As you can see from the above conceptual formula, God is the beginning of everything, and the end or purpose for which everything exists is in the last line, which is our eternal life called heaven and hell. Theistic science is the scientific effort of making explicit the path from God to the blueprint of the universe, whose reason for existence is that human beings may live forever in heavenly joy and happiness. This purpose of creation reflects God's inmost character, which is Divine Love. The essence of love is to make others happy who are outside of oneself. Heaven for human beings is the ultimate purpose that God has in creating the universe and maintaining it forever for this purpose.
For further explanations, see Section xx. See also Dr. Ian Thompson's articles listed in the Readings and Literature, in Volume 18.
(3) Revelation: Divine Speech Exteriorizing as Sacred Scripture
Divine revelation is the only source of facts, knowledge, and principles about the spiritual world of eternity and the afterlife. Divine Speech emanates from God and permeates the universe, creating and maintaining everything in a rational order that serves God's purpose of love. Divine Speech enters the human mind at the highest level of consciousness that humans are created into called the Third Heaven. Then it descends and exteriorizes to the Second Heaven in our mind. From there, to the First Heaven in our mind. From there into the natural mind, which is where we become conscious of it. 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.
Focusing our attention on Sacred Scripture brings us into direct contact with God because the content of Sacred Scripture is revelation from God. Saying that Divine Speech is proceeding from God is exactly the same as saying that Divine Truth is proceeding from God. Divine Truth is a substance called spiritual light that is streaming forth from the Spiritual Sun that Swedenborg was able to see in the spiritual world. At age 57 he suddenly found himself with the unique ability of being conscious in his spiritual mind, which is unconscious to us until the afterlife. When we are resuscitated a few hours after death, we awaken in full conscious awareness of our spiritual mind, which until then was unconscious. Now it is the natural mind that becomes unconscious, and the spiritual mind becomes conscious. As a result, we can no longer see or hear anything in the physical world through our physical body. Instead, we can now hear and see and feel everything in the spiritual world.
Since Swedenborg was the only scientist in history whose spiritual mind was conscious, he is the only scientist in history who can give us an objective and empirical description of the spiritual world. Everything that he wrote down and published, called the Writings of Swedenborg (published between 1747-1771), are called Divine revelations or Sacred Scripture. God opened Swedenborg's spiritual mind so that he could objectively report to the world of science what the conditions are in the afterlife of eternity. To study Swedenborg's Writings as Divine revelation is the positive bias in science, as discussed.
From all this you can see what the three basic premises upon which theistic psychology is founded, namely, dualism, theism, and revelation.
When Swedenborg's spiritual mind became conscious his amazing discovery was that the spiritual world of eternity in the afterlife was nothing else than what we call the mental world!
In other words:
spiritual world = mental world = rational ether = afterlife = eternity
This equation brings it home to us. We are very familiar with the mental world. We are in it. It is our life. Take away our sensations, thoughts, and feelings, and what have you got left? Nothing but a shell, like a tree or rock. Human beings are alive in their sensations, thoughts, and feelings. This is the mental world. Note carefully: Where are you now? You are not in this room. Your physical body is in this room. Your mind or mental body is in the spiritual world. So what is so familiar to us from minute by minute experience and life, is actually the spiritual world. We don't know this because we have no comparison between our natural mind and our spiritual mind. As long as our spiritual mind remains unconscious, we have the illusion or sensation that we are in the room, in the body, and that what we are sensing is the room. But in fact we are not sensing the room, nor the stimulus from the room to the sensory organs and the brain. We are sensing the sensations in our mind, the thoughts in our mind, the feelings in our mind.
Once you realize this -- that your natural mind exists in the spiritual world, not in this physical world -- you can begin to understand that we are immortal human beings. Your personality, your memories and identity, your feelings, emotions, and thoughts -- these are not physical and temporal materials; they are immortal, eternal, spiritual materials constructed out of spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun (see Section xx). Hence you can see that thoughts and feelings must be immortal and eternal, because not in time and space.
Swedenborg discovered that when he was conscious in his spiritual mind he was able to be in company with people he had known who had died, and people he read about in history and literature. This proved that everyone who dies is resuscitated in the spiritual world and continues life there forever. Swedenborg observed thousands of people die and be resuscitated about 36 hours later in the spiritual world. Most of these people he said are pretty surprised to see themselves up and running after dying.
Swedenborg's discovery that the spiritual world of the afterlife is nothing else than what we call the mental world, is surely the greatest scientific discovery of all times.
This amazing discovery changes our most fundamental concepts of the universe and life. Dualism is not a theoretical supposition. It is an absolute fact that is familiar to every human being. Nothing can be more familiar to us than the mental world of our sensations, thoughts, and feelings in which our awareness is immersed every moment of our life. Who would have suspected this amazing fact that Swedenborg discovered, namely, that this familiar mental world is the world of eternity!!
Sensations, thoughts, and feelings are spiritual objects and not at all like physical objects, such as the brain is. Physical objects are in time and space, hence they must be temporary. Spiritual objects like thoughts and feelings are not in time and space. Thoughts have no mass, no physical energy, and cannot be measured or detected by anything physical. Thoughts and feelings take up no space, they have no weight, no mass, no time dimension. Mental objects are spiritual objects, and everything spiritual is outside time and space, which is called eternity. Our thoughts and feelings are in eternity. Your self or personality, which is nothing but your thoughts and feelings, is therefore eternal or immortal. Our self exists only in the world of eternity outside time and space. This is the mental world, which is also called the spiritual world.
You are immortal. You were born immortal. Only your physical body is in time and space, and when it dies, our conscious awareness awakens in the spiritual mind, which until then remained unconscious. Swedenborg unique ability was to be able to be conscious in his spiritual mind before he passed on, from age 57 to 82, during which he wrote and published the Writings -- about 30 volumes in English translation (also available online at: www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
Swedenborg's reports prove that there is only one mental world called the spiritual world. Every human being is born into this one mental world, which has been called the spiritual world of eternity. When we are born we are dual citizens. Our physical body and organs are born in the natural world while our mental body and organs are born into the spiritual world. The two are connected until the physical body dies. When the separation occurs, we are resuscitated or awakened in our spiritual mind which was unconscious until then. We were conscious in our natural mind only. Hence we could not see or be aware of the other people who were also there in the spiritual world. Now that our natural mind is made unconscious, our awareness is brought o our spiritual mind. Now we are able to see and interact with the people who are also there.
Topic 3: Divine Speech, Sacred Scripture, and Conjunction With God
Our life of immortality is not something that belongs to us. It is not inherent in us. We are human "vessels" capable of receiving life from God, just as the TV we watch is designed to receive electronic signals that are displayed on the screen and loudspeaker. The TV does not possess the content of those images and sounds. It just receives them. Similarly, we do not possess life, intelligence, rationality, power, or freedom of our own. These are spiritual things belonging to God. But God constructed our mental organs out of spiritual eternal substances, and designed them as receptors of these things that belong to God. Hence it is clear that our immortality belongs to God, not to us, and we have it only as long as we are conjoined to God by communication and reception. The instant we should go "offline" so to speak, and stop receiving the spiritual input signal of life, power, love, and intelligence, that instant we disintegrate into something incoherent that evaporates and disappears from existence.
To understand how we are alive and what it means to be alive, we need to know what God has revealed about Himself to humanity. These revelations are known as Sacred Scripture.
A few propositions to be aware of:
(a) God manages the universe through Divine Speech.
(b) Divine Speech proceeding from God is Divine Truth itself, which is spiritual light streaming from the Spiritual Sun. Spiritual light (or Truth) contains spiritual heat (or Love) and the two are united in God.
