Swedenborg's Religious Psychology: The Marriage of Good and Truth as Mental Health by LEON A. JAMES


Swedenborg's Religious Psychology:
The Marriage of Good and Truth
as Mental Health

LEON A. JAMES

ABSTRACT: The writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) contain a psycho-philosophical nomenclature of human behavior that integrates humanistic, transpersonal, and behavioristic approaches. Good and truth are the two universal substances while affections (feelings) and cognitions (thoughts) are their corresponding functions in the mental world. The will and the understanding are mental or spiritual receptor organs for the reception of good and truth streaming in from the Infinite Divine (spiritual psychobiology). Good and truth are applied to life in three degrees: the external natural, the intermediate rational, and the inmost celestial. These correspond to three levels of mental health operation: external good and truth, or Inventiveness (Civics; Level 1); general good and truth, or Intelligence (Ethics; Level 2); and universal good and truth, or Wisdom and Freedom (Inner Religion, Myth, or Symbolism; Level 3). The marriage of good and truth in our feelings and thoughts elevates the level of our mental health operation to higher and deeper states of self-realization. Applications to psychotherapy and dream analysis are indicated. Swedenborg's system is described as a type of substantive dualism or biological theology, with importance to the development of phenomenological empiricism and religious psychology.
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Leon A. James, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Hawaii.






Swedenborg's Religious Psychology:

The Marriage of Good and Truth

as Mental Health


If mental health is wholeness, then it is a basic concern for all of us. According to a contemporary psychotherapist we have the "fear of never being whole. We feel fragmented, always putting parts together, but never finding a satisfactory totality. Fragmentation results in the unavailability of man's internal and external resources at any simultaneous moment. This fragmentation produces an inability to solve even [our] own individual problems."1 By way of a solution to the "fear of un-wholeness" this paper presents a psycho-philosophical nomenclature that empowers the simultaneous availability of our internal and external resources at all times. Speaking in traditional terms, it means that our internal resources are truths in the mind and goods in the heart. I shall try to show that it is the marriage of good and truth within our feelings and thoughts, that engenders wholeness or mental health. In the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1668-1772) we find a theoretical integration of two disciplines vitally interested in the wholeness of the individual: theology as a rational discipline, and psychology as a behavioral science.2
Swedenborg's conceptual system is of importance to psychology and psychotherapy because it allows consideration of human nature simultaneously within its three traditional aspects:
(a) body,
(b) mind or spirit and,
(c) heart or soul.

It thus integrates the corresponding threefold concerns of contemporary psychology and psychiatry:
(a) behaviorism and behavioral medicine, focusing their concern on the body;
(b) psychodynamic, psychoanalytic, and humanistic psychotherapies, with their focus on the self and the mind; and,
(c) phenomenology, transcendentalism, and transpersonal psychology, which see the "heart" (or the will as a supernatural or spiritual entity.
Swedenborg's religious psychology gives us a way of integrating the principal branches of contemporary psychology and opening up the opportunity of forging a unity out of its many current conflicting divisions.

