricate a knowledge system based on only our
physical consciousness results in a knowledge base that is opposed to the true
reality of the universe. At this point in time, we are submerged in false
science, which denies the existence of God. True science is the total
acknowledgement and acceptance of God as the creator and constant provider of
life that perpetuates the universe.
As-of
self Freedom
On a personal level, God implants humans
with the feeling of being able to co-create our life with him, even though this
is not truth because we are not the source of our own life and power. God
supplies us with life, and we are afforded the feeling
of having liberty to choose what we do with that life as well as the feeling of
having rationality to make responsible, reasonable, and wise decisions. We have
the feeling of liberty and rationality because these are qualities that are in
us from being constructed from the spiritual substances of love and truth.
We are made to think by God that we have a
self, because if we did not think this, we would not be happy viewing our
position as a puppet to God, ironically because that is exactly what we are.
God supplies us with the feeling of freedom of will,
and the feeling of freedom of understanding. This means that we think we are
free to will what we please and we think we are free to understand what we
please. This does not mean that everything we understand and will is human
produced, because we have no production abilities of our own.
This only means that we think we can choose
to do what we please, be it right or wrong. God will not hold us back from
thinking that we are capable of doing what we want, because He maintains in us
a level of self-security by always hiding His constant involvement in our
lives. If what we think is rooted in evil and falsity, He will work in the
background to subtlety and slowly coax us into truth and love, but he will
never directly intervene because this would be taking away the feeling of human
freedom. Is it plain that humans are not in control of their life, because they
don’t have life of themselves. God considers this
aspect of human life and creates the feeling of freedom and rationality in
humans to allow them the feeling of having a self of themselves so they don’t
feel externally controlled and thus like robots functioning off some source of
life that is not theirs.
A map of the universe and human mind
The order of the universe helps us
understand the dual existence of human life. At
the center of the universe is the spiritual Sun amidst this Sun is God. The
spiritual sun radiates life in the form of love and truth outward or downward.
The flow of life from the spiritual sun is represented below in diagram 1.
Diagram 1 – Concept and
instruction for design from consultation with Leon James about his web
article Spiritual Geography. Available at website - http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/geography.html Diagram 1
Each ring of this picture represents a
level into which life flows. The center ring is the source of life, which is
God amidst the spiritual sun at the center of the spiritual world. From amidst
the spiritual sun God is constantly radiating life outward from himself in all
directions. The life God is radiating is a compound of love and truth, which
are spiritual substances.
In
the diagram, the barriers in-between the levels indicate a discrete degree of
separation between them. Each ring represents a level of mental function with
in the human mind. Any level that receives the flow of life from God receives
it in different understanding and thinking. The mental reception of God’s
radiated life is done first by the celestial mind of humans. The center circle
in the drawing is God amidst the spiritual sun, indicated by the number 1, and
the next three circles closest to God are the levels of the spiritual world.
The spiritual world is the native home of the human spirit-body, which is the
mind of a person.
There are three spiritual levels of the
human mind: the celestial rational mind, the spiritual rational mind, and the
natural rational mind. These minds are ordered in accordance to their proximity
to the spiritual sun, amidst which is God. The closest, represented by the
number 2, is the celestial rational mind, which operates at the highest
rational level available to man; this level of life reception is closest to God
only because of its ability to comprehend spiritual truths with full
understanding. God is a rational human being who has as his goal the creation
of eternal heaven from the human race. Rationality is the highest form of
mental function. God is higher than humans in his rationality and His Divine
Rational is the source of our rational, just as His Divine Life is the source
of our life. We share rationality with God and this is why we can understand
His explanation of Himself to us through the writings of Swedenborg.
We can understand God if we operate
mentally at a rational level. One discrete degree out from the celestial
rational mind is the spiritual rational mind, represented by the number 3. This
mind is a level of the human mind and due to its order in the discrete degrees
of flowing life is less rational then the celestial rational mind. Rationality
defines this level of the mind as it does with all the levels of the human
mind. Since this level of the human mind is separated from direct contact with
God Himself amidst the spiritual sun by a barrier of discrete degree, it
receives God’s radiated life only after it has passed through the celestial rational
mind.
What the spiritual rational mind receives
from God as life is less rational then that received by the celestial rational
mind. The waning amount of rationality passed to each successive discrete
degree of the human mind is only a function of the lesser ability of the levels
of the human mind to understand rationally the life that flows into them from
God. The levels of our mind have different abilities of rational thinking. The
celestial rational mind is in sync with the pure rationality of God’s radiated
life. The life that God amidst the spiritual sun radiates is love and truth.