(c) Physical objects on earth are made of atoms from the natural sun whirling in sub-atomic space. Every object considered from within, is constructed of these atoms from the sun. The sun is actually still part of these atoms. But physical matter, atoms and space, are themselves made of something that is not physical, but spiritual, from the Spiritual Sun. The infrastructure out of which atoms and space are made is this spiritual substance from the Spiritual Sun. From this you can see that Divine Love and Truth are the spiritual eternal substances that make up the infrastructure of the spiritual world, and this makes up the infrastructure of the physical world, which is in time and space.
(d) In other words, eternity is the infrastructure for time and space. Since eternity = mental world, therefore the human mind is the infrastructure for the physical universe. (See Section xx) The physical universe is the outside of the universe, while the spiritual world, or mental world, is the inside of the universe. When we are born, our physical body is in the outside world of time and space, while our mental body is in the inside world of eternity. When the physical body dies, our consciousness of the outside world ceases, and we are conscious only of the world of eternity.
(e) Our consciousness, our understanding, and our feelings are all initiated and governed by Divine Speech proceeding from God into the universe and propagating itself through all human minds. When Divine Speech enters the natural mind, we become conscious of its effects such as the ability to think logically or the ability to experience feelings and emotions. Everything we do, think, or feel are operations of our mental organs when they are activated and operationalized by Divine Speech entering the mind.
(f) Divine Speech conjoins our mind with God, and it is this conjunction that gives humans the ability to be immortal and rational beings.
(g) There are gradations of conjunction or closeness with God. This determines the quality of our feelings, thinking, and sensating. Closer conjunction with God results in a higher quality of feeling, thinking, and sensating. Swedenborg observed and compared the life and personality of people in their Third Heaven, Second Heaven, First Heaven, as well as people in the hells of their mind. He found that the level of human potential goes up or down depending on closeness to God. Those who maintain themselves in the hells of their mental eternity think irrationally, are under the spell of illusions and delusions, and their social environment is miserable, vicious, and uncivilized. They are the furthest they can be from conjunction with God. Swedenborg talked to them about God and the heaven in their mind, which they hated and denied. Whenever Swedenborg mentioned to them anything good and true, they became enraged with hatred and turned the idea into its opposite of evil and false.
The people who dwelt in the First Heaven of their mind, were extremely skilled in all daily activities such as business, sports, art, education, architecture, government -- far superior to the best that they had while living on earth. The people who dwelt in the Second Heaven of their mind were far superior to those in the First Heaven, and similarly those in the Third Heaven of their mind were far superior to them. Closeness of conjunction with God therefore determines the level and quality of human life from birth to eternity.
While we are still attached to the body on earth, the quality and level of our life also depends on closeness to God, but in a less obvious way compared to the afterlife. This is because God hides His Presence in the mind. The reason for this is that on earth we are undergoing character change, reformation, and regeneration, while this is not possible in the afterlife. In order to undergo character change that is permanent we must do it as-if on our own, with effort and the willingness to resist temptations (see Section xx). Only in this manner of voluntary and free choice is the new character something we can love, something we can accept as our eternal heaven (see Section xx). Due to the necessity of this freedom of choice and as-of self effort, God hides Hi Presence in our mind so that we may feel free to reject Him if that is our choice.
Even though we reject God consciously we cannot get rid of God in our mind and in our environment. God continues to run our mind and our environment regardless of our acknowledgement of Him. This is God's omnipotence and omnipresence by which he controls every detail of the universe, whether the thoughts and feelings in our mind, the events of biography and history, or the motion of molecules in objects, stars, and galaxies. God controls and manages every detail according of His order of truth and his purpose of love.
(h) Summary formulaic expression:
gradations of closeness of conjunction with God
= quality of the human powers and abilities God can give us
= quality of our acknowledgment of God in our mind
= level of our understanding of Divine Speech
= level of our enlightenment when we study Sacred Scripture
= consistency of our effort in applying doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture
to our daily willing and thinking
[this is the bottom line of the ledger of the economics of immortality--see Section xx]
Note the bottom line in this equation. Closeness to God and quality of human potential depends entirely on our daily effort of changing the way we think and what we enjoy. Doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture tells us how to think and what to enjoy in order to get closer to God and be able to increase thereby our human potential.
Sacred Scripture reveals that we are born with an inherited character that is made up entirely of hellish traits. We also have some good traits, but these pale in intensity when compared to the hellish traits. Besides this, the hellish traits we inherit tend to corrupt and destroy the heavenly traits. Every individual must therefore put up the voluntary effort of resisting the old hellish traits and enjoyments, until eventually we come to loath them and avoid them like the plague. In their stead, God gives us a new way of thinking and feeling that is in accordance with heavenly order. then we can have the good life that surpasses everything we could hope for or imagine.
Denial of God through materialist philosophy and cynicism, is the negative bias that puts us at a distance from God. In this orientation we cannot receive directly anything good and true from Divine Speech. But we still receive things indirectly, such as the ability to think with common sense, and the instinct of preservation and social cooperation. However this indirect association with God is not powerful enough to overcome our inherited hellish tendencies. God keeps control just as much as ever, but in this situation of denial or disobedience, He allows the occurrence of evils in order to preserve people's sense of freedom of choice (see Section xx).
It appears that the majority of people are unwilling to put up the mental and emotional effort to change their inherited character traits and weaknesses. As a result, God allows much evil and false ideas to run amuck in society, making the lives of people a hell on earth, as is indicated by the symptoms of crime, prejudice, injustice, abuse, depression, ill health, ugliness, unhappiness, divorces, poverty, lack of education, etc. All these evils are allowed by God in order to preserve the freedom of all individuals to chose voluntarily to reform and to prepare for a life of heaven in eternity. Those who fail to do so, can only experience a life of hell in eternity (see Section xx).
The degree of conjunction with God through one's understanding of Sacred Scripture, gradually develops and evolves in our conscious natural mind. This happens in three stages -- natural, spiritual, and celestial, as follows:
Stage 0. Conscious Disjunction With God (negative bias thinking about God)
Based on hypothesis arising from sensory experience and measurement
(e.g., "I don't see any God around here, do you?" or "What cannot be measured or sensed is a fantasy" etc.)
Based on atheistic persuasive teachings that convince people to adopt a negative bias perspective on God
(e.g., atheistic science education, anti-religious attitudes in socialization or the openly cynical media culture, etc.)
Based on unwillingness to subordinate the human self to a higher power
(e.g., humanism, naturalism, skepticism, agnosticism, machiavellism, etc.)Stage 1. Natural, External Conjunction With God (natural-sensuous thinking about God)
Based on the Old Testament Sacred Scripture understood naturally
(i.e., seeing it as a true historical record of God's relationship to some actual people)
Based on the New Testament Sacred Scripture understood sensuously
(i.e., reading it as a true historical record vs. a universal evolutionary event for the human race, (see Section xx)
Based on the Writings Sacred Scripture understood naturally
(i.e., reading or studying the Writings in the literal historical sense, and acknowledging it as a Divinely inspired work (see Section xx)Stage 2. Spiritual, Mediate Conjunction With God (natural-rational thinking about God)
Based on the Old Testament Sacred Scripture interpreted rationally
(i.e., justifying the local historical events to be significant for the whole world and revelatory of God's nature and purpose for creation)
Based on the New Testament Sacred Scripture understood symbolically
(i.e., making up rationally oriented explanations to justify the historical events recorded)
Based on the Writings Sacred Scripture understood abstractly
(i.e., acknowledging it as a Divinely inspired work, without extracting spiritual doctrine of truth by the method of correspondences with enlightenment (see Section xx)Stage 3. Celestial, Interior Conjunction With God (spiritual-natural thinking about God)
Based on the Old Testament Sacred Scripture understood spiritually
(i.e., seeing it as Divine Speech expressed in a natural language by means of the universal laws of correspondences, as revealed in the literal explanations of the Writings Sacred Scripture, see Section xx)
Based on the New Testament Sacred Scripture understood spiritually
(i.e., seeing it as Divine Speech expressed in a natural language by means of the universal laws of correspondences, as revealed in the literal explanations of the Writings Sacred Scripture, see Section xx)
Based on the Writings Sacred Scripture understood spiritually
(i.e., acknowledging it as Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech, and extracting spiritual doctrine of truth by the method of correspondences with enlightenment (= theistic psychology, see Section xx)
To recapitulate. Try to memorize this after you've studied and understood the explanations above:
Stage 0. Conscious
Disjunction With God (negative bias thinking about God)
Stage 1. Natural,
External Conjunction With God (natural-sensuous thinking about God)
Stage 2. Spiritual,
Mediate Conjunction With God (natural-rational thinking about God)
Stage 3. Celestial,
Interior Conjunction With God (spiritual-natural thinking about God)
The four stages described above are stages of evolution in our thinking, in our rationality, in our consciousness. It is the journey closer to God, and to our supreme human potentials. Our human potentials flow in from God instant by instant from birth to eternal immortality (see Section xx). The closer the conjunction with God, the more marvelous and amazing are the human potentials that can flow in!