Substantive Dualism and Spiritual Influx
From the philosophical or theological perspective, all phenomena according to Swedenborg, are the outcome of the interplay between the two substances of good and truth.3 This position may be described as a type of substantive dualism involving the essential or universal building blocks of all things. Good and truth are rational or spiritual substances streaming from the Infinite Divine and coalesce into the constituents of all objects and phenomena. This is a difficult concept to assimilate since we have been conditioned to think of good as a quality and truth as a condition for an assertion. As a result, we think of good and truth as abstract concepts relating to abstract qualities. The Swedenborgian view, though challenging at first, is nevertheless a simple one to grasp. Good and truth stream out of the Divine as sunlight streams out of the sun's mass; good corresponding to its heat and truth to its light. Both light and heat are substances, or waves and particles of matter and energy. We can similarly conceive of good and truth as spiritual particles proceeding from the Infinite Divine and entering each individual human mind where they give rise to feelings and thoughts.
I was at first surprised at the idea that the spiritual realm contains only two constituent elements while the physical world contains over one hundred. Is not the inner world richer than the outer? Swedenborg agrees that it is since in his theology we find the idea that all natural phenomena are effects whose causes originate in the spiritual realm. The resolution of this puzzle lies in the character of good and truth as basic spiritual substances. Unlike physical elements such as oxygen or gold, which are relatively simple and homogeneous, good and truth are infinitely complex and heterogeneous. It seems appropriate to those who have the religious perspective on psychology, to trace the origin of all natural phenomena to the Infinite Divine. In the Western tradition of which Swedenborg was a part, God is Good and Truth or synonymously, Love and Wisdom. I shall elaborate on this relation throughout this paper.
Thus all natural objects and emergent qualities in the physical universe are made up of these two Divine substances or realities. Physical matter is an external matrix of hardened substances (a "shell" or "vessel") generated and kept in place by an underlying matrix of two higher substances. These spiritual substances are within every part of the external, hardened matrix.4 The inmost substance is good while the intermediate substance is truth; these two are surrounded by the outermost substance of physical matter. Swedenborg's model may be visualized as three concentric circles: the inmost is labeled "spiritual-celestial substance, i.e., good," the intermediate circle is labeled "spiritual-rational substance, i.e., truth," and the outermost is labeled "natural-physical substance, i.e., the external world." Note that this is a substantive dualism since (a), it recognizes the reality of two simultaneous worlds, one external and temporal, the other inner and eternal; and (b), it specifies that both worlds (natural and spiritual) are substantial, that is, composed of matter (stuff) proper to their surround.
Swedenborg uses the term "material" to refer to physical (or natural) stuff, and "substantial" to refer to spiritual (or supernatural) stuff. Material stuff is made of a variety of elements while spiritual stuff is made up of two basic elements, good and truth. These two basic spiritual substances stream out from the Divine into the inner (or spiritual) world first, continuing their descent (or externalization) into the external or natural world. Thus the order of descent in relation to humans is from the Infinite Divine into the soul and spirit, from there into the mind and body. This descent is to be seen as both sequential and simultaneous. It is sequential in analysis as we try to comprehend it rationally; and it is simultaneous in synthesis since, according to Swedenborg's theology, the entire life of every human, past, present, and the future to eternity, is constantly present (or known) to God.5 In Swedenborg's terms, "In God infinite things are one distinctly," "The Divine is in all time, apart from time" and "The Divine, apart from space, fills all spaces of the universe."6
The two universal substances good and truth, together engender all life, beauty, and perfection. In human beings, good and truth are received by "influx" into interior receptors located in the self: good into the will and truth into the understanding. There are two types of influx. Immediate (that is, unmediated) influx holds together the structure and function of every existing object. Thus rocks, trees, the liver, or the will and the understanding are all equivalent in owing their existence to the immediate influx of good and truth from the Divine. This immediate influx is continuous and unceasing. In this sense, Swedenborg's philosophy is animistic. That is, God didn't merely create the universe only to remove Himself so that Nature could carry on by itself. No thing can run by itself since, by itself it is nothing. No thing that is disconnected from the Divine can continue to exist. Every thing that subsists continues to exist by virtue of its direct connection to the Divine. The Divine is thus within every thing, allowing its existence through continuous immediate influx.8
