This textbook was first used at the
University of Hawaii,
Spring 2004 Semester, Psychology 459,
Generation 20
Seminar on Rational vs. Mystical Spirituality
Dr. Leon James, Professor of Psychology,
leon@hawaii.edu
You can access the student reports in the
Reading List at the end.
The Web address of this document is:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic-psychology.htm
Published on the Web in 2004
Warning: This file
loads slowly due to its size. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Theistic Psychology
THE SCIENCE
OF IMMORTALITY
In 4 Volumes
by Leon James
(this is Version 38d)
This online book in 4 volumes is still
being written. Please note the version number
you've read or printed out before, as the document is still expanding.
Please email me any mistakes, inconsistencies, or omissions that you notice.
Some of the sections are still blank.
Volume 1: Substantive Dualism
Volume 2: Personality and Development
Volume 3: Applied Theistic Psychology
Volume 4: Religious Behaviorism
Overall Table
of Contents
(see Detailed Table of Contents below)
Preface and Diagram of the
Foundations of Theistic Psychology
Volume 1. Substantive Dualism
Chapter 1.
The Negative and Positive Bias in Science
Chapter 2.
Q&A on Theistic Psychology
Chapter 3. Developmental Levels of
Thinking About Theistic Psychology
Chapter 4.
The Function of Scientific
Revelations
Volume 2. Personality and
Development
Chapter 5.
Research
Methods in Theistic Psychology
Chapter 6.
Personality Theory
Chapter 7. Character Reformation
Chapter 8.
Learning and Memory
Chapter 9.
Spiritual Development
Volume 3. Applied Theistic Psychology
Chapter 10.
Health
Behaviors
Chapter 11.
The Marriage
Relationship
Chapter 12.
The Heavenly
and Hellish Traits
Volume 4: Religious Behaviorism
Chapter 13.
What is Religious
Behaviorism
Chapter 14. Prayer as Revelation from God
Chapter 15. Faith and Charity
Chapter 16.
Religious Mysticism
Chapter 17. Religious Movements
Reading List and
References
Students who have used this textbook in a course were
required to write three reports. You can access their reports in this listing:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html#students
The instructions for these reports can be accessed here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy20/instructions-g20-459.htm
Detailed Table
of Contents
Volume
1. Substantive Dualism
Chapter 1. The
Negative and Positive Bias in Science
1.0 The Negative and Positive Bias in Science
1.0.1
How This Book Is Written
1.0.2
What is Substantive Dualism in Science
1.1 Three Levels of
Thinking About God
1.1.1
Level 1: Materialistic Science (Monism)
1.1.2
Level 2: Mystical Religion
1.1.3
Level 3: Theistic Psychology
1.2
Mystical vs. Rational Approaches to Theistic Psychology
1.2.1
Who was Swedenborg?
1.3
Non-Substantive or Mystical Dualism vs. Rational Substantive
Dualism
1.4 Partial List of Scientific Revelations in the Writings
of Swedenborg
1.5 Some of the People Who Have Acknowledged
Swedenborg
1.6 Swedenborg's Description of How We Are Resuscitated
After Death
Chapter 2. Q&A on Theistic Psychology
2.0 Q&A on Theistic Psychology
2.1.
What’s the difference between religion and theistic psychology?
2.2.
What about evil, sin, hell, devil, and heaven in relation to theistic psychology?
2.3.
Is theistic science really science?
2.3.1
Criteria for Atheistic Psychology as Science
2.3.2
Criteria for Theistic Psychology as Science
2.3.3
Can an atheist be an expert in theistic science?
2.3.4
Who is to tell us what are good traits and what
evil?
2.4.
What about the spiritual world and the afterlife—how can that
be researched?
2.5.
Is it possible that Swedenborg made it all up or was delusional?
2.6.
What's the relation between the body, the mind, and the spiritual world?
2.7.
Theoretical Implications of God's Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence
2.8.
What is God's Role in the Evolution of the Human Race
2.9.
What is Divine Truth in relation to scientific revelations in theistic
psychology?
2.10.
How is the mind or consciousness related to the spiritual world?
2.11.
What do surveys show about beliefs in God, heaven, hell, miracles, afterlife?
2.12. What About Creationism and evolution?
2.13.
What is "Substantive Dualism" in theistic psychology?
2.12.
What is Applied Theistic Psychology?
2.15.
How is Theistic Psychology different From Mysticism, Spiritism, Psychic
Research?
2.16. How is Spiritual Psychology Related to Theistic
Psychology?
2.17. How Can You Do Research on God in Psychology?
2.17.1
The As-of Self Revealed to Humankind
2.18. Swedenborg's Rational Psychology
2.19. In What Style did Swedenborg Write the Writings?
2.20 Christian Psychology vs. Theistic
Psychology
2.20.1
The Inner Scientific Sense of Divine Speech
2.21.
Where can I read Swedenborg’s Writings and collateral works?
Chapter 3. Developmental
Levels of Thinking About Theistic Psychology
3.0 Developmental Levels of
Thinking About Theistic Psychology
3.1 The First Level--Paraphrasing and Summarizing
3.2 The Second Level--Critical Analysis
3.3 The Third Level--Spiritual Enlightenment
3.4
The Spiritual Sun
3.5
Consciousness as Substance
3.6
Choosing the Heaven or the Hell in our Mind
3.7 The Nature and Character of God: A Scientific
Perspective
3.7.1
The Science of Correspondences
3.8 Divine Speech or Sacred Scripture as the Source
of Scientific Revelations
3.9
Three Experimental Proofs
3.10
Observational Facts About the Spiritual World
3.10.1
God, the Divine-Human
3.10.2
The Mind-Body Connection
3.11 The Purpose of Creation
3.11.1
God, Heaven, Hell, Mind, Body
3.12
Divine Love and Divine Truth as Substances
3.13
The Infinite Within the Finite
3.14
The Spiritual Within the Natural
3.15
The Universal Laws of Correspondences
Chapter 4. The Function of Scientific
Revelations
4.0 The Function of Scientific
Revelations
4.0.1
External and Internal Revelation
4.1 Divine Management Principles
4.1.1 Divine Providence
4.1.2
The Laws of Permissions
4.2
The Grand Human
4.3
The Perizonius Thesis
4.3.1
Individual Thinking and Willing Affects the
Entire Human Race
4.3.2
The Special Role of Science in the Salvation
of Humankind
4.3.3
The Mechanism by Which the Race is Conjoined to God
4.3.4
Rational Consciousness and Levels of
Regeneration
4.3.5
The Greatest of All Uses
4.4
The Laws of Correspondences
4.5
Scientific Revelations in Sacred Scripture
4.6
Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech
4.7
Dying and Resuscitation
4.8 The
Second Death
4.9
Immortality or Life in Eternity
4.10
God, the Divine-Human
Volume
2. Personality and Development
Chapter 5. Research Methods in Theistic
Psychology
5.0 Research
Methods in Theistic Psychology
5.0.1
The Unique Properties of Sacred Scripture
5.0.2
Analyzing Divine Speech: The Scientific Sense of Genesis 22
5.0.3
The Binding of Isaac on the Altar
5.0.4
The Mental Struggles of the Divine-Human on Earth
5.0.5
The Meaning of Sacrifices in Worship
5.0.6
The Passion of Christ
5.0.7
Evolutionary Footsteps for the Human Race
5.0.8
The Scientific Meaning of Sin and Sacrifices
5.0.9
Three Types of Spiritual Perception
5.0.10
The Elevation of Consciousness
5.0.11
Thy Seed Shall Inherit the Gate of Thine Enemies
5.0.12
Invasion of the Hells
5.0.13
Universal Salvation of Everyone
5.1 Anatomy of Mind and Levels of Consciousness
5.1.1
External Mind and the Internal Mind
5.1.2
Structural and Functional Relations in the Mind or Spiritual
Body
5.1.3
Relationship Between Mind and Culture
5.1.4
Rational Mind Mediates Natural and Spiritual
Information
5.1.5
Rational and Sensuous Consciousness
5.2 The Two Forces Acting on Every Object
5.3 Ethical Issues in Theistic
Psychology
5.3.1
Ethics of Science and Religion
5.3.2
Theistic Psychologists and Morality
5.3.3
Theistic Psychology and Media Content
5.3.4
Censorship and Theistic Psychologists
5.3.5
Theistic Psychologists View on War, Death Penalty, Abortion
5.4
Spiritual
Self-Witnessing
5.4.1
Self-Witnessing Literacy Skills
5.4.2
Cognitive Atlas: Keeping Track of Our Social Life
5.4.3
Self-description Profile
5.4.4 Origin and Analysis of Dreams
5.4.4.1 Swedenborg's Journal of Dreams
5.5
The Substitution Technique
5.5.1
The Parallelism Technique
5.6 Extracting Dualist Concepts From
Swedenborg's Writings
5.6.1
Full Text Searching of the Writings Online
5.6.2
Indexical Concordance Technique: The Writings
vs. the Web
5.7 The Scientific Meaning of the
Ten Commandments
5.7.1
First Commandment: God is the Source of Everything
5.7.2
Second Commandment: Do Not Take the Name of God in
Vain
5.7.3
Third Commandment: Keep the Sabbath Day Holy
5.7.4
Fourth Commandment: Honor Your Father and Mother
5.7.5..Fifth Commandment: Do Not Murder
5.7.6
Sixth Commandment: Do not Commit Adultery
5.7.7
Seventh Commandment: Do Not Steal
5.7.8
Eighth Commandment: Do Not Lie
5.7.9
Ninth and Tenth Commandments: Do not Covet
5.7.10 Summary Table For the Scientific Meaning of the
Ten Commandments
5.8 Rise Above It--The Ten Commandments in All
Religions
5.9 Color Wisdom--A Universal Method for Tracking
Spiritual Development
Chapter 6. Personality
Theory
6.0 Personality Theory
6.0.1
The Conscious Self and Its Development
6.0.2
Woman Built From the Man's Rib
6.0.3
The Rebirth of the Fallen Proprium or Self
6.0.4
Innocence and the Choice of Salvation
6.0.5 Spiritual Growth: How the New Will is formed
6.0.5.1 The Role of Divine Speech in Building Up the New
Will
6.0.5.2 Flow Chart of How the New Will is Created by
Divine Speech
6.0.5.3 Self-assessment Using the Ten Commandments
Chart
6.0.5.4 Spiritual Growth Method Based on Swedenborg and
Gurdjieff
6.0.5.4.1 The Ugliness of the Proprium or What Is Our
Own
6.0.6
The Birth of the Self in Infants
6.0.7
The Self in Childhood and Adolescence
6.0.8
The Self or Proprium in Adulthood
6.0.9
Death of Self and Rebirth of the New Proprium
6.0.10
The State of Reformation Begins Regeneration
6.1
The Awesome Power of the Affective Organ
6.1.1
The Affective--Cognitive Integration
6.2
What Determines Our Ultimate Fate in Eternity?
6.2.1
Wanting to Know the Future Through Psychic Prophecies
6.3
The Vertical Community of Minds
6.3.1
Human Consciousness and Mediated Divine Influx
6.3.1.1
The Formation of Habits
6.4
Love of Self and the World for the Sake of Self
6.5
Love of Self and the World for the Sake of Others
6.6 Love of Ruling Over Others for the Sake of Self
6.7
Love of Ruling Over Others for the Sake of Others
6.8 Sexuality: Love of the Sex vs. Love of One of the
Sex
6.8.1 Feminizing the Marriage Relationship: The Unity Model
6.8.2
Three Levels of Union in the Marriage Relationship
6.8.3
Unity Through Reciprocity and Differentiation
6.8.4
Sensorimotor, Cognitive, and Affective Conjunction
6.8.5
Chart of the Three Models in Marriage
6.8.6
Behavioral Indicators of One's Relationship Model
6.8.7
Dr. Laura Schlessinger's Male Dominance Model of Marriage
6.8.8
The Surrendered Wife vs. the Surrendered Husband
6.8.9
The Surrendered Husband is The Ideal Elevated Man
6.8.10
The Self-Entrapment of Male Intelligence
6.8.11
Who Is Going To Do The Bills?