These spiritual substances are the source of all life, because life is mind
based and truth and love are what a mind needs for thought.
The next discrete level of the human mind
is the natural rational mind. This mind is some distance from the spiritual
sun, represented by the number 4. This mind thinks in rational terms about the
natural world. The usage of the mind at this discrete degree is to think about
the world and natural surroundings in an abstract way. The reason why this
level of the mind is connected to thinking about life from the worldly natural
perspective rather than from the spiritual mental perspective is that it is the
first degree of rational thinking in the human mind, and so it must serve as a
bridge between the lower degrees of the human mind and the upper degrees of the
human mind. The lower degrees of the human mind, numbers 5 and 6, are the minds
that are concerned with the physical aspects of having a body in a physical
environment. The red line on the border between levels 4 and 5 indicates the
end of the human mind and the start of the animal mind.
These minds are the sensuous mind, number
5, and the corporeal mind, number 6. These minds are very far away from the
spiritual sun, and thus are not endowed with the capacity of higher order
thinking required for rational or cognizant thought. They are not called the
sensuous rational mind and the corporeal rational mind, rather only the sensuous
mind and the corporeal mind. Humans share both the sensuous and corporeal mind
with animals, but when it comes to rational mental reception of God’s life
animals are not equipped with the upper levels of the mind that humans have.
This is what separates humans from animals: the ability to receive God’s life
and understand it rationally and therefore fully without question or doubt.
This is because God’s message to us is in rational terms – the highest form of
mental function.
The outmost degree of the flow of life from
God at the inmost is the physical manifestation of our bodies and the planet we
live on. The human mind first receives life from God in the spiritual world
then the flows onto the lower regions of the mind. The lowest levels of the
human mind are the animal levels of the mind, the sensuous and corporeal minds
operating within the natural world. The actual physical existence of matter is
the most distance from the source of life, because it comes after all the
mental operations that bring it into being.
Our life from God –
The rational idea of as-of self
The spiritual world is the cause of the
natural world. Looking at diagram 1 the flow of life from the center of the
mind to the celestial rational mind and all the way to the outmost portion of
the mind, the corporeal mind, and then to the physical reality of the planet
Earth, it is evident that being human starts at the natural rational level of
the mind. Even though the human mind is able to think from its built-in animal
mind, as it does with the sensuous and corporeal minds, being human does not
truly start until one engages the use of their rational abilities that are
possessed within any of the rational minds. There are levels of rational minds
and these are separated by the ability to understand in detail the life that
flows into them.
With increasing closeness to the spiritual
sun, the more pure and true are the love and truth that the spiritual sun gives
off. At the level of function of the corporeal mind, one cannot think of the
world in a rational sense and is lost as to the truth. To understand the truth
requires rationality because God’s life is given to us in rational terms.
Humans
are faced with a bit an ego problem while alive on Earth. We are lured into
thinking that spiritual life is non-existent because we have no direct contact
with it. This is because the natural world, perceived by the animal mind is not
capable of rational thought, and rational thought is required for understanding
and accepting the existence of the spiritual world. The animal portion of the
mind is dead set on being king of the mental playing field. The natural denies
the existence of the spiritual, suggesting that it could not exist if it is not
physically present or apparent. This is the approach to spirituality that
modern day science had adapted – If you cannot measure it by some physical
method, it isn’t real.
As humans who are under the circumstance of
being disabled in our conscious awareness of our own life in the spiritual
world, we struggle to come to terms with a reality that seems incomprehensible.
The natural mind will never see human life as a dual existence because it is
above the understanding of the natural mind to accept God without physical
proof of Him. We only know that humans live a dual existence because Swedenborg
has revealed it to us from God.
The natural mind has no interest in reading
and believing Swedenborg, rather the natural mind is focused on experiencing
this dual existence so it can verify its existence.
Modern day science is what tells us that
God does not exist. The only shortcoming of modern day science is that it only
accepts natural observable events as real or having validity. This is a major
problem because modern day science limits itself to the natural world and
therefore is only asking us to use the animal levels of our mind, which will
always turn to natural events as causes of other natural events. Science is
missing the mark on providing real working solutions for today’s serious global
problems like abuse, sickness, societal problems, racism, poverty, intolerance,
hatred, and disease because science fails at assigning appropriate cause and
effect relationships. Science points to natural causal factors, which are
incorrect and lead us down a path of no progress in understanding or changing
the real cause of the problems which are always spiritual, not natural.
Our 5 senses are all handled by our animal
minds, just as is the case with other animals – The knowledge they gain about
their world comes from looking outwardly, only using their natural senses to
receive information. Human are enabled to do this simple information processing
of external stimuli, but the human minds are not engaged at this level.