Mediate influx, on the other hand, is an additional, super- added influx received by human beings in their conscious organs called the will and the understanding, which thus act as interior, spiritual receptors located in the self: good into the affections of the will and truth into the cognitions of the understanding.9 Mediate influx maintains the existence of the conscious self, resulting in the twin human abilities of liberty and rationality. Because good and truth are atemporal (or eternal) substances, the conscious self is eternal or immortal. Individual differences in character (that is, the will), or in intelligence (that is, the understanding) may be ascribed to the unique manner of reception of the influx by the receptors of each unique self.lO
The influx of good into the individual's affections (in the will) or cognitions (in the understanding) may not remain pure, in which case, the influx is transformed through perverted or "inverted" reception, the good into adulterated good, or evil, and the truth into falsified truth, or falsity. Further, each perverted good, or each evil, seeks to express itself in its own particular falsity, the two together engendering all abuses. on the other hand, a marriage of good and truth in each unique individual engenders an inner state called one's heaven, which is the inmost state of freedom and rationality permitted by human growth.ll But the ill fated association between an individual's perverted good and falsified truth engenders an individual's hell, which is the inmost state of compulsion and irrationality of corrupted human growth.
In terms of human development, the inverted marriage of evil and falsity comes first through inheritance and a worldly environment. The challenge in one's struggle in life is to separate the self from its inherited state of the inverted marriage, and build upon a self- acquired new state in which the heavenly marriage is a new (or regenerated) reality. This existential struggle is played out for every individual within the thoughts of the understanding and the feelings of the will. Evil and selfish motives are inspired in us through our heredity and culture. Bad purposes align themselves with falsified and self-serving reasonings or justifications, yielding "evil works" and a damning delight in them -- damning, according to Swedenborg, because adulterated good (that is, evil loves) and falsified truth (that is, false persuasions) remain with the self forever. All loves or affections are eternal in the mind of the individual, and they associate themselves with cognitions which correspond: loves from the reception of unadulterated good, gather cognitions of truth, while cupidities from the reception of adulterated good, gather cognitions of falsified truths.12
That our loves stick to us forever follows from the idea that love is a spiritual substance received in the mind by influx. Unlike magnetic tape, which can deteriorate, spiritual substance and form are forever. Death, through "the limbus," fixes them permanently in our character.13 Prior to death, change in our loves is possible through repentance, reformation, and regeneration. By shunning inherited and acquired evils within one's will, and by counteracting dogmatic beliefs within one's understanding, the individual can gradually be regenerated by the Divine from within. As a result of regeneration, the reception of good and truth from mediate influx becomes less and less perverted, and more and more genuine. From the reception of unadulterated good, new motives are activated in the will, and these align themselves with the existing capabilities (or truths) of the person. The marriage of good and truth within a person is thus attained. A new inner state of heaven ensues, which is characterized by the "uses" of mental health -- happiness, peace, full confidence, self-esteem, love, wisdom, intelligence, perfection, strength, and beauty. Not even death can separate the self from this foundation, so that individuals then eternally abide in their own inner states of heaven.14
Swedenborg claims to have phenomenologically traveled to the inner states of heaven where, after death, the regenerate selves from all cultures and religions congregate.15 These selves telepathically (or spiritually) create a community image which externalizes into a daily life similar in outer appearance to life on earth -- with cities, homes, occupations, governments, and marital life. This communal-spiritual image is permanent and eternal because it corresponds to the inner good and truth accumulated in the self from life in the physical body.16 Given the endless variety of goods and truths, the other world, according to Swedenborg's phenomenological experiences, is in outward appearance like the mythological elaborations of the ancients, or like a child's innocent but imaginative idea of Heaven.17
If evil thoughts and feelings are not shunned, but loved and confirmed in habit, the person's self is built upon the infernal marriage and its abuses of mental illness -- chronic dissatisfaction, depression, boredom, turmoil, conflict, anxiety, dishonesty, hatred, cruelty, delusion, envy, callousness, foolishness, and stupidity. Inherited evil, which could have been dissipated by a changed life, becomes imputable personal sin.18 Not even death can separate the self from this foundation, so that people then eternally abide in their own inner states of hell. By phenomenological experience, Swedenborg confirms that the communal-spiritual image outwardly projected by those who abide in their states of hell, is the sordid life pictured in Western literature on hells, devils, dragons, dungeons, magicians, sorceresses, sirens, and all those who delight in cruelty, irrationality, exploitation, and domination of others through the excitation of fear, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, addiction, obsession, etc. Such is the quality of good and truth when perverted, inverted, or adulterated.