6.8.12
The Spiritual Physiology of Marriage
6.8.13
Her Heaven, Not His
6.8.14
Divine Truth Within Which Is Divine Love
6.8.15
Is The Surrendered Husband Feminized?
6.8.16
The Conjoint Mind Is Both Masculine And Feminine
6.9 Feelings Operate in the Spiritual Fibers of the
Affective Organ
6.10 Will Power
and the Affective-Cognitive Connection
Chapter 7. Character
Reformation
7.0 Character
Reformation
7.1
The Method of Affective Realignment for Character
Self-modification
7.2
The Affective--Cognitive Interaction
7.3
The Role of the Sensorimotor Mind
7.4
The Source of Anxiety, Worry, and Depression
7.5
Struggle Between the Natural and the Spiritual Mind
7.6
As-of Self Principles of Living: The Power of
Self-Regulation
7.7
The Power of Affective Positivity: The Positive Bias Glow
7.8
Anger and the Spiritual Function of Mood
7.9
Sacred Scripture in Relation to the Mental World
7.10
Independent Empirical Confirmation of the Dual Meaning
in Sacred Scripture
7.11 Moral Intelligence and Evolution
Chapter 8. Learning and Memory
8.0
Learning Theory
8.1
Thinking From Natural Ideas vs. Thinking From Spiritual Ideas
8.2
Thinking About God From Spiritual Ideas Rather
Than Natural
8.3
How We Learn and Develop Rationality
8.3.1
Degrees of Truth and Levels of Mind
8.3.2 Test Your Logical Thinking
8.3.3
Literacy: The Universal Hierarchy of Basic Skills
8.3.4
Religious Curriculum
8.3.5
Individual Growth Recapitulates History and
Evolution
8.3.6
Thinking From a Knowledge of the Three Degrees
8.3.7
The Trigrammatic Construction of the Universe
8.4 External and Interior Memory
8.5
Sudden Memory
8.6
Perception: Natural, Rational, Spiritual
8.6.1
Spiritual-Rational Perception
8.6.2
Wisdom and Perception
8.7 Inherited Spiritual
Traits
8.7.1
Remains and the Levels of Good in Human Development
8.8 Universal Spirit Language and Thought
8.9
Anatomy of Mind and Levels of Consciousness
8.10 Principles of Theistic Psychology Education
8.10.1 Education With Dualist Concepts
8.10.2 Constructing Integrated Dualist Concepts
8.10.2.1 External and Interior
Portions
8.10.2.2 Uses
8.10.2.2 Discrete Degrees
8.10.2.3 Correspondences
8.10.2.4 Top Down Integration Through
Intermediaries
Chapter 9. Spiritual Development
9.0
Spiritual Development
9.1
First Step: Infancy Period of Regeneration
9.2
Second Step: Childhood Period of Regeneration
9.3
Third Step: Adolescence Period of Regeneration
9.4
The Inversion
9.5
Fourth Step: Young Adulthood Period of Regeneration
9.6
Fifth Step: Adulthood Period of Regeneration
9.7
Sixth Step: Old Age Period of Regeneration
9.8
9.9
The Three Levels of Rational Spirituality
9,9.1
Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg
9.9.2
Test of Rational Spirituality
Volume 3: Applied Theistic Psychology
Chapter 10. Health Behaviors
10.1
The Daily Emotional Spin Cycle
10.1.1 Negative Emotions and the Vertical Community
10.1.1.1 The Sting and Torment of Conscience
10.1.1.2 Laws of Social Interaction Among
Spirits
10.1.2 The Threefold Self
10.1.3 Our Four Options
10.1.4 Getting to Know What the Options
Are
10.1.5
The Negative Spin Cycle
10.1.6
The Positive Spin Cycle
10.1.7
The Others-Self Negative Spin Cycle
10.1.8
The Others-Self Positive Spin Cycle
10.1.9
The Two Bridges
10.1.10
Self-Regulatory Prompts for the Red Bridge
10.1.11
Self-Regulatory Prompts for the Blue Bridge
10.1.12 Option 1: Negative towards others and the world
10.1.13
Option 2: Positive towards others and the world
10.1.14
Option 3: Negative towards self
10.1.15
Option 4: Positive towards self
10.1.16 Design of Your Experiment
10.2
Supportive Driving -- Facing the Culture of Disrespect
10.3
Getting a Grip on Anger
10.4
Resistance to Flossing
10.5
Resistance to Medical Compliance
10.6
Medical Daily Round
10.7
Resistance to Exercising
10.8
Intolerance of Feeling Hungry
10.9
Resistance to a Healthy Diet
Chapter 11. The Marriage Relationship
11.0 The Marriage
Relationship
11.1
Marriages in Heaven or Conjugial Love
11.2
Marriages in Hell or Infernal Concubinage
11.3 The Conjoint Self and The Unity Model of
Marriage
11.3.1
Three Levels of Unity in Gender Relationship
11.3.2
Unity Through Reciprocity and Differentiation
11.3.3
Sensorimotor, Cognitive, and Affective Conjunction
11.3.4
Chart of the Three Models in Gender Relations
11.3.5
Behavioral Indicators of One's Relationship Model
11.3.6
Anatomy of the Mind or Spiritual Body: Male and
Female
11.3.7
Six Phases of Temptations for Husbands
11.3.7.1 Overcoming White Temptations
11.3.7.2 Overcoming Yellow Temptations
11.3.7.3 Overcoming Green Temptations
11.3.7.4 Overcoming Blue Temptations
11.3.7.5 Overcoming Brown Temptations
11.3.7.6 Overcoming Black Temptations
11..4
The Doctrine of the Wife For Husbands
Chapter 12. The
Heavenly and Hellish Traits
12.0
The Heavenly and Hellish Traits
12.0.1
The Writings of Swedenborg (1688-1772)
12.0.2
The Fundamental Formula of the New
Scientific Revelation
12.0.3
The Mind Is Not in Physical Space
12.0.4
Spiritual Substances Out of Which the Mind is Formed
12.05
The Three Anatomical Levels of the Mind
12.0.6
Love and Truth as Substances
12.0.7
The Geography of the Spiritual World
12.0.7.1
First Heaven--Spiritual-Natural Correspondences
12.0.7.2
Second Heaven--Spiritual-Rational Correspondences
12.0.7.3
Third Heaven--Celestial-Rational Correspondences
12.0.8
Three Degrees of Regeneration by Temptations
12.0.9
The Rational is the Beginning of Being Human
12.0.10
We All Meet in the Mind
12.1 Altruism
or the Love of Being Useful
12.2 Character Virtues
12.3 Chastity and Conjugial Love
12.4 Wisdom of Innocence
12.5 Wisdom of Old Age
12.6 Selfishness
or the Love of Domineering
12.6.1
Human Freedom--Heavenly and Hellish
12.6.2
The Necessity of Putting up the Effort As-of Self
12.6.3
Compelling Oneself to Do Good
12.6.4
The Role of Our Vertical Community
12.7 Character Flaws
12.8
Resentment, Envy, Avarice
12.9
The Love of Profanation
12.10
Arrogance, Cynicism, Relativism
12.11
Corporeality
12.11.1
Overcoming the Life of Corporeality
12.11.2
Spiritual Dangers of Sex Outside Marriage
12.12 The Love of Promiscuity and Adultery
12.12.1
Taxonomy of Adulteries
12.13 The Love of Corrupting Innocence
12.14 The Hatred of God and Heaven
12.15 The Love of Abusing Women
12.16 Taxonomy of Behavioral Dysfunctions
12.17 Psychotherapy as Biological Theology
Volume 4: Religious Behaviorism
Chapter 13 What is Religious Behaviorism
13.0 What is Religious
Behaviorism
13.0.1
Religious Behaviorism vs. the Psychology of
Religion
13.0.2
The Writings of Swedenborg as Sacred Scripture
13.0.3
Swedenborg's Mission in His Own Words
13.0.4
Levels of Correspondences in Sacred Scripture
13.0.5
Objections to Swedenborg as a Divine Revelator
13.0.6
What Heaven is Like as Told by Eye Witnesses
13.0.7
The Divine-Human is Universal, Beyond
Christian
13.0.8
Every Religion has the Same God
13.0.9
The Church
13.0.10
God's Incarnation Viewed Scientifically
13.1 Inherited Sin
13.1.1
Inherited Traits From Parents
13.1.2
Salvation and Sacrifice
13.1.3
Correspondential Meaning of Animal
Sacrifices
13.1.4
Salvation and Glorification
3.1.5
Salvation and Resurrection
13..2 Universal Salvation of the Human Race
13..3 Divine Revelation and Sacred Scripture
13..4 Heaven and Hell
13..5 Baptism, Rebirth, Reformation
13..6 Regeneration or Character Reformation
13..7 Doctrine of Life
Chapter 14. Prayer as
Revelation From God
14.0 Prayer as Revelation From God
14.1
Talking to God
14.2
Asking for Things
14.3
Ritual Prayers
Chapter 15. Faith and Charity
15.0
Faith and Charity
15.1 Charity or the Love of Being Useful
15.2 Consciousness Raising and Enlightenment
15.3 Miracles and Prophesies
15.3.1
Visions of Heaven?
15.4 Persuasive and Blind Faith
15.5 Rational Faith and Rational Love
15.6 Fundamentalism and External Worship
15.7 Rational Spirituality and Internal Worship
15.8 The Scientific Meaning of the Ten Commandments
15.9 The Scientific Meaning of the Parables of Jesus
15.10 The Scientific Meaning of the Book of
Revelation (Apocalypse)
15.11 The
Scientific Meaning of Genesis and Psalms
15.12 Resurrection and Resuscitation of the Dead
15.13 The Clergy and Priesthood
Chapter 16. Religious
Mysticism
16.0
Religious Mysticism
16.1 Literalism and Dogmatism
16.2
Creationism
16.3
Anti-Semitism
16.4
The Millennial Doctrine
16.5
The Trinity of Three Divine Persons
16.6
Spiritual Warfare
16.7
The Second Coming
16.8
Sexless Angels
16.9
The Dogma of Faith Alone
16.10
The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
16.11
The Laying on of Hands
16.12 Community and Fellowship
16.13 Christian Gentilism
16.14 Carnal Christians
Chapter 17. Religious
Movements
17.0 Religious Movements
17.1 Evangelism
17.2
Witnessing for Christ
17.3
TV Miracle Workers
17.4
Ecumenicalism
17.5 Pacifism
17.6 Universalism and Transcendentalism
17. 7 Nonduality, Mysticism, Shamanism, Spiritism
17.8 Theosophy and Astrology
17.9 Cults, Voodoo, Superstition
17.10 Popular Idols
Reading List
and References
Preface and Diagram
The diagram above pictures the relationship between theistic psychology
and the Writings of Swedenborg. Religion derived from the Writings is based on
their literal meaning, while theistic psychology derived from the Writings is
based on their psychological meaning which is universal and scientific. The
religion derived from the Writings is called a "rational faith" in contrast to
mystical faith. Religions based on the Writings that are active today are known
as "the New Church."