In the early external stage of conjunction with God (Stage 1), our thinking about God and the things mentioned in Sacred Scripture, is a natural way of thinking and understanding the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, the New Testament Sacred Scripture, and the Writings Sacred Scripture. At Stage 2, we achieve mediate conjunction with God through understanding the ideas of Sacred Scripture not just literally and historically, but also abstractly and symbolically. This means understanding Sacred Scripture more universally and less exclusively, historically, and culturally. Finally at stage 3, we achieve inmost conjunction with God through our understanding of all Sacred Scripture spiritually which means by seeing all Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech expressed in a natural language, and requiring the extraction of its spiritual message through the prescribed method of correspondences with enlightenment (see Section xx).
It should be noted that conjunction with God appears to disappear when we undergo temptations, even if we have already achieved the inmost state of conjunction at other times (Stage 3). For instance, John and Mary may be two students of theistic psychology who are studying the spiritual concepts extracted from the Writings Sacred Scripture. Their purpose is to gather the spiritual knowledge they need to undergo character reformation so that they may become prepared for heavenly life in eternity. Because they are cooperating with the Divine Psychologist they experience enlightenment, which means that they are given an interior or spiritual understanding, so that they may see the concepts rationally and scientifically. They are at stage 3 conjunction with God. After studying, John and Mary decide to go out and have some fun. They end up at a bar where they drink too much and get into fighting words with another couple that started annoying them. They leave the bar and drive home. Along the way they get into heavy traffic and they both end up swearing at another driver. Etc.
The next day they go back to their study of theistic psychology and from this spiritual perspective they can clearly see that they underwent temptations the night before, during which they were no longer consciously conjoined to God. It is common for people who are undergoing regeneration through temptations, to vary the degree of their conjunction with God, as they pursue their normal daily activities. During temptations we engage in activities and thoughts that are disjunctive of our relationship to the Divine Psychologist -- who is ceaselessly co-Present in our mind, managing the endless physiological operations in our affective and cognitive organs.
Character reformation can only begin in adult life when we are mature enough to think for ourselves. Until then we usually think from our undigested socialization and education habits. We ingest our culture and knowledge but we do not digest it. To ingest knowledge and attitudes is to acquire them as habits and to do them routinely out of habit. To digest knowledge and attitudes is to appropriate them, to make them our own. This process of appropriation to self only happens when we freely choose something after thinking about what it is we prefer or like. When we reach adult life and financial and political independence, the future that lies ahead of us is ours -- which means that we are free to choose what we want, what we desire, what we love. Without being able to choose what we love, we don't feel free. Until we feel free, we cannot freely choose our life style, the things we believe, the things we support.
When we reach this state of freedom to think in adulthood, we are capable of beginning character reformation. This takes a lifetime of cooperation with the Divine Psychologist (see Section xx). We undergo regeneration by means of battles with the temptations that the Divine Psychologist brings to us by arranging the environment appropriately and by managing our thinking and feelings to face the temptations. This we do by fighting against the hells we inherited using the weapons of the doctrine of truth we acquire from Sacred Scripture or from conscience and education. Gradually through this procedure, God builds a new character in our mind, one that is fit to live happily to eternity in conjugial heaven (see Section xx).
But what happens when we give in to temptations, throw in the towel in the fight of good vs. evil, declare ourselves free from God's commandments, religious rules, or the dictates of our conscience?
Note that this atheistic or rebellious attitude (Stage 0) could be temporary or permanent in any one individual. Note also that people who practice a religion may do so spiritually or naturally. To practice religion naturally means that you only let it affect your outward behavior and not what you are thinking and feeling. This makes it impossible for the Divine Psychologist to bring them spiritual temptations because they would never resist them -- which would harm their spiritual future (see Section xx). The only way we can change our inherited hellish traits is to reject them freely because they are contrary to conscience and God. No other motivation can succeed in altering how we think and feel, but only how we act outwardly.
Swedenborg observed thousands of people who were recently resuscitated after the death of their physical body (see Section xx). He interviewed many of them concerning their knowledge and beliefs. They all were still able to recall clearly their memories from earth, which we all can do for awhile after resuscitation, and before settling into our true personality, who we really are (see "second death" Section xx). This evidence indicates that people after resuscitation, thus in eternity, cannot hold on to their rules of conscience and their religious beliefs when these were merely outward norms of conduct they followed by habit, without independent examination.
Because they now rejected all rules of religion, conscience, morality, and respectability they felt completely free to feel, think, and do whatever their felt like spontaneously, uncritically. And because they had not undergone temptations and character reformation, their inherited tendencies and loves for evil and cruel things now took over completely, and they turned into an immortal life of hellish pursuits, delights, and sufferings.
On the other hand, Swedenborg observed some people who had no religion of any kind, but had had a strong sense of conscience and natural morality and respect for others, for animals, and for nature. When they were told and taught about God and Sacred Scripture, they were instantly able to understand it rationally, and were able to enter the life of conjugial heaven to eternity.
If we consider the state of our civilization and society today it is obvious that there is more disjunction with God than conjunction. God has created a perfect system and is maintaining it in perfect order. This is His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence (see Section xx). People look at crime, social disorder, human unhappiness everywhere, and they conclude that either there is no God, or that God is not omnipotent, or that God is both good and evil. These are all false conclusions. In fact, society is perfect and God is maintaining it in perfect order, since God is omnipotent. The difficulty has been for people to see that it is perfect the way it is.
The perfection of society as maintained and controlled by God, is that it gives people a life in which at any moment they can begin their character reformation and preparation for eternal happiness in heaven.
God maintains our ability to do and think evil things just as he maintains our ability to think and do good things. If God reduced our ability to think and do evil things, this would not be a perfect world because we could not regenerate our character and we would be condemned to a life of eternal hell.
At any moment of our daily willing and thinking, the Divine Psychologist puts us up to a choice between choosing evil or good. The cumulative moment by moment choices we make every hour, day by day, over the decades of our life on earth -- millions of choices -- constitute our character. This is the vehicle of our immortality. After our resuscitation we are immersed by the Divine Psychologist into an intense life of recapitulation and self-discovery. All societal shackles are cast off in absolute liberty when we fully realize that we are now immortal, in a world where we are free to exercise our desires and loves whatever they are. Now at last, without social pressure, responsibility, expectations, and rules of conscience, we can be whatever our feelings and thinking prompt us to be -- purely selfish, totally egocentric, wild and mad, cruel and obsessive, prompt to extremes and excesses of any kind whatsoever. These feelings and imaginings now create a hellish environment around us, where we continue our life with others who are similar to us (see Section xx).