Psycho-Spiritual Aspects of Mental Health.
In Swedenborg's psychology, the will and the understanding are the two psychobiological organs of the human self.19 Their function is to act as internal receptors of good and truth streaming in from within from the Divine. Swedenborg's position is thus a spiritual biology. When good influxes the will, affections are aroused in the person's motivational system. The presence or maintenance of particular affective states is called affective behavior. For example, feeling indignant at someone's conduct is an affective behavior; as is wishing to be safe, or endeavoring to reach a desired goal. Similarly, when truth influxes the understanding, cognitions are aroused in the person's understanding or cognitive system. Today we call the sequencing of particular thoughts or ideas, cognitive behavior. For example, solving a problem is a cognitive behavior; as is planning a meal, or formulating a principle. Thus, all human behavior is a reaction to interior influx from the spiritual world: thoughts are reactions to truths inflowing from within into the external memory (that is, into knowledges acquired experientially, from without); feelings are reactions to goods inflowing from within into our endeavors and strivings.20 Affective and cognitive behaviors together engender sensorimotor behavior -- all sensations, noticings, acts, gestures, expressions, and speech which constitute the external world of appearances.

Levels of Transcendence:

The Breadth and Height of the Self
The horizontal axis in Table 1 outlines the relation between the philosophical and psychological aspects of mental health. The three columns represent the conjunction of good and truth engendering mental health uses -- freedom, rationality, and inventiveness, or when inverted, mental health abuses -- compulsion, delusion, and helplessness. The vertical axis represents Swedenborg's distinction between three levels of human concerns: merely local and historical concerns as seen in the affairs of civics (Level l); more generalized concerns as seen in the search for meaning and what is ethically right (Morality, Level 2); and universalized concerns as seen in archetypic imagery in myth and religion (Level 3). These constitute three developmental levels of transcendence whereby the mind evolves toward ever more interior states of spirituality.
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 insert Table 1 about here