The diagram identifies the Writings as "Divine Speech."
Religion based on the Writings refers to them as "the Word." In the Western
tradition the Old and New Testaments are called the Word by Christians. In the
New Church, which is also Christian, the expression the "Threefold Word" is used
to designate the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings. They are
seen as three sets of Divine revelations that complete each other.
The Writings demonstrate that the Old and New Testaments are
written in the style of Divine Speech which contains several layers of meaning.
The literal historical meaning is accurate and Divine, but they also contain
other meanings that can be recovered or reconstructed by applying the code of
correspondences in which all Sacred Scripture is written. Though so much has
been written about the Bible, no one suspected that these inner meanings are
contained within the literal meaning of every verse, phrase, and word.
Swedenborg was given the Divine mission of revealing and teaching the code of
correspondences by which all Divine Speech comes to the human mind.
Divine Speech issues from God and enters the human mind
through "celestial correspondences." People who have elevated their rational
consciousness to the highest level of the human mind called "heaven," can
perceive and understand these celestial meanings. Swedenborg shows that these
celestial meanings refer to details about God's Incarnation and God's feelings
and thoughts regarding the human race. Although he describes these subjects in
detail, using the Old Testament chapters, we can only understand these topics in
a natural way, not celestial. This is because our consciousness is restricted to
the natural mind while we still live on earth.
From the heavenly regions of the human mind, Divine Speech
descends to a lower region called the "spiritual heaven" in our mind. People who
elevate their consciousness to the spiritual level of rational understanding are
able to understand the spiritual correspondences of Divine Speech. Swedenborg
shows that they deal with the anatomy and development of the human mind. These
scientific revelations are contained in the spiritual correspondences of Divine
Speech. Next, Divine Speech descends into the lower portion of the human mind
called the "natural mind." People whose rational consciousness operates at this
level are able to understand spiritual correspondences in a natural way.
Finally, Divine Speech then descends into its lowest form and is known as Sacred
Scripture or the Word. At this level it is written down in a natural language
through the inspiration of an ordinary individual who is willing to serve as
God's "prophet."
The literal sense of the Old Testament refers to the history
of a people that has been designated by God to receive Divine Speech in the form
of the Old Testament history, prophecies, and prayers. Swedenborg shows that the
Old Testament verses can be reconstructed or decoded by applying
correspondences. He shows how the reconstruction of Divine Speech can be
effected by applying spiritual and celestial correspondences. Similarly he shows
that the New Testament can also be reconstructed in the same way, applying the
same universal correspondences that Divine Speech uses in its descent to the
human mind.
Swedenborg does not show how the Writings he authored are to
be reconstructed through correspondences. But he does affirm that the Writings
are Divine Speech and that all Divine Speech can be reconstructed by the same
universal correspondences. Theistic psychology uses this principle to
reconstruct scientific revelations from the Writings.
The reconstruction of the Writings as Divine Speech is
achieved by distinguishing between natural correspondences, spiritual
correspondences, and celestial correspondences, then applying these to the
literal sentences of the Writings. Three methodologies are available, as shown
on the diagram: extractive research, predictive research, and applied research.
Extractive research uses the natural-rational correspondences
of the literal meaning of the Writings. Swedenborg was a successful scientist
and engineer when, at age 57, he suddenly found himself conscious simultaneously
in both this world and the spiritual world. He was thus able to discover
universal correspondences directly by observing the interaction effects and laws
between the two worlds. For 27 years he took copious notes about his
observations and experiments in the spiritual world. He then published some 30
volumes giving a rational scientific account and synthesis of the content of
Divine Speech and how it regulates the interaction between natural laws and
spiritual laws.
Because of this, the literal meaning of the Writings
sometimes appear as science and sometimes as religion, and sometimes the two are
mixed within the same passage. So the first level of extractive research in
theistic psychology is to interpret the literal meaning of the Writings in those
passages where it openly and plainly gives scientific revelations. These
passages are written in natural-rational correspondences and can be understood
rationally by anyone with a literacy that can cover textbooks in secondary
school. This is the level upon which religion is based in the New Church and it
is called "the plain teaching of the Letter." All Church Doctrine in the New
Church is based on these natural-rational correspondences.
At the second level of extractive research in theistic
psychology are interpretations of spiritual-rational correspondences, and at the
third level, the interpretation of celestial-rational correspondences. For
technical details on the extraction methodology please consult Volume 2 of my
book A Man of the Field available on the Web at this location:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume2-nonduality.html
Conscious communication with God is the method God has
provided for spiritual growth. We are born natural, like apes, but we are
created with a mental organ for rational consciousness of God. This is why human
beings are immortal. Immortality or eternal life is based on rational
consciousness. This rational
organ must be developed in the same way as the physical muscles of the body.
Once we achieve literacy, we are able to think rationally about religion. Every
society has some form of religion. Through religion we discover God's existence
and dualism. Our rational thinking is expanded when we learn that God is present
everywhere, knows everything, and has always existed, even before He created the
world. It takes new and higher forms of reasoning to try to understand God.
When we are striving to understand God rationally, we are able to receive still higher forms
of rational thinking, especially when we begin to study Sacred Scripture as
Divine Speech.
"Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech" is a higher concept in
rational thinking than "Divinely inspired writings." If a writer is Divinely
inspired, maybe another writer is too. And then we have a multitude of writers
who claim that they are Divinely inspired, and no doubt sincerely believe so,
and others also believe that. But this type of reasoning is far below in
rationality to that which sees that Sacred Scripture is Divine Speech filtered
down to earthly minds, and from there written down by the writer like one writes
down dictation. The idea of "Divine Dictation" is higher than the idea of "inspired
prophet"--higher in the sense of more rational.
Divine Speech in itself contains infinite truths and
principles in every Word. As it exits from the rational mind of God it enters
the human mind at its highest form of rational consciousness or meaning. This is
called the "third heaven" in our mind. It then enters the "second heaven" in our
mind but there is a translation that takes place in the process. The Writings of
Swedenborg demonstrate exactly what this translation process is, and is called
the code of "correspondences." This refers to the universal laws that govern the
interaction between the natural and spiritual world. Swedenborg was given to
discover these laws by being allowed to become conscious in the spiritual world while he was still living in a physical body on earth.
This was an unprecedented event in the history of creation.
Swedenborg calls it "the greatest miracle the Lord has ever granted." For 27
years, from age 57 to 84, Swedenborg was a dual citizen--conscious
simultaneously in both the natural world and the spiritual world. He was able to
carry on his normal duties in Sweden as a respected mining engineer and science writer and
publisher, even as he was writing pages and pages every day about his other
worldly experiences, observations, and experiments. His reports and notes have
been published and translated in different languages. In English they occupy
nearly 30 volumes on my office shelf. They are known collectively as "the Writings of
Swedenborg."
Now that the style of Divine Speech has been revealed, along
with the code of correspondences between spiritual and natural qualities, we are
able to reconstruct the meaning of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture.
What is the content of Divine Speech when reconstructed? What
is God talking to us about?
The content of God's Speech is contained or hidden in Sacred Scripture.
The written "Word of God," written in a natural language through a prophet (not
by a prophet!), can be reconstructed at several levels of rational
consciousness. The prophets were totally unaware that what they wrote down had
layers of meaning they wouldn't be able to understand, or that someday, this
hidden meaning would come to light. The literal meaning of Sacred Scripture is natural, historical,
and poetic. It talks about God in these terms and it quotes God also in these
terms. This is the first level of rational consciousness we attain as human
beings. We discover dualism and God. We begin to understand that we are immortal
"spirits" living in a material body. When we lose the material body we live in
the spirit in either heaven or hell. We discover that we can rationally
influence which it will be by either obeying or disobeying God's Commandments
given in the literal language of Sacred Scripture.
These new dualist concepts make us rational and human. We now have a
rational consciousness of God, of the spiritual world, and of the rational
consequences of our choices in life on earth. Before this rational knowledge we
were higher apes, incapable of making choices on the basis of our future, both
on earth and in the continuation of our life in the spiritual world. Note that
the literal sense of Sacred Scripture raises the rational level of civilization as well as the
individual. Legislation, education, and morality could not be developed and
maintained except through the rationality we gain from the letter of Sacred Scripture. As
civilization evolves, so does the level of rationality of its laws and its
science. Individuals who are raised in a civilized society acquire the
rationality that originates from Sacred Scripture even if they are not taught
Sacred Scripture directly.
Atheistic science has been able to increase in rationality
and power to give us the vast changes from wheel to computer. It is not
officially recognized that this rationality in science is due to Sacred
Scripture entering the human mind and consciousness. Nevertheless it can now
be seen that it is so, as demonstrated in the new scientific revelations called
the Writings of Swedenborg.
The rationality of science has been natural,
based on the sensory order of events in the physical universe and their
abstractions into formal systems. A higher level of
rationality is found in law and morality because these systems of thought work
with higher, more universal and more spiritual issues and solutions. Even this level of rationality is still
natural, relating to the temporary world, not spiritual or dualist relating to
the eternal future consequences of human acts. Religion is at a still higher level of
rationality since it is dualist and takes God into account through Sacred
Scripture. From the rationality of religion it is possible to start
reconstructing the content of Divine Speech. The first reconstruction or
understanding is at the level of operation called the "first heaven" in our
mind. Then, by applying the code of correspondences, we can reconstruct Divine
Speech at the next higher level of rational consciousness called the "second
heaven." Finally, we can reconstruct Divine Speech to the highest rational
level of our mind called the "third heaven."
This approach to reconstructing Divine Speech through
successively higher correspondences is called the "scientific meaning of
Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech." Theistic psychology is based on the
reconstruction of Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech by extracting its scientific
meaning through the methods revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg.
What is then the specific content of Divine Speech?
It is a scientific and rational description of the laws by
which God maintains the universe in Divine Order. It also gives the structure
and anatomy of the human mind. It shows the relation between the anatomy of the
mind and the geography of the spiritual world. It reveals the detailed network
of interaction God maintains for the entire human race. Nothing can happen in
one mind without it being communicated to every other human mind in existence.
This universal interdependence of the race, which I call the "vertical
community," is maintained by God as a form of
evolution by which the whole race is growing in rational consciousness. It
reveals the details of life after death, of heaven and hell, of spirits from
other planets congregating in the Grand Human as endless societies of heaven
arranged in the geographic form of the human body, and in the specific functions
of its organs. And many other details about regeneration, temptation, spiritual
development, marriage, history, and scientific principles and laws.
This is the content of Divine Speech when Sacred Scripture is
reconstructed in its scientific meaning. Divine Speech is therefore the highest
form of scientific revelations given to humankind for the purpose of raising our
rational consciousness of God and our understanding of true reality. God Speaks to the race out of
His love to be conjoined with every created human being. The content of God's
scientific revelations allows us to raise our rational consciousness to the highest
level of the human mind called "celestial." God's purpose for creating the
universe is no other than to create endless numbers of immortal human beings on
innumerable earths in the universe, and to bring every person to their heaven
where the entire human race congregates together and lives to eternity in maximum possible
happiness for each and all.
Theistic psychology has three branches of research and
development--extractive, predictive, and applied. These are new terms I had to
coin to make the content comprehensible to the modern scientific mind. "Extractive research" is the
systematic and cumulative rational effort to extract scientific meaning from
Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech. "Predictive research" is a similar effort to construct rational
theories and doctrines that our understanding leads us to. Our understanding of
extractive research leads us to expand on what is already extracted and known to new areas of interest
and need for society and the individual. These new theories or doctrines are at first unconfirmed
since they are not direct extractions from Sacred Scripture. But more extractive research can
eventually confirm these new theories and doctrines. Until they are so confirmed
their status is ambiguous. "Applied research" uses the knowledge from extractive
and predictive research to improve various critical areas of need in society and
the individual. Some of these are listed in the diagram and are discussed in
Volume 3.