When we think about it now, it is clear that we should avoid at all cost from ending our life on earth with a hellish personality on the inside, even if we have a civilized personality on the outside.
This is God's purpose in providing revelation of spiritual truths in the form of Sacred Scripture, namely, to allow us to see rationally that we must undergo regeneration of character in order to have a heavenly life in eternity. And as well, to teach us the techniques that are effective in this regeneration. By acknowledging God, by studying Divine Speech as Sacred Scripture, we become enlightened so that we can acquire doctrine of truth with which to resist temptations and to be conjoined with God through willing what is good and thinking in accordance with our rational understanding of the revealed truth.
Topic 4: Forms of Divine Speech in Our Conscious Natural Mind
Divine Speech proceeds from God's Mind and propagates itself instantaneously across the entire universe in the form of spiritual light and heat, which enters every human mind from its third heaven, and descends by discrete degrees (see Section xx) into all the regions of the mind. The following is a listing of the levels or degrees of the action of Divine Speech in human minds, starting with the most universal and least conscious, and increasing in consciousness and effectiveness, all the way to the highest level of the mind, which is the closest potentially to God.
I human instincts of mutual empathy, sympathy, cooperation, affiliation, curiosity, inventiveness
II daily moods of high and low, clear and foggy, receptive and resistive, peaceful and conflictual
III character, personality,
norms of conduct, ethics, and lifestyle developed through
socialization, enculturation, education, training, experience
IV inner voice of conscience, civilized morality, allowed vs. taboo, right vs. wrong
V the Letter of Sacred
Scripture as religion, history, culture -- often distorted
and
corrupted, leading to sectarianism and conflict
VI interior sense extracted
from Sacred Scripture as theistic science or
theistic
psychology, which is universal and not historical, cultural, or religious
As you can see from the above listing, Divine Speech is present with every human being at different levels of closeness and conjunction. It is not until we reach level IV that we are conscious of God as a force that is higher than our own. At level V we are introduced to a personal and conscious relationship with God, but it's not until level VI that we form a genuine and uncorrupted awareness and relationship with God on a daily basis.
Part A (i): Why Doesn't God Make an Appearance at the United Nations?
Swedenborg was able to observe the character and life of every generation of people that had lived on earth, and then passed on to their life of immortality in eternity, either in their heavens or their hells, where Swedenborg was able to observe them. Since in this way Swedenborg had access to a cross section of all the people that had lived on earth, he was able to describe objectively and empirically the evolution of human consciousness across time. He discovered that the earliest generations, or the "Most Ancient" civilization on earth, was made of a celestial human race that now dwelt separately in their own human heavens, which are different from the heavens Swedenborg visited that belonged to the generations that came after the celestial race (see Section xx).
The celestial race eventually had died out on earth due to their inability to continue in their type of mind called celestial. Their brain was whole, while the spiritual race that succeeded them had split-brains, left and right portions, as we know it from our own race today. The switch over in evolution occurred sometime near the beginning of recorded history, possibly around 10,000 BC (though Swedenborg does not give precise dates).
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. The celestial whole-brained race was not capable of this. They were unable to lie or simulate, hence unable to deceive others and do them evil. Swedenborg talked to them in their ancient heavens and was able to confirm their character as different from ours, completely innocent and ignorant of all evil (except for a few among them who are in their hells.)
The celestial race people were able to talk to their departed family members and teachers, who spoke to them from their heaven, instructed the people on earth, and sometimes imposed punishment on them to chastise them from any tendency to do or think evil. In other words, the celestial people on earth were dual citizens consciously. Like Swedenborg's unique experience (see Section xx) the celestial race had their spiritual mind activated and conscious, whereas the spiritual race that came afterwards, had their spiritual mind completely unconscious. From then on, the only source of knowledge of the afterlife of eternity was through revelation in Sacred Scripture. Swedenborg was able to read in the spiritual world the various versions of Sacred Scripture that the subsequent generations had received from God.
The conscious ability to communicate with God or the people in the afterlife is called sensuous spirituality, whereas the knowledge of God through the revelation of Sacred Scripture is called rational spirituality. It is crucial that we understand the difference because it is not possible today for the spiritual split-brain race to have direct sensuous spiritual awareness or communication with God or the people in the afterlife. There may be some exceptions to this rule (see Section xx).
An example of direct sensuous awareness of God or of spiritual things would be if God appeared today in physical space and time. For instance, God might appear at the United Nations or on the world TV stations, introduce Himself, give a speech, make some miracles, and even stay around so people can interview Him and make movies and recordings. This never happened and will never happen. Why not? There are two fundamental reasons you need to know about.
First, our relationship to God necessarily involves our rational mind, which is also called the spiritual mind (see Section xx). Everyone is born with an organ in the rational portion of the mind called heaven. Hence our relationship to God develops through truths and rationality from within our mind, not sensuous evidence or interaction on the exterior of our mind. God appearing in the streets or at the United Nations would be only an external relationship through the bodily senses and natural mind. This cannot remain in the afterlife, which is a world of rational ether, of truths, hence in the interior of the human mind, not in the exterior senses.
The second fundamental reason why God does not appear at the United Nations or on the streets meeting people, is that whatever God would say would be expressed in natural languages by correspondences, just like Sacred Scripture is the natural language correspondence of Divine Speech. Divine Speech is nothing but Divine Truth, and this is nothing but God's thoughts and reasoning, or Divine Wisdom, which is infinite and omniscient (see Section xx). Whatever God thinks is Divine Truth. This is spiritual light proceeding from the Spiritual Sun and permeating the mental world of the human race, that is, the mental organs of every individual. Divine Speech first enters the highest portion of the spiritual mind where those who dwell in their Third Heaven in eternity, become conscious of the proceeding. This conscious awareness of Divine Speech is the closest meaning or understanding the human race can have of God. This meaning is conveyed by means of "celestial-rational" correspondences (see Section xx).
Then Divine Speech or Truth, descends into the next layer of the human mind where those who dwell in their Second Heaven in eternity, become conscious of it in the form of "spiritual-rational" correspondences. Then Divine Speech continues to descend and exteriorize throughout the human mind, where it becomes conscious to those who dwell in the First Heaven of their mind in eternity, through "spiritual-natural" correspondences. From there Divine Speech or Truth exteriorizes still further, and becomes conscious to the natural mind through its levels of operation -- natural-rational correspondences, natural-sensuous and corporeal correspondences. This is where most people first become aware of God --d through the natural correspondences and meanings in Sacred Scripture expressed in a natural language (see Section xx).
So what would happen if God met you on the streets or gave an interview to journalists and scientists at the United Nations, or came to the University of Hawaii and taught this course in Theistic Psychology?
God would speak from His Own Mind and Divine Speech would flow down from His Divine Mind, through the human heavens, and finally would be heard by you in your natural language. The meaning of His sentences would be constructed of natural meanings, words, and concepts. People might be terribly disappointed! All they would hear, over and over again, is what Divine Speech has been telling the human mind since the beginning of creation. It would sound to them that God is not talking to them, but just quoting Sacred Scripture, again and again. People would hear different things, each in their own language and thought level. Some people who are regenerating by means of Divine Speech from Sacred Scripture, will hear more interior ideas in what God is saying, but those are in the negative bias mode of thinking about God, will hear nothing but what they already believe.
So you can see that God cannot just burst unto the scene and give proof of His existence, and command people to do this or that. For He has already been doing this in Sacred Scripture, and those who are unwilling to acknowledge Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech in correspondences, will not change their mind when God appears in their living room and talks to them.