The human mind is first engaged at the
natural rational level, because no longer is this mind dependent on external
input for computation and thought. It does not look outwardly for life’s
information, rather inwardly towards God amidst the spiritual sun radiating his
love and truth, which are life itself. The first level of rational mentality is
the natural rational mind; it thinks rationally about the natural world and is
the first phase of becoming rational. The next phase of rationality is the
building of our understanding of hidden spiritual meaning embedded in our
surroundings and the events in our lives.
This phase enters us into spiritual rational mental function rather then
the natural rational function. The spiritual rational minds in the human mind
are the spiritual rational mind, and the celestial mind
and are not dependent on natural concepts and reality.
The truth is that humans receive their life
from God and appear to use it as they wish, but in reality are still under the
control of God because it is He who progresses
our lives forward creating every detail of every instance. God is infinite in
His ability to multi-task enabling Him to manage the universe with ease and
pleasure. His radiated life is constantly streaming into our spirit bodies (or
mind—will and understanding) in the spiritual world giving minds the energy and
power needed for them to effect into reality the natural world. That humans
have a self that is their own is wrong, because a self is connected to life and
the life we have from God is not ours but His and at no point in time does
God’s life ever become appropriated and converted into our life.
The idea of humans having a self of
themselves is an irrational thought because we only have life due to the inflow
of life we receive from God and this means that if we experience the feeling of
a self it not self generated, but God generated. Humans are therefore given the
appearance of having a self so they feel like individuals with personal (their
own) freedom and not creatures control by a force other then themselves, even
though this is what is happening.
The concept of as-of self is important to
theistic science in that it helps us label the feeling of self we have as
humans. Rationally we know that God is still in control of us even when we are
in total freedom, because it is impossible that He is not, since he is creating
every single thing, occurrence, and object in the universe no matter what
importance we assign to it.
God has granted humans the qualities of
liberty and rationality, these two qualities are what differentiate humans from
other animals. These abilities of liberty and rationality are not independent
of God and require His life for existence and therefore are not ours and
therefore we don’t actually posses these quality of
our selves, rather as-of our selves, meaning that we think they are of our
self, but in reality there are of God.
The idea of as-of self is essential and
required for rational thought about God and his role in our lives, because we
need to correctly define our strong feelings of having a self that is free and
reasonable, even thought we know rationally that humans can have no self. In
other words God has granted humans the feeling of having freedom to do what
they think is right, and the feeling of having freedom to desist from what they
think is wrong. Accompanying humans right to do what they think is right, is
their feeling of having rationality so they can make educated and informed
decision based on the truth and love powering our lives. Since humans have been
granted a rational mind, which is divided into three levels – celestial
rational, spiritual rational, and natural rational – God allows humans to think
and feel as if they have freedom of choice so that they progress in their own
way according to how they understand the love and wisdom He radiates into their
mind from amidst the spiritual sun in the center of the spiritual world.
Due to the fact that God gives us a
supposed feeling of freedom and rationality, His allowance of evil thoughts and
deeds is required, because people use their freedom and rationality to will and
understand things that are not true, thus things that are opposed to God since
He is truth. A good example of this is
the current scientific position that humans hold now. It denies the existence
of God, which is totally wrong and clearly opposed to God, even thought he has
allowed the existence and development of this science from its inception. The
idea of as-of self allows us to have complete understanding of the self we feel
and experience, even though we know rationally that a human self is not
possible.
The permission of Evil
God controls
the universe by a method of universal management that utilizes the laws of
correspondence to translate the spiritual world into the natural world, or
better said, laws of correspondence that translate spiritual meaning into
natural meaning. For every spiritual event there is a corresponding natural
event that carries with it encoded spiritual meaning. The spiritual meaning is
coded in a fashion as to change it in to natural meaning. By applying the laws
of correspondence that govern the process that transforms the spiritual meaning
into the natural meaning, we can educate ourselves about the interior spiritual
meaning of our existence and the events that make up our life.
The obvious human challenge is to rise
above the animal level and to hold mental concepts dear to our hearts, for it
is our ability to reason and discern right from wrong that will never guide us
ill. The innermost point of the knowledge we have is God inside us in the
spiritual world. Our life comes directly from God Himself and it is only for
this reason that we still persist on earth to date. Our entire life is
dependent on God.
During the days of the ancients there was not a Hell in the
spiritual world. There was only an ever-expanding Heaven, minus the world of
spirits. The mental foundations of the ancients were strong and rooted in the
truth. They were internally informed about the spiritual world because they had
dual consciousness. Every day of their natural lives they were vividly aware of
the spiritual world. The spiritual world was completely understandable, joyous,
truthful, knowledge providing, and loving to them.