It should be
stated that the "Threefold Word" in its literal sense is specific to the Christian
tradition and history. But in their scientific sense it is universal. The
Threefold Word as Sacred
Scripture cannot be adopted or incorporated into other religions when considered
in its literal-historical meaning, but when the scientific meaning is
reconstructed, all religious and historical content vanishes. Theistic
psychology is therefore a universal science of the human mind, independent of
historical and religious differences.
This book introduces a new era in science. It's been 233
years since the publication by Swedenborg of the last book of the Writings.
Although his name is somewhat known in literary circles, Swedenborg is
completely unknown in science. History of psychology textbooks mention many
names from the past leading up to modern psychology, including Descartes who is
cited for being a mind-body "dualist." Swedenborg's dualism is unknown. The
reason is obvious. None of the authors mentioned in the history of psychology
have ever claimed that their ideas are based on interviews with spirits, devils,
and angels, or with individuals from the past like Aristotle or Luther, now
living in the spiritual world. None of the other authors have claimed to visit
heaven and hell and to possess knowledge about the history of the earliest
people on the planet. None of them claimed to have talked to people born on
other planets. Swedenborg is such a strange case when we read such details that
history of science writers could not assimilate him into the lineup of past
contributors to the knowledge of human behavior.
But now, through this book, the scientific revelations in the
Writings of Swedenborg have entered the mainstream of normal science in the 21st
century.
Besides this historical footnote, the importance of this book
is that it introduces into the science of modern psychology an alternative
perspective to the current atheistic psychology. Theistic psychology provides
scientists with a new paradigm which I call "the positive bias in science" (see
Chapter 1). The current perspective of atheistic psychology may be called "the
negative bias in science."
The positive bias in science allows for the existence of what
I call "substantive dualism." This is unlike former proposals of dualism because
no one had known about the spiritual world until the scientific revelations in
the Writings of Swedenborg (1688-1772). In general, dualism is the theory that
the mind and the body are not of the same matter or substance, and that mind is
non-material, like the spirit or soul. Nothing whatever was known about the soul
or the spirit, or what their relationship was to the mind. Since the Writings of
Swedenborg, all this has been cleared up by his direct observations of both
worlds. As well, prior formulations about dualism did not introduce God as part
of the definition of dualism.
Descartes, Newton, and Darwin helped create modern atheistic
science, despite the fact that they believed in God. In contrast, Swedenborg
introduced God as a concept in his scientific books decades before he suddenly
found himself with the ability to be conscious of the spiritual world at age 57.
Along with the concept of God, Swedenborg had introduced the concept of the
Spiritual Sun which no one before him had thought of. And how the Spiritual Sun
acted on the natural world through Divine love and truth. This did not make any
scientific sense to other scientists at the time. But when Swedenborg began his
new observations of the spiritual world, he was then able to confirm
empirically, his prior suppositions. Historically, Swedenborg must therefore be
considered as the founder of theistic science, as well as theistic psychology.
"Substantive dualism" and "theistic psychology" are phrases
that I made up to help introduce Swedenborg's Writings to modern psychology.
Another phrase I made up is "rational ether" which refers to the sphere of the
spiritual world. I also made up a phrase to reflect the relationship between the
spiritual world and the mind: "the geography of the spiritual world = the
anatomy of the human mind." These new ideas are explained in the book.
Volume 1 discusses the details of substantive dualism and the
function of scientific revelations. Volume 2 discusses personality theory and
spiritual development, with a focus on character reformation. Volume 3 discusses
applied theistic psychology with a focus on marriage, health, and everyday
behaviors. Volume 4 discusses religious behaviorism with a focus on prayer,
faith, and mysticism.
"Such as the love
is, such is the wisdom, consequently such is the man."
(Swedenborg, DLW 368)
Volume 1: Substantive Dualism
Chapter 1
The Negative and Positive Bias in Science
1.0 This book explores whether
it is possible to use God as an explanatory concept in psychology and still
remain within the scope and definition of a science.
1.0.1 How This Book Is Written
"Theistic psychology"
contrasts with "atheistic psychology" which prohibits the use of God as an
explanatory concept for any phenomenon or theory in science. By contrast,
theistic psychology makes use of knowledge about God from "scientific
revelations" which are found in the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).
We will examine the data and experiments he presents in his Writings concerning
God, the spiritual world, life after death, and the human mind, with a view to
evaluating whether such a system can remain scientific.
Note that by examining this evidence by a prominent author
well known in Western literature, we are not automatically granting that
it is authentic scientifically. We are only granting that it is possible that
Swedenborg's spiritual observations might be accurate, valid, and scientific.
This remains to be examined. I have written this book to help you examine the
evidence from the scientific point of view of modern behavioral psychology,
which I have taught for 40 years in psychology departments known nationally for
their strict behaviorism and experimentalism. I have contributed to the
development of this field, in some modest way. The list of my publications can
be consulted here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonpublish.html
There is no pressure or expectation for you to change your
mind on anything. There is only the usual expectation in psychology courses that
you show the ability and effort to read critically and to evaluate rationally,
and with your own understanding. Since the topic is "spirituality," and more
specifically "God and the spiritual world of the afterlife," the first
impression we get is that this is religion, and once we think that, we are a
little shocked that this should be the topic of a psychology research seminar. And in addition, it is a public state university, so
our next reaction is to think of the separation of Church and State rule so
strong in this democratic country. These are normal reactions, and I know them empirically from
students who have used this book. You are welcome to examine their reports which
they wrote in all freedom of expression. One report at the beginning, one
two-thirds through, and one at the end of the semester. You can access the
student reports in this listing:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html#students
What I found out is that the initial reactions I mention are
succeeded by more informed arguments which clarify completely the difference
between religion and theistic psychology. This book consists of four volumes so
it is not easy to get through the material in the course of one semester
of 16 weeks. To compensate for that, I have treated topics somewhat
independently, feeling free to explain something that was already explained.
Readers who go through the book in the sequential order it is presented, will
frequently recognize a topic or argument that has been treated of before.
But I recommend that you do not skip these apparent
repetitions. In order to build our rational understanding of spiritual topics it
is useful to have different angles on the same argument, and
thereby acquire a much more accurate view. Furthermore, the repetitions will
allow you to rehearse what you have already read. Almost no one has 99 percent
memory in reading. Often, the rational understanding is broken up by content
that is unavailable or forgotten, leading to lack of full clarity, which then is
attributed to the subject matter. This can derail our attempt to keep going. I
expect that you will experience delight in understanding so clearly something that before has always been a
kind of a mystery for most people.
The majority of students who have used this book have had a childhood in which religion was considered a required part of
family activities. Some have been Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals,
Buddhists, and self-declared atheists with a passion to oppose the idea of God.
After getting through their first reactions, as you can read from their reports,
they were so intrigued that many of them stayed after class to continue
discussion of the fascinating evidence. It seemed to me that all students
benefited from this critical examination, whether or not they accepted or
rejected the evidence. Even those who rejected it found it interesting and
impressive, though they chose to maintain their stand from the beginning that the evidence is not
sufficient to be considered a scientific proof.
Those who came with a firm idea of God from their religion
did not exhibit conflict or distaste to the idea that
God might be introduced into science. Some decided yes, some no. The students
who read at least half of the material assigned, gained the most and had the
least conflict with the subject matter. About one third of the students
expressed deep appreciation and great happiness for their new ability to think
of God scientifically without in any way threatening their strongly held
religious views. I have made a more formal analysis of student views, which
will be reported in a forthcoming article to be made available on the Web. Look
for it here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/class-analysis.htm
1.0.2 What is Substantive Dualism
in Science
Science is the systematic, rational, and
observational study of the universe and of reality.
Science creates rational explanations for
observed facts and strives to create an overall understanding of the universe,
its parts and how they interact by lawful mechanisms to produce the variety of
phenomena that exist.
Psychology as a science strives to unify
the explanations of human behavior into a rational and comprehensive account.
There are however methodological difficulties to overcome when we study mental
phenomena such as feelings, thoughts, and sensations. Two opposing approaches
have been adopted in the history of psychology, one monist, the other
dualist. The monist approach in science is based on the unproven assumption or
belief that both the mind and the body are made of physical matter, space,
and energy. Note that this assumption is unproven and may be wrong. It may be
that the mind is not made of physical matter like the physical body and brain.
We will need to consider what other scientific proposals exist for explaining
what the mind is made of and what the physical body is
made of.
The dualist approach
in science
is based on the empirical reports given by Swedenborg showing that the mind is of a
different substance than the physical body. Scientists since Aristotle have
proposed that the universe is made of two kinds of stuff. The physical world is
made of stuff called "matter" while the mental world is made of stuff called
"substance." Matter is physical or material and has the property of time, space,
and mass. Substance is spiritual or non-material and does not have the property
of mass, space, or time. Consider your thoughts, feelings, and fantasies--they
do not occupy space, mass, or time. Dreams are not physical. Dualist scientists
have argued that thoughts and fantasies cannot exist unless they are made of
some stuff somewhere. This stuff is a rational ether in the mind.
The mind is
therefore an organ made of rational ether or spiritual substance, just as the physical brain is an organ
made of physical matter and space. Materialistic scientists reject this
substantive view of the mind and prefer to
argue that thoughts, feelings, and fantasies are not real, so they are not made
of matter or stuff. They refer to the mind
as an "epiphenomenon" of the brain, that is, something unreal that appears
real but isn't. As soon as the physical brain dies, there is no mind, no self,
no person. But dualist scientists argue that when the physical brain dies, the
mind continues to live--not on earth but in the spiritual world.
The mind-body controversy has gone on for
centuries among scholars of Europe and its history is reviewed in most history
of psychology textbooks, which usually take the issue all the way back to
Aristotle and Plato, both of whom were dualists. Descartes is the dualist best
known to psychology students. As we examine the psychology of the 20th century,
of which I was a part, all dualism disappears from the main scientific
literature. Today, few psychology majors can say that they have had to study any
dualists among the hundreds of psychologists whose work they had to read. The
reason for this is what I call the negative bias in science. Materialistic
science has a negative bias that rejects dualism and accepts monism even though
there is no scientific proof for either position.
This book is therefore most unusual and may represent a new
trend that might grow in the future of psychology. Theistic psychology is based
on only one author's work--Swedenborg-- a fact that both surprises and bothers some
people. In general this reaction is completely sane and rational. I have had it
too, by the way. But I have no choice in this because Swedenborg is the only
scientist who has written observationally about the spiritual world. I am
deliberately excluding all other "claims" many people make that they are able to
talk to spirits or psychically communicate with the dead, or that God speaks to
them, etc. I have never been impressed by any of these claims and have never
found anything scientific and rational in them, despite their own claims. Of
course, they are not scientists. Swedenborg is the first and only reputable
scientist to have made this claim.
When I first came across Swedenborg's reports in 1981 I was
delighted because I did not have to face someone's mere speculations and beliefs about the
spiritual world. Instead I was presented with the observational evidence and the
rational explanations that, as a scientist, I expected and demanded for any
scientific account of the human mind. I only
had to make sure that I was evaluating the evidence critically. When I became a scientist in my early
twenties I retained no interest in mystical experiences of the type psychologist
William James discusses in his book The Varieties of
Religious Experiences (see Reading List). I wanted rational evidence of God and
the afterlife, not mystical experiences of super-consciousness or "oneness" with
God.
Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688-1772) was the first and only respected scientist in history who wrote a
large collection of scientific works detailing his direct observational experiences in what he called
"the spiritual world." For the last 27 years of his life on earth he was able to be
conscious in both worlds--the world on this earth in which he was a Swedish
government engineer and member of parliament, and the spiritual world in which
he was able to move and travel and talk to the people who were there and observe
their life. Swedenborg careful daily notes and explanations amount to nearly 30 volumes
in English translation. These books are now in most academic and public
libraries as well as online on CDs and on the Internet. Obviously Swedenborg's
Writings have attracted a large audience over the past two centuries due their
unique content. You can access all of the Writings of Swedenborg at this Web
address:
www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
In 1981 while I was browsing the shelves
of Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii, I discovered the collection of Swedenborg books and began to
read them. I did not know anything about Swedenborg despite my familiarity
with the literature in psychology (I earned a Ph.D. degree from McGill
University in 1962). I quickly realized as I was reading, why Swedenborg is never
referred to in modern psychology. I was taught to have a very strong negative bias against dualism. When I taught History of Psychology courses I became
familiar with the textbooks in that field. Not one ever mentioned Swedenborg
even though others who were dualist were mentioned, like Plato, Descartes, Malherbes,
and Leibniz, among others. I realized that the reason is that Swedenborg was a different kind
of dualist, quite unique. To reflect the difference, I coined a new phrase for
his approach: "substantive dualism" -- the title for Volume 1.
This term reflects the idea that
Swedenborg's dualism involves the existence of two worlds, one natural or
material and the
other spiritual or substantive. While this is a familiar idea in the history of
theology and philosophy, it has never reached the halls of science until
Swedenborg. The word "substance" has two opposite usages, one traditional and
another modern. The traditional meaning has been long used in philosophy and may
be defined as the "essential nature" of something, or the "ultimate reality that
underlies all outward manifestations and change." The modern meaning is
something "physical material from which something is made or which has discrete
existence" or "matter of particular or definite chemical constitution."
The modern meaning is monist and materialist, while the traditional meaning is
dualist or spiritual. The "essential nature" of something refers to the
"ultimate reality that underlies" it.
In other words, the traditional meaning of substance refers
to the underlying or inner framework of something upon which the outer structure
is built. The "stance" in the word substance comes from Latin "to stand" so that
"sub" - "stance" refers to that which stands below or is underlying. For
instance, if you think of an iceberg, what you see above the surface of the
ocean is the outward structure, while the underlying portion is not visible yet
much larger and more dangerous to ship. Or, think of the sentences you create
when you speak or write. The words strung in a sentence make up the
outward portion while the grammar that puts the words in the right order is the
underlying portion.
From this you can see that every object has an outward
portion and an underlying portion, and these two portions are in different
worlds or degrees of existence. The outward portion of your shoes is made of
physical matter from the natural sun and stars of which the planet is made. But
the underlying portion of your shoes is made of spiritual substances from the
spiritual sun. This is the fundamental thesis of substantive dualism in theistic
science. It is the same with the individual. The outward portion of the
individual human being is a physical body made of matter from the natural sun,
while the underlying portion of the individual human being is the mind made of
substances from the spiritual sun.
Substantive dualism recognizes two different suns, one
natural, the other spiritual. Each creates its own world around itself. The
natural sun creates planets, while the spiritual sun creates human minds.
When human beings are born they are made of two portions each
being born in its own world but connected together. The outward portion is born
on earth and is the physical body. The underlying portion is born in the
spiritual world and is the mind. The physical body and the mind grow together
and act as one. When the physical body dies, the mind continues to live in the
spiritual world forever (called "eternity").
You can see from this that substantive dualism is the view
that there are two worlds, one natural and the other spiritual. The natural
world is in time and space and has mass, while the spiritual world is in
rational ether, thus not having space, time, or matter--it is limitless and
eternal. This view was held by most ancient writers though there was no proof of
it since no one was able to come back from the dead and tell their story. As a
result it was abandoned by modern scientists who focused only on the physical
world. But Swedenborg reopened the issue in modern science by being able to be
conscious in both worlds simultaneously, thus before he died, like everyone
else. No other scientist has ever made this kind of claim. If true, then
Swedenborg's observations constitute the first scientific proof that the
spiritual world actually exists and that substantive dualism is the correct
approach in science.
Swedenborg was 57 years old when he
suddenly acquired the ability to be conscious in both worlds simultaneously. At
that time he was a well known and respected scientist known throughout Western
Europe. His scientific publications always included explanations of dualism in
terms of the spiritual causes within every natural phenomenon. He regarded
every natural phenomenon as an effect of a prior spiritual phenomenon. His
dualism at that time was substantive, but he had no direct evidence of the
existence of substances from the spiritual world. As a result, his early
scientific books, up to age 57, were admired by many, but not included in the
rapid development of several sciences in his century--physics, chemistry,
physiology, anatomy. Swedenborg's books on these topics were not included in the
mainstream of 18th century science. Instead, he became known as a theologist and
religious revelator when he started publishing his later books on the spiritual
world.
Swedenborg's dualism prior to his dual
consciousness was not demonstrably substantive. He had no scientific knowledge
about the spiritual world, though he assumed that it must exist. How astonished
he was during those first few months when he suddenly started being aware of the
spiritual world! He was at first disoriented, but he quickly adapted to his new
lifestyle. He continued his official duties, travels, and publications while
this started happening to him, and he also kept careful daily notes of his
observations. The collection of his 30 volumes constitute a unique record
in the history of humankind and his books have influenced many key authors and
thinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries. And today his influence continues on
the Internet. Soon his influence will extend to all of science.
Scientists, scholars, and biographers who
have examined Swedenborg's unique record have had two main reactions: (1) he was
a great genius, but he was deluded; (2) he was sane and honest and was one of
the great minds of all of literary history.
I have had the second reaction and after
years of careful study, I came to the conclusion that the Writings of Swedenborg
present the greatest scientific discovery since the beginning of science. I then
started my research efforts in trying to incorporate into psychology the data
Swedenborg recorded in the Writings. He wrote in Neo-Latin which was the
language of scientists in the 17th century and his books have been translated
into many languages.
In order to incorporate Swedenborg's Writings into
materialistic and atheistic psychology, I had to overcome two
difficulties: dualism and God. Substantive dualism, or the world of spirits, was
unknown in psychology except in abnormal and clinical psychology where "spirits"
were reported by delusional patients. Some of Swedenborg's detractors called him
delusional because he said he talked to "spirits" in the spiritual world. The
second obstacle was the concept of God which has been automatically excluded
from "atheistic" science that started in the 20th century. The concept of God
formed an essential pivot role in Swedenborg's substantive dualism and could not
be left out from a serious attempt to incorporate Swedenborg's dualism into
modern psychology. God and dualism cannot be separated in science because the
spiritual world has no meaning without God. Unlike the natural world where God
is invisible to the physical senses, the spiritual world reveals God as an
essential partner in the person's life. God is visible in the spiritual world
because when we are cut off from our physical body, we are "spirits," which
means being conscious in the spiritual world. God appears visually as a
Divine-Human in the midst of the Spiritual Sun. Swedenborg was able to see this just
like the rest of the inhabitants of the spiritual world, all of whom had been
born on some planet in the physical universe.
One may think this kind of report to be
preposterous and outside the scope of science.
Ordinarily this would be the case. But
it should be considered that Swedenborg's record is an exceptional and unique case that
becomes evident when his reports are analyzed. It is
totally without precedent in the history of humankind where a well known
scientist and noted community member, declares in his published Writings that he
was given by God the special and unique ability to be conscious in both
worlds for the purpose of bringing to humankind the scientific proof of our
immortality in the afterlife .
It was Swedenborg's understanding that
he was not "picked" but prepared since childhood to become the kind of scientist
that would have the reputation and genius to pull this off, if I may put it that
way (see Chapter 13). Insurmountable heaps of opposition were surely forthcoming
from the other scientists when one of among them dares to make such an unheard
of claim. Yet Swedenborg was able to keep his job and to finish up his
scientific publications, and then to begin a new series of publications called
the Writings (1745-1771) in which he tells the world of his unique situation,
along with careful notes and explanations.
The proof that he succeeded is that more
than 200 years later a modern scientist like myself can unexpectedly run into
his 30 Volumes in the library of our university, translated into English, and I
can read it, understand it rationally, and see that it is valid. And this same
proof has been accepted by other scientists who likewise did what I did -- see
for example the Web site of physics professor Dr. Ian Thompson of England:
www.TheisticScience.org as well as
others mentioned in the Reading List of collateral literature.
Anyone can investigate whether this is so or not.
How then do you explain that I have found
the Writings of Swedenborg to be rational, scientific, and valid?
The choices are similar as with
Swedenborg: (1) I am not a scientist and am delusional; (2) I am experienced and
sane. These two choices apply to Dr. Thompson and all the others you can
investigate who have found the Writings of Swedenborg to be rational and valid.
To pick choice (1) is called the negative bias because it is only a general
reaction to the topic and its theistic and dualist concepts--you don't in fact
know me to be able to say that objectively. To pick choice (2)
is called the positive bias because it is only a general reaction to the topic
of God and the spiritual world, and perhaps to my reputation as a professor for
the past 40 years. Whichever choice you make is a bias, but they
have vastly different consequences.
If you opt for the negative bias against
Swedenborg you deny yourself the possibility of examining the evidence in full. You can
only examine the report if you read it with a view to understanding it critically
and rationally. One can read the Writings in the negative bias just to prove
that Swedenborg was mad and that the ideas in there are fantastic and
delusional. Of course this is not a fair or objective assessment. But with the
positive bias you are granting in advance that the
report may be true. In the negative bias you are not granting that the report
may be true. This is then the big difference.
It's correct to call the negative bias
approach as "biased." This is because the conclusion that Swedenborg's reports
cannot be true and must be delusional, is a conclusion not based on the evidence
presented. The evidence was not examined except perhaps in part and only with
the view of finding a way of rejecting it. The arguments for rejection of
Swedenborg's Writings have not been objective or rational. They merely deny that
a scientist can gain entrance into heaven and hell and see God. But we must
inquire whether this is a rational response. Why is it not possible that God
exists?
A traditional answer might be that
"science is about the physical world, while God, heaven, and hell are not
physical in time and space. Therefore to bring God into a scientific theory or
explanation is to try to bring in something irrelevant or outside the scope of
science. And this should not be allowed or it will weaken or destroy science."
Everyone educated knows this traditional
objection since it is taught in public schools everywhere. But this objection is
not valid if dualism is reality. If dualism is reality then there is a spiritual
world where God is visible and determines what happens in our mind. Swedenborg is a reputable scientist who has
confirmed it by observation. I am a reputable scientist who has rationally
confirmed Swedenborg's reports and explanations. Others like me exist and have
written about it. Clearly one cannot reasonable dismiss both Swedenborg
and all the scientists and scholars who have confirmed the rationality and
objectivity of the evidence.
The purpose of this book is to critically
examine the premises of theistic psychology and to evaluate whether it is
possible for psychology to be theistic and still remain a science.
National surveys over many years
consistently show that the vast majority of Americans assume that there is a
Divine Person to whom an individual can talk, and be heard, and that God
intervenes and controls the course of all events through infinite Love and
Wisdom. Atheistic psychology's position has been to dismiss these explanations
about God's influence on events and behavior and to prevent these ideas from
entering the science of psychology. However today it has become clear that this
exclusion of God from scientific explanations is a premise adopted by scientists
without actual proof, and that it is not a necessary rational premise. Hence it
is a negative bias without proof.