God wants us to know the rational methods by which He creates and manages the details of our lives and the universe. God wants us to know the anatomy and physiology of our mental organs so that we can take care of them appropriately. God has created our mind in such a way as to be capable of being conjoined with His Mind, and thereby we might be alive forever and never die. This amazing feat is accomplished through the spiritual substances of heat and light streaming forth from God (see Section xx), and permeating the mind of every human being, from the top of its anatomy, to the bottom.
This spiritual heat is called "Divine Love," and our affective mental organ called the will, was designed by God to be able to react to it, so that we have the subjective conscious life experience of willing something, like willing to lift our hand, or touch this or that, or ignore this or that. This free will as subjective experience is what gives us the living sensation of being conscious and alive. And it is activated in us by spiritual heat flowing in from the top of our mind. Should this flow of spiritual heat stop for an instant, we would experience the sensation of dying, and we would actually disappear from existence. It is this inflowing spiritual heat that makes us alive, keeps us alive, instant by instant, from birth to endless immortality and eternity.
In the same way spiritual light flows into our cognitive organ, activates it, the result being our subjective experience of self-conscious thinking, reasoning, understanding, talking about it, etc. This is the subjective experience that gives us content, meaning, culture, hence rational human beings capable of intelligent planning and imagining.
You can see from this physiological description that we are human beings from the inflow of Divine Love and Divine Truth, which activate our mind and give us the moment by moment continuity of our consciousness of self as a unique individual or person.
The split-brained spiritual race has two brains (left and right) because the physical structure reflects and corresponds to the mental structure, namely the split-mind in the form of the affective and cognitive organs having independent function. It was necessary that the race following the whole-minded celestials be split-minded, as the spiritual human race now is, so that people could learn spiritual truth through written Sacred Scripture, even though their inherited tendency was to rebel against that truth and to want to ignore it or reject it.
This is how we are today. We hear about God's commandments and we sense our conscience. In this way we learn about spiritual truth -- what our fate is to be in the the endless eternity of our afterlife. How we should be preparing for it to make sure it is a heavenly life instead of hellish. We take this into our knowledge and our understanding. We don't feel like following it, and we don't for the most part. Yet we know the truth as it has been revealed by God to us. This is the essence of the spiritual race: to have this choice. To know the revealed truth of God and to follow it or not. This is the freedom that God maintains in every human mind from birth to eternity. It is the perfection and the guarantee, that at any instant that we wish or choose, we can join our will to the understanding of truth -- which means to will the things that our understanding knows is good and right.
We do not have the power to do anything at all since all power is in God's omnipotence, which cannot be given away to a human being or to nature (see Section xx). But God wills to have things happen according to how we consciously will or choose. This shows you how close God is to the individual, how intimate our relationship is, much more so than any two human beings can have with each other.
Part A (ii) What About the Paranormal, Miracles, Telepathy, Magic?
Various people and traditions have attempted to prove the existence of the afterlife relying on paranormal data and research. An example is the book titled An Amazing Experiment (1961) by Charles Drayton Thomas and available online at: www.survivalafterdeath.org/books/thomas/contents.htm To me it is quite obvious that no such proof is scientifically believable because the data are so scant, impoverished, and practically non-existent. And of course, it is irrational and illogical to try to give physical proof for what is not physical. All paranormal phenomena are measured and explained in terms of energy of various kinds, and these are based on quantity, time, and space. Rational ideas are based on mental sates in eternity, outside time, without space, extension, quantity, number, or shape. Such are our feelings, emotions, ideas, thoughts, sensations -- they are all mental, spiritual, timeless, eternal states and operations (see Section xx).
It is the same with "medical miracles." One can never prove that God exists by classifying an observed physical event as evidence for a spiritual reality. Some people may be persuaded of God's existence by witnessing an event that cannot be explained medically, but this kind of persuasive belief is rejected by people after resuscitation, when they discover that they are now living in the eternity of the afterlife, in all its sensuous living experience (see Section xx). However they cannot hold on to rationality and sanity because their belief is based on a sensuous idea of God, not rational and spiritual. In the afterlife, sensuous ideas act like gravity objects in air or water -- they sink to the lowest bottom. The bottom of the human mind is called our hellish traits. We sink into our hellish traits, and we get rid of all of their heavenly traits, for which they have no use, and to which they react with fear and hate.
It is the same with magic, sorcery, ghosts, science fiction, etc. -- they are all natural ideas about physical energy, time, space, place. They are not spiritual because they are sensuous rather than rational ideas. All spiritual ideas must be rational ideas, for the two are the same (see Section xx).
The Swedenborg Reports on the other hand are rational ideas, rational explanations, and rational observations. From age 57 to 82 Swedenborg was conscious in his natural mind as well as his spiritual mind, which is also called the rational mind (see Section xx). Note that we could not have accepted these reports if Swedenborg had claimed that he had seen visions on earth, or interacted at a distance with people on earth or in the world of spirits through his natural mind. If this had been Swedenborg's claim, then he would have been diagnosed with psychotic or delusional disorders. But this was not his claim. Rather, Swedenborg claimed that his spiritual mind was opened or operationalized prior to his death. He continued to maintain that it was impossible for the natural mind to have any information about the spiritual world.
It is rational to think that Swedenborg could observe the afterlife of eternity with his spiritual mind, but sensuous to think that he could do this with his natural mind. the latter is impossible. The former is possible.
Part B: Sensuous Consciousness of God Does Not Remain in the Afterlife
This amazing closeness is hidden from our direct sensuous awareness. We cannot show any direct evidence of it to someone else or even to ourselves. Anyone can deny God's presence, so hidden is it from our sensuous awareness. God will not appear at the United Nations, will not give an interview, will not appear to anyone on the street or a building, will not cause you to hear a sonorous voice your physical ears could hear, etc. God will not allow you to have a sensuous awareness of Him through your physical body and senses.
Instead, God wants us to rationally acknowledge His Presence in our mind and life.
This becomes clear when you consider the physiological fact that heaven is inside our rational mind (see Section xx). This was different for the celestial race, who now dwell in their celestial heavens, which Swedenborg was allowed to visit. Their celestial race heaven, which are separate and inaccessible to our heavens, is built physiologically within their sensuous mind, which is governed by the affective organ (the will) in conjunction with the cognitive organ (understanding). But the physiology of the human race was drastically evolved or altered when the spiritual race came into being. The heavens of the human race were now built up differently, inside the cognitive organ (understanding). The affective organ, which was hellish by inheritance since the Fall (see Sections xx), had to be regenerated or recreated through the battles of temptations, in which we fight for our life with the truth in our understanding (see Section xx). We must win this battle in order to be "saved" for heavenly life in eternity. It is the only way we can acquire heavenly traits, that is, by giving up voluntarily and getting rid freely of the hellish traits that we were born to enjoy and hang on to as dear life itself.
When we are regenerating, the Divine Psychologist is constructing our heavenly eternity within our cognitive organ (our understanding), and creates a new affective organ (our will) within that.
Thus, our life of eternity is now actuated by a rational conjunction with God through Sacred Scripture. God's presence in our mind is something we learn rationally, by constructing rational and scientific concepts that we acquire through study of Sacred Scripture and reflection upon it. It would destroy our ability to think of God's presence rationally if we had sensuous evidence of His Presence. The sensuous and the rational oppose each other in our mind.
As proof of this inherent opposition, Swedenborg interviewed people in the world of spirits shortly after their resuscitation, and discovered that some people had acquired a "persuasive" belief of religion based on a sensuous or physical presence of God. They acquired this persuasive belief through observing demonstrations of what appeared to them to be miracles performed by healers and "holy men." Or else, they experienced visions of God or angels, as in Near Death Experiences (NDEs) (see Section xx). These "miraculous" events were seen as proof of God's physical presence in the world, and from this they believed in God.