Reality can be perfect in the spiritual
world because thoughts are reality in the spiritual world – the spiritual world
does not face the limitations inherent in the natural world, such as gravity,
death, decay of existence, and the physics of the structural arrangement of
atoms and all that. Natural knowledge can only lead to more natural knowledge
unless it is examined using the laws of correspondence to decode the spiritual
meaning from the natural meaning. Swedenborg reveals these laws of
correspondence to us in the books he wrote on his first hand scientific
examination and study of the spiritual world. We are now empowered to know the
spiritual meaning of natural phenomena.
Since our life is null without God’s
constant nourishment and involvement we face a situation and must come to terms
with the fact that we are God’s creation NOT Gods ourselves. We have absolutely
zero power over our reality and we supply no life to ourselves. We are minds
receiving truth and love from God. Our varied understanding and gauge of the
truth and love we receive from God is the determining factor in where we are in
our mental functioning. If we don’t see spiritual meaning in the things around
us, it means that we are looking at these things with animal sensing eye that
are limited and cannot observe the interior spiritual meaning coded by the laws
of correspondence.
To elevate our mental activity is to
uncover the spiritual meaning in things and to begin to understand the
spiritual world better. The goal of raising our mental functioning is
preparation for a life in Heaven by the time we pass over to the other side,
because once you are over your loves from your natural life stick to you and
are what you will love forever, unless you undergo rigorous spiritual training
to change loves. Unfortunately ignorance
is not a valid excuse at the pearly gates. We cannot shake off our loves once
we enter our spiritual consciousness after our physical detachment. They are
who we are and make up every bit of us. We exist for them. They are our loves.
We would disintegrate without them. This is the whole Swedenborgian philosophy
– That everything is love and truth, and that these two elements in the
spiritual world of our minds create the material of the natural world. And that Humans are no different; we too are built of love and
truth in the spiritual world. This is of no surprise in the spiritual world,
because it is evident.
Our problem is that we have been blocked in
our ability to have direct consciousness of the spiritual world. This makes us
less knowledgeable on the subject of spirituality and consequentially on
knowing that God is at the center of the universe supplying its life at all
moments. We can easily become unaware of God for large amounts of time, even
our entire life if we don’t pay attention to the truth. God is truth and God is
Love and Heaven is on earth now. These are all true statements that have been
verified by Swedenborg, the scientist of the Heavens.
If God is truth and God is Love and Heaven
is on earth now, then why is there evil in the mix of activity? Why is there a
hell, if love is all there is? Why might God will evil if he is good? This is
the question that seems to have the greatest ability to potentially undermine
Swedenborg’s complete account and description of who and what God is. If the
answer to this question is weak or a scam then it appears as if there is no God
or there is a God and He is both good and evil. There is no weak answer to this
question, because the truth is clear that God does not will evil, nor is there
no God.
The answer is best understood from the
aspect of knowing that God’s relationship with our fallen race of people, who
are born with ties to hellish loves from the perversion of our spiritual organs
of thought, is a unique and special one, which involves the concept of
freewill. This is that God gives all humans the feeling and sense of freewill.
We know that humans alone cannot exist so it is God who powers humans. God does
understand that if we think we have freewill we are inclined to seek out our
loves from the world and to develop their meaning for us.
God also realizes that if we were able to
recognize His involvement in our lives at all instances, we would not feel
free, rather we would feel trapped and dictated. Due to our strong genetic pull we have come
to agree to reject the truth about the existence of God, and we continue to
hold intact old systems of governance that endorsed slavery as a favorable
commercial activity. We still hold close in our heart the lust for the goods of
others. This is a negative trait and resultant behavior we inherited from our
ancient ancestors.
Upon the creation of the universe and the
human race, God simultaneously generated a complex and efficient management
system of the universe and its contained parts. One of these contained parts is
the Human race and all the individuals of that race. Humans are the only
creatures capable of understanding and comprehending the spiritual aspect of
life. This ability is implanted in them by God and is a gift beyond fortune
because the end result of the gift is the activation of the spiritual levels of
the mind, the usage of which lead to ceaseless human life in the spiritual
world. This is why we care about integrity and honor and valor. We have a
language because we have a spiritual language that turns into our natural language
through the laws of correspondence. These laws are the key to decoding the
spiritual meaning of natural events, occurrences, and things. Just as there is
laws governing the translation of spiritual meaning into natural meaning there
are laws that govern human life and our relationship with God. There is a set
of basic rules that spell out the human condition. The human condition must be
view in context, because the human condition has experienced changes over time
and these changes were drastic and long lasting.