Therefore it makes sense to explore the
alternative premise, which is that the cause of every event and behavior is God
who is an intelligent Person who is carrying out a rational goal from loving
motives. But it is necessary to go beyond religious ideas and to establish the
rationality of God in science independently of religion, culture, and times.
Theistic science, and theistic psychology, are therefore pan-cultural and above
all religions or cultures.
There are two positions one can take about the
proposal of introducing God into science. According to one position--the
negative bias, scientists automatically exclude God from scientific
explanations. This may be called the negative bias in science since there is no
way of proving empirically that God does not exist. The other approach may be
called the positive bias in science since it accepts the possibility of
God's existence without being able to prove it first. But while the negative
bias continues unproven as a permanent position, the positive bias allows us to
examine the evidence. Once the evidence is examined, and seen as valid, the
positive bias is no longer a bias but a proof. The negative bias remains a bias.
1.1
Three Levels of Thinking About God
|
Read Chart from Bottom Up
|
|
LEVEL OF
RATIONALITY |
NAME |
MAIN FEATURES |
|
3
|
THEISTIC
PSYCHOLOGY
|
God is the cause of every
natural event and all human behavior, including the sequence of thoughts and
feelings we have. In the Writings of Swedenborg, God has revealed scientific
facts about the structure of the universe, about the anatomy of the human
mind, and the details of life after death. Therefore all explanations about
causes of events and of behavior must include God and the mechanisms by which
God intervenes and manages the details of all events from beginning to end.
Those who modify their character to become "heavenly" and rational continue
life to eternity in the heaven of their mind; others in in the "hell" of their
mind, which is delusional and irrational. Both heaven and hell are in the mind
and every human being is immortal.
|
|
2
|
MYSTICAL RELIGION
|
God is the Divine
infinite Creator who oversees every person's destiny from birth to life after death. God
gives Divine revelation in written
Scripture through the intermediary of a particular individual
called revelator or prophet. Those who are faithful to their religion are
rewarded with an afterlife in heaven, others are punished with an afterlife in hell.
Praying to God sometimes convinces God to give us what we want. Similarly with
rituals and sacrifices. Some rituals can bring us closer to God by allowing us
to experience His presence or to get a feeling of mystical union with Him. God
can get angry or disgusted with some people who are wicked or "sinful." Some
people called the clergy or priesthood have a special relation to God and they
sometimes can intercede with God to forgive people's sins or to avert a
calamity.
|
|
1
|
MATERIALISTIC
SCIENCE
|
God may have created the
universe (we have no way of knowing), but now it’s running on its own by means
of universal natural laws that are discoverable by science through physical
measurements and abstract theories about them. Today no explanation is accepted in
science that refers to God. Life after death, or heaven and hell, are not
scientific issues but religious, and they are left to people's personal belief
system that should not impact on their science. Anyone claiming to have seen
God or heaven is automatically to be considered unfit as a rational scientist.
Human behavior is not to be judged by religious ideas but by scientific
assessments. Good and evil are not scientific ideas and do not belong in
science. Ideas from the Bible should not be allowed in public school or
scientific literature. There are many religions each with their own God and
rules, which proves that religion is a cultural belief system, not a
description of how the universe actually is.
|
Explanations of the
Chart
1.1.1 Level 1:
Materialistic Science (Monism)
The bottom line in rational
thinking is the denial of God or atheism, but it includes other intellectual
forms and justifications such as materialism, which denies the existence of
anything that isn’t physical. For instance, it asserts that there is no
spiritual world; there is no creation; there is no higher power or higher
intelligence that is not part of the natural world. In addition, there are other
forms of thinking that deny God such as animism, which asserts that natural
things are spirits or gods, or that a rock is really alive, and so on. Or else,
the universe is alive as the "Great Spirit," which is again a denial of God as one
Divine Infinite Person.
Similarly, theosophy and
spiritism, substitute other ideas for God such as the "Spirit of the Times," or,
the "subtle realm" of the human mind, which itself is called "divine." Magic
denies God because it attributes powers to things other than God such as devils
and "forces" or "energies," hence for those who believe in magic or sorcery, God
is not the only source and cause of all power. To put any limits on God's power
is the same as denial of God because God, by definition, is omnipotent, which
means that no other power exists, as defined in the dictionary:
God. capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality:
The Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and
ruler of the universe.
The supernatural being conceived as the perfect and
omnipotent and omniscient originator and ruler of the universe; the object of
worship in monotheistic religions.
The denial of God's existence
automatically precipitates the person into subjective belief systems that can be
endlessly elaborated and complicated. This conclusion logically follows if one
assumes that there is God and God is the source of all power. Therefore, if God
exists, the
denial of God is similar to an engineer denying that the earth is round or that
different
forms of energy exist. Whatever theories and explanations this engineer will
make, will all be false and contrary to reality. Similarly, if there is God, that
is, One Infinite Omnipotent Omniscient Omnipresent Person, then it's contrary to
reality to attribute power or intelligence to other sources such as other gods,
other forces, other energies. In contrast to materialistic atheistic science, theistic
psychology
(level 3) starts
with the assumption that God exists as the Infinite Person who makes scientific revelations
about Himself, about creation, about our life after death, and about the
rational rules God uses in managing every detail of the universe.
If this assumption of theistic psychology
is correct, then denial of God would be the bottom of the scale of rational
thinking, which is thinking with truths about reality. But those who reject the
assumptions of theistic psychology will naturally reject the idea that atheism is
irrational and will see it as irrational and unscientific to assume God's
existence.
Materialistic science assumes
that all phenomena are to be discovered by physical measurements and that we
must not use God as an explanatory concept in science because such a concept is
not physical and cannot be measured. Instead we must assume that the natural
world and physical forces have their own laws that must be discovered
independently of any appeal to God or a spiritual world that cannot be detected
or measured by physical instruments. Psychology today has adopted this
"physicalist" and "atheistic" point of view so that the mental world of thoughts
and feelings are considered "epiphenomena," that is, not real. The real part, it
asserts, is the brain activity, which consists of electrical and chemical events
firing in certain sequences.
According to this materialistic outlook
all human behavior, including thinking and feeling, is nothing but these
electrical and chemical events organized in a special way to give rise to
self-conscious awareness--an "emergent phenomenon" that originates from the
physical activity of the brain. In other words, according to materialistic
science, we are biological robots with limited time to exist, and at the death
of the brain, the "epiphenomenon" that is based on it called consciousness or
the mind, vanishes and disappears from existence. We are no longer anything
except a memory in the minds of those who knew us--and this is of course their
memory, not the actual continuation of our existence.
It is an important fact to consider that
the majority of scientists in this country belong to a religion and attend some
church.
This segregation of thinking areas in the mind between one's
religious beliefs and one's scientific premises, is often associated with
the politics of "separation of Church and State." Materialistic scientists who have
declared their belief in God (like Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Carl Rogers, and many others),
nevertheless do not include God in their scientific research or theory building.
There are well known psychologists
like Carl Rogers and Jung, who described themselves as having a religion but not one of them brought God into
their scientific theories. The only major exception is Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688-1772) who wrote a book called Rational Psychology in 1742, in which
he makes God and God's revelations, part of his overall theory of human
behavior. A few years later Swedenborg published his 12-volume work titled
Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets), in which he gives many new facts about
the mind, its structure, its development, and its immortality in heaven or hell.
Today in psychology no one would be able
to publish a single article involving God in any of the psychology journals used
by members of the American Psychological Association. It would be practically
impossible for a professor today to use the Bible as a source of scientific
theory in a required psychology course for majors at a public institution of
learning. This resistance or prohibition in science to use Divine scientific
revelations as a source of knowledge about reality, is irrational if indeed God
exists and makes scientific revelations. In contrast,
theistic psychology assumes that God is the source of all reality and the
real cause of all events in the world today, in the past, and in the future.
Since God's purpose for creating and running the universe is a Human purpose,
and since God uses rational methods of managing the universe, it makes sense to
discover what these Divine rational laws are and to make use of them in
practical daily applications to further our human potential.
Theistic psychology will enhance natural science since all natural events have a spiritual cause. By knowing the spiritual cause of natural events we can
control our environment better, both physical and mental. This is especially
important if there is an afterlife and the quality of life there depends on the
mind we form while in this life. This book will summarize many of the facts and
proofs given by Swedenborg that God exists and that we are born immortal.
Atheism is the tendency to develop multiple arguments to
prove that God does not exist. Typically an atheist believes these arguments to
be rational, but they are not. It might be a useful exercise for you to pinpoint
hte rational flaws in the arguments of atheists. I typed "if there is a God" in
the google.com search engine and got thousands of slites by people who put a lot
of energy developing arguments against the existence or perfection or goodness
of God. Here is a typical example, if you want to check it out:
www.vexen.co.uk/religion/rm.html
1.1.2
Level 2: Mystical Religion
All
religions today are "mystical" in the sense that they do not give a rational and
scientific explanation of God and the universe. Instead they give a creed that
must be accepted as a belief system or faith which specifies who God is and what
He demands from the members of that religion. Those faithful who live according to
their doctrine are rewarded by God to have eternal happiness in life after death.
But those who do not live according to their doctrine, and all those who live
according to a false faith, are punished and relegated to eternal misery in
their life after death. Some faiths include the idea that this punishment is not
eternal since people can change from bad to good following their phase of
punishment in the afterlife. Some religions include the idea that this
punishment takes place by being reincarnated in the natural world until the individual
attains freedom from illusion and becomes divine.
Level 2 thinking is above level 1 thinking
in rationality, if the assumption that there is God is true. Level 2 thinking is
a better representation of reality, more valid, more powerful, more useful, and
more practical than atheistic science. For instance, materialistic science thinking (level 1) cannot help us
at all in terms of preparing ourselves for the afterlife. This is a huge
disadvantage since it's extremely important and urgent that we prepare ourselves
adequately for the afterlife. This is totally obvious if you consider it from
theistic psychology which describes the life after death as either eternal
happiness and sanity or eternal misery and delusion. Which it is depends on
our preparation. Hence religion is a more rational and effective method of
psychological preparation than atheistic psychology. Clearly, from a practical
point of view, it is important that we get this straight, that we remember
what's at stake if we are right or wrong about God.
But mystical religion is not yet a fully a
rational and scientific perspective on God. One proof of this is that that there
are various religions and they not only contradict each other but sometimes want to
annihilate each other. Even when they are peaceful to one another, some of them
still believe that all others are false and lead their believers to eternal
unhappiness in the afterlife. Obviously, if the religions were fully rational,
they could not disagree with each other in such a drastic way.
One exception to this pattern of religion
is the New Church which has been based on the Writings of Swedenborg (see
Reading List). They
acknowledge the idea from the Writings of Swedenborg that God accepts all
religions and that eternal happiness (or "heaven") is not denied to anyone who
is capable of living a heavenly life, which means capable of having altruistic feelings in the afterlife as the basis of one's inner character. This inner
character is what we form for ourselves by the way we live on earth. The
"spiritual body" we have in the afterlife is nothing else than the character we
have formed with our life in the natural world. In the spiritual world, which is
a mental or rational world, feelings and thoughts create what is around us, as
will be explained (see Section xx).
Theistic psychology teaches people the skills they need to
rebuild their character into heavenly traits with which they can have a life in
heaven. Clearly this is of incalculable benefit to every person.