Note that this physical demonstration of God's Presence is a sensuous spirituality, while rational spirituality is to look around and to see the splendor and intelligence of nature, and seeing that as a miracle, because it is from God's omnipotence and not from itself. Rational spirituality conjoins with God, but sensuous spirituality disjoins us from God.
The freshly resuscitated people that Swedenborg interviewed, mentioned above, demanded to be taken to heaven and to God's Court. But they were told by wise bystanders that God is nowhere to be found but in Sacred Scripture, or more precisely, in the rational understanding we acquire from Sacred Scripture. God is in that rational understanding that we form of the revelation of Divine Speech, but only to the extent that we intend and do that truth, that is, to the extent that we live according to the truth that we understand.
Those newly resuscitated people walked away in dismay when they heard the above. They kept their search up for God and heaven until finally they were led away by clever charlatans who prey upon such people in the world of spirits, meet them, pose to them as holy men who can do miracles, and promise to lead them to God and the Kingly Throne. At last they are led away into the entrapments of the hells where they become slaves to manipulating charlatans, and thereby experience a miserable existence.
Amazingly, Swedenborg discovered that they were unwilling to give up that life in the hells of their evil persuasions and insane fantasies. Isn't that amazing? They were not kept there as punishment for their misdeeds or false beliefs. They themselves, out of the free will God never removes from anyone, keep themselves in their hells. When they are exposed to the slightest rational suggestion or good intention, they become so enraged and insane that their miserable situation actually worsens. This is because nothing is as strong in their mind as their hatred for God, their disgust for heaven, their aversion for what is good, innocent, altruistic, loyal, wise. Hating these things so much, they are unwilling to exit from the hells of their mind since the only alternative is the heavens in their mind. There is no other existence in eternity, only heaven or hell. People have both in their mind, so it is their choice that keeps them in one or the other state of eternity.
With this type of evidence it is clear now why God won't appear to you in a vision, or on TV, or at the United Nations making a speech to the people of earth! It is also clear that real miracles are only those that run things as they are. For instance, it is a miracle when I get home every day after a half hour drive in traffic. It is a miracle of God that keeps those cars from hitting each other a thousand times more than actually happens. It is a miracle that God speaks to us in our rational understanding when we read Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech. It is a miracle when we resist a temptation, strengthen our resolve, feel closer to God as a result. It is a miracle that each one of us is going to be resuscitated and carry on a life of immortality.
We have to discover ourselves as organic human beings belonging to an organic race. We are like a single vine that, over the ages, has populated an entire rocky island. It is just one vine, from one seed dropped by a bird, that fell into a crack in the rock, survived, and eventually covered the entire available area. You can walk around the island and you will see that each part of this vine is different in appearance, having had to adapt to different climatic conditions. And even a single leaf or flower that you may examine, is unique in form, shape, texture, size, biochemical condition, and even genetic, molecular, and sun-atomic structure. Each is unique.
In the Writings Sacred Scripture, Divine Speech has revealed to humankind that no two created things of any size of comparison, can be the same. And it is explained that this is because God is infinite. Whatever God creates from Himself through the infinite substances of the Spiritual Sun, must retain the infinity of God within itself. This is the source and cause for every created thing coming into being, existing, and subsisting over time and activity.
This is why every object, of any size, is unique.
The vine that populated the entire surface of the island is actually composed of myriads of unique individual elements. All these unique elements are differentiated from each other. Each element or individual particle possesses its unique identity. Even though there is only one vine, all its elements are uniquely differentiated to make up this one vine.
This vine is the human race.
Part C: We are Dual Citizens in Discrete Layers
The Writings Sacred Scripture reveal that the entire human race, past, present, and future to endless time, is present simultaneously in one Idea or Knowledge of the entire human race. A complete human being is created by conception and birth, according to the Writings. The unique individual or person who is created by conception and birth, is created simultaneously into two worlds. One world is temporary, the other is permanent. The temporary physical body created into a natural world in time and space, and the permanent spiritual body created into the mental world of eternity, outside time and space.
The spiritual body is organic, like the physical body. Both bodies are made of the sun in their world. Our physical body is made of matter from the natural sun of this earth. Our mental body is made of mental substances from the Spiritual Sun, which is the entry point from infinite God into finite creation. From the Spiritual Sun there is constant and ceaseless streams proceeding into the finited universe, creating the spiritual world. This is the inner world, the mental world, the human mind and its organs. Then, as the proceeding spiritual substances descend and continue to externalize away from the central Spiritual Sun, the natural universe is created through the sun in each galactic zone or space. So when we are born our physical body is attached by correspondence or functional bond, to our mental body.
The physiology of this mind-body attachment has been revealed to us in Divine Speech, as we can read in the Writings Sacred Scripture. The mental body has three organs called affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. These mental organs are constructed out of the rational and immortal substances proceeding from the Spiritual Sun. This is why we are born immortal beings. What we call our mind or self as a person, is nothing else physiologically, than the operations of these three organs in the mental body. Our feelings are subjective experiences we have when the affective organ is stimulated by incoming streams from the Spiritual Sun. In other words, as the spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun stream out into the created universe, they permeate the mental world of the human race. The affective organ is built to react to incoming spiritual heat, while the cognitive organ is built to react to incoming spiritual light.
The operations of the affective organ cause us to have the mental experience of feelings, intentions, preferences. The operations of the cognitive organ cause us to have the mental experience of thinking and being conscious. The operations of the affective organ cause us to have the mental experience of afferent sensations and efferent determinations to act in the physical body.
Note that the physical body is in an external world of time, while the mental body is in a timeless and spaceless, or eternal, world. The sensory organs and brain in our physical body react to electro-chemical activities of physical particles or cells reflecting our physical surrounding as it impinges upon the body. Every tiny action of every tiny particle in this physical process, is a correspondential “copy” of a parallel tiny action in the spiritual world or the mind. The proceeding control system from the Spiritual Sun determines every co-action between something in the spiritual world and its parallel in the natural world. The two worlds are bonded, connected, co-determined by the stream proceeding from the Spiritual Sun and permeating the entire created universe, spiritual-mental in spaceless eternity, and natural-physical in time-space.
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.
There is possible connection between the two worlds except by functional correspondence. It is not possible for something to go from world into the other world. Everything created in its own world stays in that world. There is no transfer between the two worlds. When our connection to the physical universe is broken, the natural mind that was active prior to death, is now inactivated or becomes unconscious, though this takes a lengthy process and is not instantaneous, as Swedenborg reports from his multiple observations (see Section xx). Prior to death, our spiritual mind was active fro the proceeding stream, as explained above, but it was unconscious. None of its activity was available to our conscious awareness.
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. These three organs in the natural mind cannot operate on their own. They cannot communicate with the sensory input form the physical body. They are dead, unless they are activated by the spiritual stream coming from the unconscious spiritual mind. When the natural mind responds to this influx, we have the subjective experience of being conscious, having thoughts we are aware of, and having feelings, intentions, motives. 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. And when we think about analytically and abstractly, we may come to the conclusion that the natural mind originates from the sensory experience in the physical body.
But as Divine Speech describes our created mental anatomy and physiology, the human mind is constructed in discrete layers, or levels, like an office building without stairs or elevators. The people on the various floors can communicate with each other, but they cannot mingle. The levels of our mental operations are bonded together in action. They cannot act on their own. They always are compelled to act in unison. God does the compelling, and the surveying, and managing of every detail. Nothing can work or operate without this permanent and continuous immediate management by God.