The ancients were a different breed then
us. They had the ultimate experience of life, because they had dual
consciousness and were not fearful of death and dying (because they knew that
they lived forever in the spiritual world), and they lived a totally different
life then we live, under a paradigm of completely understanding God, the
universe, and their place in all of it. All of it was as clear as day to them.
But there was trouble in paradise and someone got greedy and started to lust
after the goods of another. And then more people start following in suit, after
seeing others execute marvelous conquests of the goods of others. Soon many
people were into the idea of using others as leverage to get what they wanted.
Slavery is a prime example of this type of spiritual insanity. If God allows
slavery how can God be good?
The idea that God wills events is true, but
it is also true that God permits events rather than willing them. In his
interactions with humans, he is limited as to the amount of direct control He
can place over anyone. This is due to the fact that he has already established
the idea of freewill in the minds of humans, so He cannot contradict rules He
had made. If God were to make us do all the right things, we would feel controlled
and like robots, without self- direction. This is a symptom of our cultural and
genetic inheritance that instructs us to love to take the goods of others with
disregard to human rights and our ability to discern right from wrong. Our
pre-programmed assumption of life is that there is no
spiritual consequences connected to our physical behaviors. We have
implanted in us the idea that we are our own masters and we are in control of
reality. This is completely wrong and is a direct threat to our mental sanity
and ability to lead truthful and uncontaminated lives.
Since the fall of our distant ancestors, we
have been functioning under the paradigm of life that they fashioned and
created. It is our duty as the next generation of humans to return to the truth
of existence and the knowledge that God is here with us at all junctures of
life. His involvement in our life is in the spiritual world, and so His
involvement in our lives is also in the physical world, because the spiritual
world causes the physical world.
When the ancients started to misbehave and
use spiritual knowledge to rob the goods of others, God took notice of what was
being done. He had granted these humans the ability of dual consciousness along
with pure love and truth, and they found a way of perverting the love and truth
He gave them into lies and hateful practices. Our ancestors fostered and sprung
forth the idea that since we are allowed to engage in evil activities and God
does not stop us from doing so, that we are in control of ourselves, and thus
God is not in control of us.
This is why hell and dominance was
introduced into the human experience. The ancients begun to adhere to the idea
that God was not an integral part of their life and that he could not prevent
human action, or reserve punishment for those who decided to do what they
internally knew as wrong and hateful. God’s contribution to the universe and to
humans as well is the constant flow of love and truth He gives off from amidst
the spiritual sun in the spiritual world. To deny God the ownership of life is
absolutely insane and complete falsity.
The powers of rational thought have been
utilized to reason and prove falsities. A commonplace example is modern day
science, which we know uses logic and reason to detect true causal
relationships. But the entire scientific community is proving falsities all the
time because they never point to any spiritual cause of physical effects. The
absolute truth is that the spiritual causes the natural. Modern day science
tells us rather that certain physical events or conditions cause other physical
events or conditions. When it comes to scientific knowledge God is the most
rational and clear in his ability to detect true causal relationships, of which
the universe was built from and functions on.
Our ability to think in and deceitfully
confirm falsities is a function of our past mental coding from our ancestors.
When God disabled the ancients from reproducing, only allowing a few split
brain children to be born, He redesigned the human experience because the new
race of people were not allowed conscious access to the spiritual world. This
meant that humans would not have direct knowledge of the spiritual world, and
it meant that humans were to know about the spiritual world through other means
of knowing that are not direct. The new race of humans would have to rely on
their inner, interior, unspoken knowledge of God to have stable knowledge of
God, without physically sensing Him or the spiritual world. This proved to be a
compensational step in the human experience resulting from the adulteration our
ancestors brought to the human consciousness.
We are suffering from the result of the
ancients abusing their access to the spiritual world. This means work for us
because we have a genetic pull to adulterate others by using them for our
mental and material gain. At the core of who we are, is a voice that tells us
that God is not real and that He has no control over the natural
environment. This is a widespread
problem that has a spiritual cause. The spiritual cause is the thinking style
people have. They are lost as to the truth because they seek physical
verification of God due to their engagement of the lower levels of the mind
functioning on animal principles rather than human principles. At an animal
level there can exist no mental concepts and so no
concept of God has a change life. For people who think using their animal minds
God is not a possibility. This is easily understood when think about weather a
dog, a cat, or a horse could conceptualize anything, let alone God.
Under the direction of animal motivated
thinking it is clear that many people don’t know the truth, and are at a
disadvantage of discerning falsity from truth, because they reject the upper
portions of their mind that can enable them to know the truth. Most people are easily lured into accepting
as truth, something that is false, due to crafty mental methods of proving
falsities. The use of crafty mental methods to prove falsities is a common
occurrence. Science even asks us to engage in and support its view that God is
null and that humans grew out of (evolved from) electricity, water, and dirt.