Theistic psychology assumes that there is an absolute
universal standard for all human character regardless of planet, religion,
culture, or personality. This is a necessary assumption since it defines good vs.
evil and truth vs. falsity in terms of scientific
revelations from God. Rationally, there can be only one God since God is
infinite and two infinites are impossible. Since God is absolute truth and the sole source of all truth, there
is an absolute standard for the human race regardless of origin or time. This
absolute truth or reality is communicated to humans in two ways--externally by
means of scientific revelations given by God to a particular prophet or
revelator, and second, by inner voice of one's conscience by which God
influences and guides every person, whether one denies God or not.
A student reacting to some of the ideas in this book wrote:
"One statement that I disagreed with was “ Taylor says if a
person or church does not understand the true god properly than all doctrine,
dogma and ritual are possibly invalid.” I disagree with Taylor because I don’t
understand the true God and I don’t think anyone ever could really understand
him truly. Taylor believes “that God appears as “mysterious” to people and
therefore god cannot truly be apart of the mind if He is not understood.” I
think God is always present whether we understand him or not and mysterious is a
part of our misunderstanding of God that makes him great. One of the statements
that I agree with is when Elisabeth disagrees “I think there will always be
mystery with God, because we have a finite mind while God has an infinite mind.”
I agree with this totally I think God is beyond our comprehension."
A common idea is voiced here, namely that since God is infinite,
He is incomprehensible. Therefore God and mystery are inseparable. However, Swedenborg
points out two aspects of God, the one that we relate to and the one that we do
not. We do not relate in any way to God's infinity and immensity. For instance
God's essence is infinite Divine Love and Truth. We cannot relate to that for it
is incomprehensible. But God has created human beings with rational minds that
can relate to God's Proceeding called the Divine-Human. We can have conscious
communication and interaction with the Divine-Human through the love and truth
that issue from Him and enter our mind. Love and truth in our mind activate our
mind and form its content, meaning, and consciousness.
We can be adjoined to God through the love and truth in our
mind from Him. We can reject and distort the love and truth that enter the
mind. In that case we cut off conscious communication with God and higher ways
of thinking. Note carefully that God is equally in every individual regardless
of the individual's religion or belief system. But there is a significant
difference between the mental states in which we reject God and the mental
states in which we honor God. When we acknowledge God's management involvement
with every event in our mind and life, we are elevated in the level of our conscious
operations. God reveals meanings and understandings to us internally when we
approach daily tasks with constant acknowledgement of His active presence and
co-participation.
This higher meaning and rational understanding of Him, and how
He manages us and the universe, is not available to our mind in states of denial
of God or states of forgetting of God in the doing of daily tasks.
Progress in our spiritual development is tremendously
enhanced when we make a serious effort to consider God's presence in all our
actions all day long every day. By studying theistic psychology we can develop
our rational understanding and explanations of how God co-participates in every
thought, feeling, action, or seemingly chance event. This requires that we
understand God's goals and management techniques. God has revealed them in the
Writings of Swedenborg. If we maintain the positive bias, we will be able to
investigate Swedenborg's arguments and proofs. If we stay with the negative
bias, we cannot rationally examine his evidence--we can only reject it in
advance.
1.1.3
Level 3:
Theistic Psychology
According to the assumptions
of theistic psychology, scientific revelations have been given by God in the
Writings of Swedenborg (1688-1772) and that these revelations make up the basic
assumptions and premises for theistic science. Without these scientific
revelations it would be impossible to have access to these details about God's
management methods, since they cannot be discovered in any other way. Whatever
other authors have written in the past, necessarily represents their guesses or
visions, which remain limited. By definition it is impossible for any of them to
see beyond the human level. But scientific revelations are Divine and come from
the level of the Divine Omniscience. They make accessible to science a database
of knowledge about God and the afterlife which can never be discovered or
invented by humans living in the natural world.
These scientific revelations are
not like prior revelations which were mystical. The revelations in the Writings
of Swedenborg are the only Divine revelation that
has been given as a rational scientific system.
The details were not dictated to
Swedenborg while he was in a trance or asleep. Instead, Swedenborg was given the
unique capacity to be conscious simultaneously in the natural and the spiritual
worlds. For 27 years on a daily basis he accessed the spiritual world mentally
and kept daily notes that comprise his data, his observations, his experiences,
his experiments, and his explanations. He therefore was able to compile a unique
record of how the spiritual and natural worlds interact and depend on each
other.
He was able to interview those who had
lived on earth thousands of years ago, and are now living in heaven or hell. He
was also able to interview people he knew in his native Sweden who had died but
recently. He was a reputed scientist who had suddenly come into possession of a
new observation platform of the human mind. He could see and talk to the people
who were undergoing the process of "resuscitation," which is the switching over
from the physical body to the spiritual body at "death." This process takes
approximately 30 hours (see section further in this chapter). He conducted controlled observations and
experiments and reported what he saw and heard in the spiritual world. He had
rational conversations and exchanges with those who inhabit the afterlife. He
described their language, their thinking, their lifestyle. His rational and
scientific explanations of these events are therefore to be read as science.
This book examines whether
God and Divine revelations, can have a scientific role in
explanations of human behavior, without destroying psychology as a science. We
will consider the entire spectrum of human behavior, from birth to the life
after death in immortality. We will also consider how the spiritual world and the natural world
are interlocked by rational laws of correspondence so that the laws of feeling,
thinking and acting cannot be explained without recourse to what is happening in
the spiritual world simultaneously. This is because the physical brain is in the natural
world while the mind is in the spiritual world and the two are locked into
functional correspondence--what one of them does influences what the other does
according to specified laws of correspondences.
These laws of correspondence
will be used in theistic psychology to do research about the inner mind that is
within the spiritual body. The inner mind of every individual is unconsciously
in constant contact with the minds of individuals who are in the afterlife. In
this way there is a continuous network of interaction between all individuals of
the human race, past and present. I refer to this universal
interaction network as the "vertical community" (see Section xx). The methods and procedures of
this interaction process is described in the Writings of Swedenborg. As a
result, a tremendously useful new database of scientific knowledge is now
available to the human race.
1.2
Mystical vs. Rational Approaches to Theistic Psychology
It's important to understand clearly
the difference between mystical and rational spirituality since they have
significantly different consequences. The basis for distinguishing mystical vs.
rational spirituality is to examine how they each conceptualize our relationship
to God.
The mystical approach is based on sensuous consciousness of the Divine. Often this is referred to by
adherents as "sensing oneness with God" and other references to "the experience
of God." This sensing and experiencing is an operation of the corporeal mind,
which is very close to the body and very far from rationality or rational
operations in the mind. In contrast to this, rational spirituality is based on a
rational consciousness of God as Person. This operation is higher in the
human mind than a corporeal experience. Rational consciousness of God involves
revelation of Divine truth in words and sentences, analyzing and understanding
those sentences, problem solving with those sentences and creating a doctrine
for life, which means rational rules and principles by which we conduct our daily affairs
and relationships.
It can be said that sensuous consciousness
of God (mystical spirituality) involves the right brain operation while rational
consciousness of God (rational spirituality) involves the left brain operation.
Of course the operation of the brain is merely a result of the operation of the
mind. Therefore it is the rational operation of the mind that is essential for
understanding God through God's revelation of truth in Sazcred Scripture--according to
the approach of rational spirituality. But in mystical spirituality
understanding of God is seen as limited while experiencing God is seen as more
immediate. However, according to rational spirituality the attempt to
"experience" or "sense" God directly is a delusion of corporeal spirituality. It
stems from self-intelligence and makes self-intelligence or the self, equal to
the Divine. This is known as "nonduality" because it assumes that God and human
beings can form a one as if their consciousness were of the same substance. But
rational spirituality creates an absolute "duality" between God and human beings
since God is infinite and there cannot be a "oneness" between the infinite and
the finite. Nothing from the infinite (i.e., the Divine) can be part of the
finite (i.e., human beings). I discuss the issue of nonduality at length in
Volume 1 of A man of the Field available on the Web:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume1-nonduality.html
According to rational spirituality we can
be "conjoined" with God, or "adjoined to Him, in a reciprocal duality where the parts always and
forever remain distinct from each other, and there is never a "melding" or other
"oneness" possible. Conjunction with God brings salvation and eternal life in
heaven, which is the highest state of life for human beings. But the
delusion of "oneness" with God brings falsities in one's life instead of truth,
and the eventual result is the corruption of the mind so that the self sinks
into the lowest state of human life called hell. Obviously it's crucial
to be able to distinguish between these two forms of spirituality, for one leads
to happiness and rationality, while the other leads to corruption and delusion.
Of course, those who follow the mystical approach reject the premises of
rational spirituality as ludicrous and they see no merit in it. Therefore people must decide carefully for themselves by examining the rationale of
these two approaches.
1.2.1 Who was Swedenborg?
As a background to who was Swedenborg, I quote from
an article that gives a brief but authoritative biography of Swedenborg by
Dr. Jane K.
Williams-Hogan. The Web address of the article is
www.glencairnmuseum.org/jkwh.html (see Readings below). Here are some
relevant quotes:
In his study he
gradually realized that the Word alone could form the experiential ground of
a new revelation from God to man. Because this ground is universally
available to all people and unlike a private vision, it can be challenged or
confirmed by other men's rational and experiential response to it.
(...)
As he grew to
understand it, that commission required both intellectual and spiritual
preparation. The need for such preparation, according to Swedenborg's own
testimony, lay in the nature of the revelation he was to receive. As he
stated in Arcana Coelestia, internal revelation, or revelation from
perception, requires preparation of the mind and soul, in order to create a
foundation for it. External revelations through dreams, visions or hearing a
voice, on the other hand, such as those received by the Jewish prophets, do
not require a similar foundation. Revelations of this kind are revelations
without perception or understanding.
(...)
Because Swedenborg was
an instrument of an internal revelation, his spiritual mission took place in
both the spiritual and natural worlds. He believed that his commission to
the natural world entailed only that he should faithfully write, publish,
and disseminate the heavenly truths that were revealed to him by the
Divine-Human.
This is all that he did during the twenty-three years of his public mission.
He never put any effort into direct proselytizing or into organizing a new
church, nor did he personally attempt to convert anyone to his views.
Throughout this time he underwrote all of the expense necessary to fulfill
this mission, and whatever income he received from the sale of these books
he directed his printer to reinvest in their publication. He sold his books
below cost and he also sent many copies of his works to libraries, prelates,
and various other notable individuals. During this time from 1749 to 1771 he
published eighteen separate theological works.
(...)
Swedenborg's religious
teachings provide a new vision of God, new insight into the nature of the
relationship between the spiritual and natural worlds, and a universal and
rational ethic to guide men to a useful life. It is a radical and rational
Christian religion: radical because it breaks with both Catholic and
Protestant traditional interpretations of the Trinity, original sin, the
atonement, and imputation and justification; and rational because the focus
of its theology is the penetration and clarification of the mysteries of
faith, through which a new understanding of salvation emerges which grants
man cooperative efficacy in spiritual things.
(...)
According to
Swedenborg, the purpose of spiritual and natural creation was to form a
heaven from the human race. However, this required free response on the part
of man, and provision for his salvation. The spiritual world, of which
heaven is a part, is the world of causes, while the natural world is that of
effects. Therefore, for a new revelation to be truly new and universal, it
must reveal the world of causes which was for so long hidden from man, and
it must essentially address the question of order at that level; for so far
as the world of causes is ordered, so will be the world of effects
Swedenborg is discussed in throughout the book and you
will gain additional insight on who he was as you proceed.