When we are disconnected from our physical body, we have the experience of being “resuscitated,” which means being consciously awakened, as if from a dream. Swedenborg observed this resuscitation process thousands of time during his daily life in both worlds for 27 years (see Section xx). When people are “resuscitated,” they awaken in the memory and activity of their natural mind. This is for rational continuity so what is happening to us can make sense. Swedenborg talked to many people who have been just resuscitated. He calls them “novitiate spirits.” The majority of those in his era (spanning the 17th and 18th century) were apparently “astonished” that they were now alive in the spiritual world, and that they had their entire body as before. Quickly they discover that it is now an immortal body of spiritual substances.
This mental body has vastly more powers and abilities than our physical body. This makes sense when you think that the spiritual or mental body exists in rational ether from the Spiritual Sun; while the natural or physical body exists in physical space and matter from the natural sun. For instance, we may want to switch weather when it is raining, to fit with our afternoon plans. But we cannot wish the rain away. The rain is physical and the wish is mental. The mental has power over the physical by correspondence only, never directly. So the only way we can act upon the physical world is by mentally doing that which corresponds physically. We can move our hand or our body parts when we so desire and think. This is because there are built in correspondences between intentions in the affective organ, thoughts in the cognitive organ, and efferent motor determinations in the sensorimotor organ.
Part D: There is Only One Mental World in the Human Race
But the correspondences that determine the weather are not available to our mental operations. Only God changes the weather in correspondence with planned purposes, ecologies, histories, and biographies. All of it is panned in advance by God and the plan becomes reality when God activates the built in correspondences. But in the mental world of eternity there is no physical weather system, no geological layout or land mass created by physical forces. Everything in the mental world is created by the mind!
You can easily understand this when you think about your dreams, fantasies, imaginations, and made up stories. You are in full control of events, including the weather. Why? Because these events are mentally constructed in mental world of imagination and invention. Our dreams can be strikingly vivid and detailed. Our feelings and thoughts create dramatic scenes that look and feel normal. We make up characters that talk to us. We can make them scare us, or embrace us, leave us, or come back. Everything in the mental world is controlled by our feelings and thoughts – what it is that we want happening.
But there are rules of correspondences in both worlds. Swedenborg observed that when people are resuscitated, they attract other people who are like them, who come around and have interactions. This tendency is so forceful that people gather together in cities that are mental recreations from memory, like in a dream. The difference is that in a dream you appear to be the only one making up the events and characters. But what would happen if people’s dreams started getting mixed up so that everybody’s dream took place in the same dream world. It would be frightening. I am in your dream, you are in my dream, we are in other people’s dreams – we no longer have control over the dream world, but only a tiny portion of it, that portion that we are making up.
That’s exactly how Swedenborg described the spiritual world, which is the objective mental world in which everybody’s thoughts and feelings played themselves out. It is the world of eternity because dreams, thoughts, and feelings are operations of our mental organs, which exist not in space, not in time, not in physical matter, but in spaceless, timeless, rational ether forming eternity.
The spiritual heat and light proceeding from the Spiritual Sun into the mental world of humanity, jointly create the objective spiritual world of the human mind. In other words, every person’s mental organs are in the same mental world. In fact, there is only one mental world! What an amazing revelation. You are in my mental world when you are in your mental world, and I am in your mental world when I am in my mental world. This is exactly what we are used to with the physical body. You are in this restaurant and I am in this restaurant and a down other people are in this restaurant. There is only one restaurant in which these people now are.
We can understand that. The restaurant has space for all these people, so all these people can be in this restaurant at the same time. It would be the same if people could merge their dreams into one dream world where all the dreams take place. Then I can dream of a restaurant, and you and a dozen other dreamers can be in it because my dream and their dream are in the same dream world. We can meet each other there. Every human being who is dreaming a dream, can meet with every other human being who is also dreaming – as long as there is only one dream world where people can do their dreaming and create events and objects in the dream.
This is what Swedenborg discovered: that there is only one mental world for humankind.
Furthermore, he discovered that this mental world is the world of the afterlife and eternity!
It’s hard to imagine anything more stupendous than this reality!
We can memorize these ideas with a formula:
mental world = spiritual world = afterlife = eternity
You can clearly see now that you are born to be immortal. Your mental world begins when you take your first breath (see Section xx). That’s when you become conscious of sensations. A few weeks later, we become conscious of thoughts and feelings. We are beginning to form a self, a personhood. We are becoming part of the human race. Our mental world appears private. We are alone in it, in comparison to our physical world where we see and interact with social others. So we grow up with the natural mind forming the idea or hypothesis that we are alone in our mental world. We follow the sensuous principle of “Out of sight, out of mind.” In other words, no one seems to be in our own private mental world, hence there is no one there. But this may only be an appearance or illusion.
Swedenborg became conscious in his spiritual mind at age 57, as already explained. We become conscious of our spiritual mind only when we are resuscitated, at the death of the physical body. But he was given this special mission by God which was, to reveal the scientific and rational facts about the human mind and God. Until this time, no one could know anything about the afterlife, the spiritual world, or the anatomy and physiology of the mind (see Section xx). How could God reveal these scientific facts to the modern person? Not by direct entry into the physical world and creating a university where God writes the curriculum and teaches to people. This would only encourage a sensuous relationship with God here on earth. It would be temporary. When people pass into the spiritual world, whatever they believed or conceptualized about God sensuously, disappears.
As explained in several locations in Theistic Psychology (see Section xx), sensuous rationality tied to the corporeal mind and physical body, does not survive because it is located in the natural mind, and these mental organs are de-activated or put to sleep and are no longer functioning in our life of immortality. We awaken in our spiritual mind, which is a discrete degree or level above the natural mind. Nothing whatsoever of the natural can enter there or exist there. This is why God does not make an appearance at the United Nations or on the streets of the cities, as He did during the Incarnation Event (see Section xx). That event was an evolutionary change in the spiritual mind of the human race (see Section xx).
Specifically, the Divine Human was embodied in a Physical Body, which God rendered suitable for His Human Divine Spiritual Body, which He always possessed from eternity. By rendering this Divine Physical Body suitable for the Divine Spiritual Body, God thereby brought about an evolutionary change in the levels of the human race. He created the new Rational Heavens in every human mind then alive in either world, and in every human mind that is born after that. Hence the human race was altered in a most significant way. We might say that God finally completed the creation of the human race. Until then we were not complete. Since then, the human race contains a rational heaven in the affective organ at the highest level of the mind.
It is absolutely necessary that we develop this potential in us before we pass into the afterlife. When we are resuscitated, the kind of life we have is determined by the idea we have of God, for all other ideas depend on this chief idea. If we can tolerate and acquire rational ideas of God, we can find a way to our heaven, and exist there forever. If we cannot tolerate rational ideas of God, our consciousness automatically sinks down into the lower levels where the natural mind is, with its sensuous concepts and corporeal images obtained through the physical body. Instead of being able to let go of all ideas based on time, space, number, quantity, we hang to them, and we reject the rational ideas.
The result is spiritual insanity. This involves a distorted mental physiology. When the spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun, immerses them in its stream, their affective organ reacts hysterically and explosively, with extreme avoidance and compulsive rage. Swedenborg was able to observe this many times over the 27 years of his daily consciousness in the spiritual world. Sensuous ideas are opposed to rational ideas. Hence their ideas were opposed to heaven and God in their mind. When they were told some truth about God, they instantly denied it, and turned it around into its opposite – which of course was false. Swedenborg performed this experiment many times in different ways to make sure it is scientifically valid (see Section xx).
So you may be sure that God will not appear on the streets for the modern mind. Prior to the Incarnation Event, the human race had a sensuous heaven only, which was suitable to the original celestial race on earth (see Section xx). After the whole-brained celestial race had died out due to spiritual abuses of the science of correspondences, God created a new race called the split-brained spiritual race, of which we are members. This race had a new heaven in their mind, which is why the old race and the new race are segregated in eternity. Swedenborg however, was allowed to visit both races.