To a spiritual person this sounds like a joke because human life is not random
and a growth of material things. It is rather mental and spiritual at its core
and at its end it is material and physical. The true nature of life is not
captured by science, and this is why we need to realize that Scientific Dualism
is a needed paradigm that is actually the truth of the function of the universe.
For the spiritually aware person, there
exists a rift between what the instruction we have in us from the past and the
instructions we receive from God at all moments of our life. God is infilling
our mind with love and truth at all moment of our life, while we have an inner
desire to adulterate the goods that God gives us. We wish inside to reject God
and to accept ourselves as gods. This is our root problem. The solution to this
problem is the idea of as-of self, in place of our idea of self. Our idea of self is based on the facts that we
have a life that is independently supplied by us and we have complete control
over that life. These facts are not true and so is the assertion that humans
have a proper self. The better description of our notion of self is the idea of
as-of self, implying that it is as-if we have a self, only because we know that
it is rationally correct to define it in this way because don’t actually have a
self.
What about the permission of evil? Does God
will war, suffering and the creation of a hell in the spiritual world? It is
known that God resides inside of all of us on a discrete level managing things
in the mental realm of the spiritual world. Our usage of the varied level of
our mind places us in a mental space that corresponds to a certain spiritual
space. The outermost levels of the human mind are animal levels and the usages
of these levels results in evil activity because there is a clear absence of
the ability to incorporate God into mental understanding. Humans who engage the
animals solely are missing the mark of being human, because they are not using
their interior rational and spiritual minds to grasp the spiritual sense in the
natural.
If a human thinks like an animal then that
is exactly what he is. The degradation of the human mind to the false rational
and animal levels is horrible. What is even worst is the activity of proving
falsities. Such as is the case in science, as discussed above. The use of
faulty but sophisticated reasoning and persuasion are employed to convince many
people that false things are in fact true. Such as God does not exist, proven
by a theory of evolution that says humans are from animals. This is mental
madness, because the truth is being totally ignored, and the truth is being inverted
and the opposite of it is being conveyed. Our perverted spiritual organs of
thought, which we have inherited from our ancestors, do this flipping of the
truth. This is what has us involved in and thinking about evil. We are born
into love of lust of the goods of others. This is an unfortunate starting place
for us, but as we grow-up we can begin to search for the truth that we have
within us. The answers to our questions about life and human purpose are found
within us in the spiritual world where our life begins.
God gives humans an allowance of perceived self-determination and independence from His
involvement in their life. The love and truth that flow into the human mind is
understood by humans to be of their own. This is not a valid reason to start to
believe that it true. We must be informed about the reason why we are being
mentally fixed by God to think in this certain way. His knowledge tells Him
that if we were to always know that He is controlling us that it would be death
to human life because everyone would feel like a robot with no self of its own.
The reason why we would think this if we knew of His complete control of our
life, is because we have a desire to believe that we have a self which defines
us as independent of God, this of course is wrong and only an inherited
ingrained mental thought pattern from our fallen ancestors.
In God’s management of the universe He has
established laws of permission, which are His way of regulating His ability to
intervene and stop people acting from evil motivations. It is more important to
God to not stop people from being and doing evil then it is for Him to directly
stop them. He permits the evil actions of humans because it is more important
for people to learn about life and self-correct than it is for God to save them
and deny them access to evil and darkness. This is because for the spiritual
growth of humans now it is very important that they don’t experience God first
hand, because they are learning how to experience and know God indirectly, more
through getting in-touch with God by searching inside of themselves and seeking
the Bible and the Writings of Swedenborg for that which will effectively tell
us truths about the spiritual world.
The laws of permission are incorporated
into Divine
Comment
by Dr. James:
God does not “interfere” directly, but He sets things up without our awareness.
For instance, He manages what things we remember and what we forget, so that He
might lead us to certain decisions and perceptions. God also intervenes by
managing events that we acknowledge to be out of our own control, such as errors,
accidents, luck, the weather, and so on with all probabilities, which allow Him
to influence the outcome of events and decisions. This includes the macro
events of evolution and history as well as the micro-events of biography with
every individual in the universe --thinking, feeling, and experiencing moment
by moment from birth to eternity. (End of comment)
People carry a huge responsibility because
the faculties of reason and higher mental function they possess mixed with the
freedom granted to them from God allows them to direct reality and even other
humans around them. This ability as we know can be abused. The thirst for
dominance over and control of others and their goods is abuse of this nature.