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Level 1. At the lowest level, civics consists of concerns for the external particulars of natural life, such as obtaining physical comfort and safety, gathering external knowledge and applying it to society's needs, working for a living to support self and family, or maintaining law and order through service and personal sacrifice. operational level 1 is un-redeemed biography; it inevitably leads to such existential dead-end issues as the fear of death and the unfulfilled quest for meaning. Existentialism, materialism, monism, behaviorism, philistinism or externalism are strictly materialistic negative bias philosophies dwelling on the concreteness of sensory empiricism while shying away from the substantive reality of higher or inner human operations. In the negative bias ideology of scientism, the individual thinks or says, I only believe what can be proven by fact, by which is meant, time bound physical or naturalistic observations.
Level 2. Ethics occupies the intermediate level as it deals with more internal concerns such as the moral and rational meaning of human affairs: caring for the truth; upholding equity and fairness; and striving for coherence and objectivity. These concerns are more general or abstract, and transcend the local or historical particulars of civics. operational Level 2 transcends externalism by infilling it with rational meaning. We transcend existentialism and behaviorism when we appear to induce the abstract from the concrete, the general from the particular. The behavioristic act now has an ethical antecedent, or justification, within itself. The action is now elevated from the merely natural plane to the more interior plane of the rational, which includes the ethical, the moral, and the spiritual levels of cognition. The external act is transcended by virtue of the fact that an internal motive lies within it. This is a mechanism of interiorization.
Traditional religious practices such as worship, prayer and doctrinal study, as well as other forms of spiritual activity such as humanistic psychotherapies, psychoanalysis, logotherapy, Zen and other quests, function to infuse rational (or ethical and moral) significance into merely natural activities. These rationalized systems function as new inner sources of valuing the details of natural external life. The rational function of the mind (Level 2, according to Swedenborg, is composed of both natural and spiritual substances. The natural substances exist in those perceptions and memories (or, images) which enter through the external (physical) senses, i.e., the sensorimotor domain of behavior. The spiritual substances (good and truth) enter through the inner senses called "the understanding" and "the will," i.e., the cognitive and the affective behavioral domains.21
Swedenborg's description of how the lower aspect of the self is infused by the higher, can be extremely useful to religious psychology. Current non-religious psychotherapies, as exemplified by Freud, Erikson, Rogers, Skinner, and Ellis, are conceived as bottom- up operations. The stages of development or change are added on top of each other, like a heap of sand being poured from the top. In contrast to this external view, Swedenborg's substantive dualism maps the inner religious world, as it infuses or infills the external self from within. Self-transcendence, that is, mental growth, is the operation whereby the cognitive and affective organs are infused with truth and good streaming in from the Infinite Divine. Religious psychotherapy thus acquires a distinguishing characteristic from non- religious psychotherapy.
The rational level of the mind (Level 2) is divided into two categories of operation, one patterned after the external natural world, the other patterned according to the interior spiritual world. The external rational operations in the mind are effected through natural truths or ideas contained in the memory, while internal rational processes operate with spiritual truths or ideas. Thus, in the Swedenborgian system, thoughts or ideas vary as to their origin: natural concepts (Level 1) originate from the natural world through the external sensory organs, and spiritual or rational concepts (Level 2) originate from the spiritual world through the interior sensory organs. The latter are identified as "the understanding" and "the will." As already indicated, the organ of the understanding refers to the cognitive domain and the organ of the will refers to the affective domain. Thus, all concepts built by sensorimotor input from the natural world operate at the external rational level; all concepts built by cognitive and affective reception of spiritual stimuli (i.e., "truths" and "goods" streaming in from the spiritual world) operate at the interior rational level. In Table 1, the line between Levels 1 and 2 represents the external rational. At this lower border, stimuli from the external natural world stream in and are there ordered. The line between Levels 2 and 3 represents the internal rational. At this upper border, stimuli from the interior spiritual world stream in and there organize themselves. In Swedenborg's system, the rational function of the mind forms a necessary intermediary between the natural and the spiritual. The rational partakes of both worlds.
The rational-spiritual operation (Level 2) empowers the self with new feelings of satisfaction that accompany right or appropriate conduct. These new inner satisfactions are capable of overcoming existential concerns or crises. The infusion of rationality into civics, or of ethics into everyday life activities, is an infusion of spiritual meaning into one's existence. The earlier existential crisis has now been overcome. For awhile we are content. Eventually however, new doubts arise and threaten to destroy once again the inner peace of the self. A new transcendence becomes necessary, and it occurs when Level 3 operation infills Level 2.
Level 3. Swedenborg places religion at the inmost level of human concerns as it involves the permanent (eternal) destiny of the self, and is thus the universal aspect of every individual. Religious concerns are also to be distinguished into external and interior categories. External religion refers to one's denominational and sub-cultural activities and motives (e.g., "It is expected of me" or "I need to belong somewhere"). The external thinking and feeling in religion revolve around the motives to be socially accepted and to be fair to others. The interior-rational operations of religion involve the shunning of evil for the sake of God, the consequent love of good, the delight in uses, the love of truth, and the endeavor to apply truths to life (which is called wisdom).22 These are the most abstracted or universal of concerns, the highest or most internalized within the self. This aspect clearly does not refer to external religion as embodied in cultural- ethnic rituals, but rather, to the essence of all religions which concerns the inner relation of the self to eternity and the Infinite.
External religious practice alone remains unredeeming. By itself it is not true religion but merely an ethnic-cultural statement, an historical entity existing in political antagonism to competing systems or denominations. Religion becomes true, meaningful and rational when it is infilled, first, with genuine morality (Level 2), and at last, with genuine love or the delight in good (Level 3). Religion infilled, or inner religion, is universal, immortal, and harmonious. This Swedenborgian definition of religion is in sharp contrast to fundamentalist views that affirm a division between "faith" and what is rational. The fundamentalist sees faith as blind belief since it is beyond what the intellect can explain. But Swedenborg insists that a blind faith is not interior, and hence does not last into the afterlife. A blind faith cannot be interiorly loved since only what is rational can be interior. Hence only a rational faith is tied to the love of good and truth, which then survives to eternity. Loving blindly, according to Swedenborg, is loving externally or naturally; it is temporary. Loving interiorly, hence spiritually and eternally, occurs when the understanding or intellect illumines the object of love. Love conjoined to rational faith is a saving religion; love allied to blind faith, is not. Rational faith is based on a universally valid doctrine; blind alt is based on discriminatory dogma.

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