The need for the human race to create rational concepts of God and heaven led to the development of modern science. Today any modern person is educated in science and analytical thinking. These scientific concepts and attitudes make possible today the development of theistic science. Now God can be taught in school, not as religion, but as science (see Section xx). This would not have been possible before the Writings Sacred Scripture, the last volume of which was published by Swedenborg in 1771.
Now that God can be a scientific and rational concept for the basis of human thinking, every human being has the opportunity and ability to develop their rational heavens while they are still living in a physical body, and while still conscious in the natural mind. Every individual is exposed to the rational ideas in the Writings Sacred Scripture so that they may form their rational heavens through their idea of the Divine Human. People either receive this instruction on earth in society, or in the world of spirits, after their resuscitation. Every one is then instructed in the rational concepts revealed in the Writings Sacred Scripture. Those who are willing to abandon their hellish loves with its false ideas of God, are able to open up their heavens and dwell there. But those who are unwilling, then abandon their heavenly loves and rational ideas of God. They open up the hells in their mind, into which they sink and immerse themselves with delight, as witnessed by Swedenborg many times.
You now have the unusual opportunity to discover the scientific concepts of God which God has revealed to humankind, barely 235 years ago through a Swedish scientist whose mind God had prepared for this special mission (see Section xx).
For more on sensuous vs. rational spirituality see Section xx.
Selections from Volume 5 of Textbook of Theistic Psychology
Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:
AC 61. Verse 12. "And I turned to see the voice which spoke with me" signifies the understanding illustrated. This is evident in some degree from what was said above (n. 55), in the explanation of what is signified by John's hearing a voice behind him. It is clear that in these words there is an arcanum that cannot be known unless it is known how the Divine flows in out of heaven with man; for it was from influx that John heard the voice behind him, and that afterwards, having turned to see the voice, he saw the things that follow. Divine influx out of heaven is into man's will, and through that, into his understanding. Influx into the will is into the occipital region, because into the cerebellum, and from this it passes towards the foreparts into the cerebrum, where the understanding is; and when it comes by that way into the understanding, then it comes also into the sight; for man sees from the understanding.
That there is such influx it has been granted me to know by much experience. It is the same whether we say influx into the will, or into the love, since the will is the receptacle of love; and it is also the same whether we say influx into the understanding or into faith, since the understanding is the receptacle of faith (see what is adduced in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, n. 28-35). But it is not permitted to adduce more on these subjects at present, because up to this time they have been unknown: only these few things have been said that it may be known what is involved in John's hearing a voice behind him, and his turning to see it; and why it is that this signifies the understanding illustrated; it is because what enters through the will into the understanding, or through love into faith, comes into illustration, since what man wills or loves, that he clearly perceives. It is otherwise if it enters by the way of the understanding alone. It is said "to see the voice," because by "seeing," when predicated of spiritual things, is signified understanding from illustration (as was shown above, n. 11); and unless "seeing" signified understanding it could not have been said "to see the voice."
In 1887 Rev. N. C. Burnham, a devoted Swedenborg scholar, published a careful study of the anatomy of the mind, summarizing the information given in the Writings of Swedenborg. Included in his study were several schematic diagrams that help us visualize the mind's anatomy. Dr. Ian Thompson did a superb job scanning the diagrams and the text of the 19th century book, making it available on the Web at: www.theisticscience.org/books/burnham/index.htm
I will reproduce some of the diagrams to help you with the details of my discussion.
Diagram III portrays the major components of the human mind. These are arranged in successive and simultaneous degrees. If we take a successive order or developmental view, the highest is also the earliest in growth. First comes the "soul proper" (A--green) which is closest to the Divine Order in creation. Next comes the mind, which is also called the "spirit" (B--white). Below this is the "spiritual body" that encases the mind or spirit (C--pink). Finally, the natural or physical body (D--black). You should remember that what is highest is inmost or most interior, and what is lowest is most outward or external.
Now when we take a slice of the mature mind we can see it in simultaneous order of degrees. What is highest or inmost--the soul, is now in the center of the slice. The next ring is the mind or spirit, around that comes the spiritual body, and finally the outside is the physical body.
From this you can see that human beings are born as dual citizens in two different but interconnected worlds. We possess a physical (natural) body within which is encased the spiritual body containing the mind and the soul. You should know that the "within" discussed here is a discrete degree within. There are three discrete degrees in the created universe called celestial, spiritual, and natural. The degrees are distinct in the sense that there is no direct connection between them. The physical body is in the natural degree but the mind or spirit is in the spiritual degree. Within each degree there are many sub-layers but there are no layers touching each other between the degrees. There is no way of starting with the natural degree and, climbing its layers, until you touch the spiritual degree. In other words, nothing from the physical body can enter directly into the spiritual mind. And vice versa--nothing from the spiritual mind can enter into the physical body.
This is very different from sub-layers within a degree. For instance, the planet is made of layers arranged in concentric circles. We can start from the outermost layer of earth and rock, and start digging deeper and deeper until we reach the inmost layer of the planet which is believed to be molten rocks and chemicals from the sun that have not yet cooled down. This progression is an instance of continuous degrees. The layers touch each other so you can enter form one into the other in a physical manner.
Similarly for the layers within the mind or spirit. As we shall see below, the mind has three discrete layers, replicating the three discrete layers of the universe--celestial, spiritual, natural. We can progress continuously within each layer, but not across layers. The natural layer or degree of the mind is composes of three sub-layers that are in continuous degree--corporeal, sensuous, rational, so that it is possible for our thinking to progress from the corporeal to the rational by acquiring literacy skills in education. But no matter how much you progress into the natural-rational, you will not be able to have a single spiritual thought or feeling. You will always remain in the natural degree. Similarly for the other degrees.
Swedenborg confirmed this separation of degrees by speaking with those who dwell in their celestial degree of the mind and those in the spiritual and those in the natural. These are called the three heavens in the spiritual world (= mental world see Section xx). Those who operate at the celestial level of mind are called "angels of the celestial heaven," and there wasn't a single idea or word that could be understood by those who dwelt in the next lower degree called "angelic spirits in the spiritual heaven." And their concepts and words could not be translated into the language and thinking of the "good spirits in the natural heaven."
This geography of the spiritual world matches and overlaps with the anatomy of the human mind (see Section xx).
So when it is said that we are "spirits within a physical body" remember that "within" is discontinuous or in a discrete degree within. It is not the same "within" as the organs are "within" the physical body. You can dissect the physical body endlessly and you will never get to the mind or spirit since they are in discrete degrees.
But then how does it all work together in coordination?
The answer is that the three discrete degrees are locked into each other by "the laws of correspondences" (see Section xx). There is a one to one relation between an event in the natural world and an event in the spiritual and celestial worlds (= mental world). No event can occur solely in just one degree. All events that exist must exist simultaneously in all three degrees. An event is really three events called source, cause, and effect. These three are in discrete degrees.
For instance, I scratch an itch on my face. This event is in the natural degree, hence it is called the effect. Simultaneously to this event there must take place a cause which is in the spiritual or mental degree. This event is my plan to relieve the itch by scratching it. A plan is a spiritual cause, while scratching is a natural effect. The third component is in the celestial degree, which is the source--my intention or desire (= motivation) to relieve the itch. The simple act of scratching my face comes into existence in a successive order. First, there is an event in the celestial degree or source--I have a desire to relive the itch. Second, there is an event in the spiritual degree or cause--I know how to relieve that itch. Third, there is an event in the natural world or effect--I use my hand in a certain way to scratch my face. When the event comes into existence, it does so in successive order; once it is in existence, it continues in existence (= subsists) in simultaneous order -- the first in successive order is now at the inmost of simultaneous order, and so on (see Diagram).
Whatever God created was done using thi