War for territorial expansion is abuse of this nature. Thinking about designing
a major slave trade is abuse of this nature. Manufacturing weapons of war is
abuse of the freedom God has granted us. It is a mental inversion of the truth
and love persistently flowing into our minds.
The permission of evil by God is regulated
so that the evils that do occur can work out to be positive and useful in the
long run to eternity. This is a quality that all evils permitted by God must
have, for it is God’s overriding mission to enable things that will lead to an
eternal good. God does mediate the degree of evil that people do express and
exhibit. But he does not dispel evil from anyone. It is human’s responsibility
to cast out the evils inherent in them from the past. This is accomplished by
mental elevation from the lower levels of the mind to the upper spiritual
levels of the mind where love and truth are the foundation of thought and God
is clearly understood. The use of the rational levels of the mind to prove
falsities shows us that not only do we need to participate in high mental
function but we need to follow God’s instructions for us because left to our
own devices we lead others a stray and away from the truth. God wills into
existence love and truth. These spiritual elements raining into our mind and
give us power to thinking and produce action. What we choose to think and do are up to us and can be evil if we choose. If evil is
performed then it stands that God did not will it but rather permitted it,
because he values maintaining our sense of freedom over directly intervening
and stopping an evil course of action If we will and think evil it is us to
attribute the responsibility of creating a hellish world or a movement of evil
since God has granted us freedom which he respects at all times, while ever
supplying us with love and truth so can have real knowledge.
Another map of the universe and the human mind
* Diagram 2 gathered from my consultation with Leon
James about the structure of the universe and the flow of God’s life within
it.
Divine
Human Mind Mind Diagram 2*
Animal
On the low end of the diagram
is the natural world, which is the product of the animal mind. This world is a
function of the sensual and corporeal minds. These minds are natural- only
processing information from external sources. At the border between the
sensuous and natural rational minds there is an important change in mental
capacity – The natural rational mind is rational while the sensuous mind is not
rational.
The spiritual world and the natural world
are levels of human life. Both the natural and spiritual worlds are associated
with different degrees of mental functioning. These differentiated degrees of
mental functioning are defined by their distance away from the center of the
spiritual world, where God is amidst the Spiritual Sun, radiating His Divine
Love and Wisdom forward into the minds of all humans. The levels of mental
capacity within the human mind are: the natural mind, the rational mind and the
celestial mind.
Each mind exists by itself, or in other
words these minds do not mix and are separated by discrete degree. The natural
mind is not capable of rational thought and therefore has no understanding of
God, and no way of coming to terms with his existence. It is only recognizes
the natural world as existing.
The natural mind is fixed on using natural
things as definers of reality. The rational mind is above or more inward then
the natural mind, which places it a level closer to God and the truth. It is capable
of analytic thinking and reasoning. The rational mind enables us to think about
concepts and ideas that don’t now present themselves to us in our natural
world. Above or more inward of the natural rational mind, which is the first
level of the rational mind, is the spiritual rational mind. The spiritual
rational mind is the second mind of rationality and is purely spiritual, not
needing to contain natural thought or remnants of it, as is the case with the
natural rational mind since it serves as a bridge between the spiritual world
and the natural, or the animal mind and the human mind.
Next to God and above the spiritual
rational mind is the celestial rational mind. This mind is the highest mental
level of the human mind. The celestial mind is in contact with God, because
this portion of the mind is the centermost and so is at the location where God
is. This mind is where the highest angels reside. Maintaining mental function
at the celestial level requires full understanding of the current human condition,
which requires reformation of character, spiritual study, and regeneration of
life, since we are offspring of a fallen race who chose to love themselves over
loving God and his intentions for us.
The spiritual societies of Heaven
and Hell
Using our minds to oppose God is
the creation of falsity and irrational thought not based on reality. Within the
spiritual world there exists heaven and hell and the world of spirits. Heaven
is the location where spirits live, who had as people living in the natural world elevated their mental functioning to a rational or
celestial level along with acknowledging that God is the source of all life and
the universe itself. This is because maintaining natural mental functioning
from birth to death is not ample preparation of the mind for life in heaven
where truths and rationality are the atmosphere and basis of life.
Rationality is required to understand the
mental concept of love and truth, and this understanding brings loving others
and living a wondrous delightfully beautiful life while treating others as
brothers to the forefront of our purpose in life, because this the instruction
from God to us. The truth is that all
people are admitted into heaven only those who cannot tolerate the truth and
wisdom alive there travel themselves to Hell because they will not let go of
their irrational thought patterns, premises and abusive ways of interacting
with others. If we have however elevated how mental consciousness in the human
able to understand the rational concepts required for live in heaven, namely
that God exists and is the Creator and maintainer of the universe.
Those who did not elevate their mental
functioning out of the natural levels of the mind and into the rational levels
of the mind have not prepared themselves for a life in Heaven, because they do
not carry with them a human character that desires love and truth, which are
rational concepts. Instead these people have prepared themselves for life in
Hell because they carry with them a character that desires falsity and hatred,
the opposite of reality, which are the spiritual substances of truth and love.
To be rational is to understand and accept the truth about the dual nature of
the universe and God as omnipotent and the creator and constant supplier of
live to the universe and mankind. The rational degrees of the mind are
themselves heaven in varying degrees. Being rational is the unique human mental
capacity and by being rational we can comprehend our relationship with our
Loving God.
Hell is where spirits
live, who had as people living on earth only utilized
the animal minds. These people live in Hell because they are irrational; we
know that usage of the animal minds is devoid of any rationality so the animal
minds are securely irrational units. God does not place spirits departed from
their physical bodies in Heaven or in Hell, the spirit is placed in Heaven or
Hell is simply by the way one lives their life while on Earth. If one engages
in mental activity that is rational having at its core the acceptance and
understanding of God, they are humans and are qualified for life in heaven.
If people
engage in irrational mental activity they are not human but pre-human or animal
in mental function. The result of thinking from the pre-human mind is life in a
lowered mental state called “hell”. The spiritual environment of hell is a
projection of animal thinking and appears dark, dreadful, scary, dangerous,
decadent, hateful, and hostile. While our spiritual consciousness is dormant
during our physical life on Earth, it resides in the world of spirits, in the
spiritual world. The spiritual world has three parts to it: The world of
spirits, Heaven, and Hell. These locations are not physical; rather they are
areas or states of mind. After the physical body
ceases to function, human life continues to eternity in a spirit-body in the
spiritual world. When we become consciously aware of the spiritual world we are
in the world of spirits.
The world of spirits is the arrival point
of all humans switching over from physical awareness to mental awareness. When
the physical body dies so does human’s physical connection. Our lives become
purely mental at that point. We no longer have a tie to the most outward layer
of the universe, the level that is the most distant from God amidst the
spiritual sun at the center of the universe.
Once we crossover into our new conscious
awareness we are taught about the spiritual world by angels. When we are ready
to live life in the spiritual world on our own, the loves we brought with us
from Earth and physical life are what determine our final placement, either in
Heaven or in Hell. The option of staying in the world of spirits is not a
choice. All spirits are initially pleased with their placement in a spiritual
society be it in Hell or Heaven, because the spirits will always be placed into
a society that corresponds with their loves. However, it was noted by
Swedenborg that even though Hell dwelling spirits were in a colony of spirits
that shared their love of falsity and hatred they suffered much from
interacting with people like themselves. This makes the loves we have during
our physical life special because they are the determining factor in our
self-placement into either Heaven or Hell.
Swedenborg’s consciousness of the spiritual
world tells us that human life is more the natural environment that we are
accustomed to. He tells us that to know the world only through our five outward
senses is animal like and unqualified as human. If we engage the natural
rational mind, and start to use the inner or higher levels of the mind, this is
when we become qualified as human. The highest form of humanity is the usage of
the celestial mind. Every human is
living a dual existence, but while alive in the physical body our dual
existence is blocked from our consciousness. Swedenborg represents a rare
occasion when God directly intervened and allowed him dual consciousness while
alive on Earth.
When the physical body
ceases to live, our consciousness shifts from the natural to the spiritual. Our consciousness is activated in our
spirit body, which is our mind. Our spirit body is an image of our physical
body, one representing the other. Our life in the spiritual world appears like
our life in the natural world, physical and solid state. In the spiritual world
we use our mind to construct our reality and we draw on the natural reality we
have known from our past, so it makes sense that we carry on with life as human
beings in the afterlife, just as we do now, not as airy spirits floating around
or some ethereal entity hovering through time and space. The physical things
that appear in the spiritual world are made of the higher order spiritual
parents of atoms and material elements- the spiritual substances of love and
truth.
Our life in heaven is threatened by our
past of fallen ancestors who used their as-of self powers of liberty and
rationality to create world of slavery and use of others for their own material
gain. To right our inherited thinking from the past, that tries to keep us focused
on the natural world by claiming it is the only reality, we must pursue a life
of spiritual study, reformation of our fallen character, and the regeneration
of our life from thinking irrationally to thinking rationally. At each moment
of our lives, God is working with us to bring us into the truth so we might
choose to think rationally about life and the universe.
God’s Divine
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