.
1.3
Non-Substantive or Mystical Dualism vs. Rational
Substantive Dualism
Here is a contrastive Table that
will help in keeping track of the discussion:
| Two Contrastive Views on
the Writings of Swedenborg |
NON-SUBSTANTIVE DUALISM
(mystical and sensuous)
|
SUBSTANTIVE DUALISM
(rational and scientific) |
| Swedenborg is called a "visionary" and what he
reports are called "visions." |
Swedenborg is called a "revelator" and what he
reports are "scientific revelations."
|
Swedenborg's communication with spirits is viewed as
"spiritism" or "shamanism" or "mystical oneness with God."
|
Swedenborg enjoyed "dual citizenship" or the ability to be
conscious simultaneously in both the natural world and the "spiritual
world." |
Swedenborg was able to "probe the depth" of the
sub-conscious mind and achieve supra-consciousness.
|
Swedenborg described what he could see and hear in the
spiritual world and used a rational or scientific style and content in his
reports. |
| Swedenborg was a genius on the edge of sanity or insanity. |
Swedenborg had the orientation of a rational and empirical
scientist doing field work in the spiritual world.
|
Swedenborg was a pioneer explorer, continuing the work of
other visionaries and mystics in the preceding centuries and millennia.
|
Swedenborg was a unique case in all of history and had a
specific Divinely commissioned task, that of giving a scientific
description of the spiritual world by being given access to interviews,
experiments, and travel in the spiritual world for many years.
|
Swedenborg's visionary experiences are edifying and
stimulating intellectually but they should not be taken literally.
|
Swedenborg proved the validity of his mission and
experience by showing that the Bible was written in an ancient code called
"correspondences" which matched perfectly the visual observations he made
of the events and scenes in the spiritual world.
|
Swedenborg's writings are hard to understand, written in a
pedantic style, heavy, dry, dull.
|
Swedenborg's Writings are easy to understand, crystal
clear, completely rational, integrated and fully consistent.
|
The mind-body issue is one of the
oldest in psychology. It may still be seen today as a key issue that impacts
on all of psychology. Today the most advanced views on the mind-body issue
in psychology take two main forms which can be called epiphenomenalism and
mystical dualism. These two stand in contrast with the substantive dualism
of theistic psychology. A review of current scientific views on
consciousness and the mind can be consulted at these Web locations:
www.newdualism.org
jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/online.html
www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/crick-koch-cc-97.html
Epiphenomenalism is the view
that the mind -- feelings, thoughts, sensations--is not a functioning organ
but a subjective by-product of the operations of the brain. Sometimes the
word "emergent" phenomena is used to indicate that the operations of the
brain can be abstracted somehow into sensations or feelings. In other words
our feelings and sensations are not as real as the brain. This view sees the
operations of the brain as objective, whereas the feelings and thoughts it
gives rise to, are subjective, which means that they do not have an
independent objective existence. This approach is not rational as it
relegates the most important feature of humans to nonexistence. With this
view, humans are just a more advanced form of animals. When the brain dies,
so does the mind.
Dualism
is the view that the mind is a separate and independent type of phenomenon
than the physical brain. The mind has an objective existence just like the
brain. It is common to suppose that the mind survives the death of the
physical brain, though no one in modern psychology has given an adequate or
comprehensive account of what happens when the brain dies. The ancient
psychologists like Aristotle and Plato knew that the mind must be an
immortal organ because it is capable of wisdom, and this is not material but
spiritual and eternal. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Hindus all had
detailed accounts of what happens to the mind (or "soul") when the physical
body dies. But in modern science all this was rejected.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is named
in the history of psychology textbooks as the first modern psychology
thinker who held the approach of "dualism" since he claimed that the body is
a biological robot and only the mind or soul has sensations and feelings.
However, since he was unable to give a rational account of what the "soul"
is or how it survives without the body, his dualism has been relegated to
history. Swedenborg (1688-1772) was the first modern psychologist who was
able to give a completely rational and scientific account of how the mind
survives at the death of the body. Before discussing Swedenborg's
"substantive dualism" there is also a form of dualism that is different from
Descartes so I'd like to refer to it as mystical dualism.
Mystical dualism is the
approach represented by several well known authors who have had a special
interest in Swedenborg. A sample of this group is represented by the articles and comments on Swedenborg
that appear in
a collection titled Testimony to the Invisible (see
Reading List below).
Both Western and Eastern philosophy and religion share this mystical view on the mind
and God. It is the idea that humans have the capacity to experience the
divine in themselves, which is the same as the objective Divine God. In
other words human beings are of one substance with the Divine. Under the right
conditions of meditation it is possible to "feel one with the Divine." The
experience of "ecstasy" has been described by many authors for centuries and popular
intellectual movements have been based on this kind of approach to God. It has been
called mystical because the experience is difficult or impossible to
describe afterwards except in words that do not do it justice. So when
others read these descriptions they cannot really know what the experience
was like, and certainly they cannot experience it themselves by reading the
descriptions. William James also reviews this approach in his well known
book Varieties of religious Experiences (see Reading
List).
In Testimony to the Invisible Wilson Van Dusen is
the only author who describes himself as a mystic who has had this
experience and is trying to develop techniques of meditation that others can
use to achieve this experience. The other authors in that book are not
themselves mystics but describe Swedenborg as a mystic. In other words they
reject the view of "substantive dualism" as described below. They claim that
Swedenborg was not a scientist but a visionary mystic who tried to describe
his experiences in terms of an allegory of the spiritual world and the
people he visited there, not unlike the highly regarded poetic fiction of William Blake
(1757-1827), who had read Swedenborg and wrote imaginative poetry to
describe the Heaven and Hell Swedenborg describes. All mystical dualists,
and the transcendentalists (Ralph Waldo Emerson,
1803-1882), have rejected the idea that Swedenborg' actually traveled to the
spiritual world and did observations and experiments there.
Substantive dualism is unique
to Swedenborg because he is the only one who had access to the spiritual
world for observation and experimentation. Theistic psychology is based on
this type of approach. There are two worlds, natural and spiritual, and they
are connected by the laws of correspondence. Whatever happens in the natural
world is an effect whose cause is in the spiritual world. This is called
"substantive" dualism because it specified two worlds each with its
objective reality. The natural world is made of matter, energy, space, and
time. All things in the natural world are temporal. The spiritual world also
has its Sun but it is made not of matter, but of spiritual substances that
are
outside time and space. Spiritual objects are immortal or eternal. The mind
is a spiritual organ that is born simultaneously with the physical body. The
mind is also called the spiritual body. The shape and form of the mind is
the same as the body. In other words, the mind is not just within the brain
but within every cell of the body, so that the mind as a whole, has the
shape of the body.
The mind or spiritual body is also
called the "spirit" and "soul." Because the mind has the shape of the body
it has hands, legs, torso, genitals, a brain, etc. Everything the physical
body can do and sense, the mind-body or "spirit" can also sense, but far
more keenly and intensely. As the physical body grows, so does the spiritual
body or mind. The experiences, memories, feelings, thoughts, are all situated in the
mind, not the physical brain. Feelings, thoughts, and sensations operate within the
mind, each in a different sub-organ of the mind. Feelings in the affective
organ, thoughts in the cognitive organ, sensations in the sensorimotor
organ. Further, these organs operate together at three different
non-overlapping levels called natural, spiritual, and celestial. The natural
mind contains the memories and experiences we obtain with the physical body,
but the spiritual and celestial mind contain the "influx" or inflow of
information from the spiritual world. So the content of the three mental
organs are different but they are related by the laws of correspondence.
Upon the death of the physical body, we appear to ourselves to awaken in the
spiritual body in the spiritual world, where we continue life forever.
Substantive dualism is based
entirely on Swedenborg's "dual citizenship," that is, his unique ability to
be conscious in the spiritual world while he was still connected to the
physical body. This ability to be conscious in the spiritual world is
fundamentally different from the experience described by mystical dualism.
Swedenborg was not in a trance
or meditating or in the throes of some mystical unition with God. He was
fully conscious as a scientist, just like doing field trip research in some foreign
land. He saw cities, lands, lakes, gardens, animals, people whom he called
spirits, angels, and devils, depending on their state of life and
personality. The mystics and visionaries have experiences so different from
Swedenborg's travelogue approach that they reject the idea that Swedenborg
actually went through those places in the spiritual world. Instead, they
believe that Swedenborg chose to write in that way about his mystical
experiences. But this idea completely destroys Swedenborg's objective
credibility, which gives the mystics and critics freedom to re-interpret
what Swedenborg is saying to agree with their picture of the mind. Theistic
psychology would not be possible under such circumstances. We would merely
fall back on a mixture of obscure descriptions of various experiences by
various people.
The great news about substantive
dualism is that the geography of the spiritual world is identical to the
anatomy of the mind. With this astonishing discovery Swedenborg was able
to describe the anatomy of the mind by means of the objective observation of
the geographic features of the spiritual world.
For instance, he found that
the spiritual world has three regions -- heaven, the world of spirits, and
hell. These three regions are therefore in the mind. Every individual has a
heaven and a hell in the mind. Swedenborg observed how some people arriving
into the spiritual world at death, raise themselves into their heaven while
others immerse themselves into their hell. This activity depends on the
content of their mind, their personality and character.
Another great news is that while we
are still tied to the physical body on earth we appear alone in our mind to
ourselves, but not to the others who are already fully conscious in the
spiritual world. They can see our mind and its general content. They cannot
see the physical body since they lost direct contact with the natural
world upon the death of their physical body. But they can see our spiritual
body which actually houses our mind and its content. And we can see theirs
as soon as we enter the spiritual world at the death of our physical body. Until then our conscious awareness is restricted to the natural
mind and its attachment to sensory input from the physical body.
Another great news of substantive
dualism is that our life of eternity in the spiritual body can be and must
be prepared for. Our lot or level of life in eternity is completely
determined by the content of the personality and character we have developed
while living on earth. Hence any individual can make the conscious choices
now that will later lead to eternal happiness and super-natural abilities.
Although we can no longer have
interaction with earth we have something far greater and neater. In the
state of mind called "heaven," our mind has the power to create the quality
of our environment -- unimaginable treasures of architecture, art, apparel,
food, knowledge, wisdom, truth, love, travel, entertainment, work
opportunities, etc. Of course these things are entirely different from earth
where these things are external to our mind while in "heaven" they are
internal. For instance, food is not required for survival yet it appears on
the table at social occasions, and their taste and quality is unimaginably
superior and novel, as witnessed many times by Swedenborg. Similarly with
your clothes which appear as a surprise in closets or directly on your
spiritual body. Similarly with housing, which Swedenborg was unable to
describe due to their un-earthly "ineffable" magnificence and architecture.
You can see from these types of
observational reports by Swedenborg that most scientists of his day
dismissed them as fancy. How was this received by the many famous authors
and philosophers who called Swedenborg one of the greatest geniuses in
history, like Emerson and the contributors to Testimony? They viewed it as
Swedenborg's literary device (or trick) with which he tried to present his
philosophical, poetic, and theological insights.
But theistic psychology makes sense
as a science only if Swedenborg's reports are made of actual, real,
empirical observations and experiments.
When I first started reading the
Writings of Swedenborg in 1981 it never occurred to me to take his reports
as an allegory or poetic artifact. I had been a professional scientist and
psychology professor for twenty years before that and all my readings had to
do with science and psychology. Reading Swedenborg was a unique experience
since no one else has made such claims and justified them with evidence and
rational analysis. Years later I began to discover that his Writings were
actually famous in literature and that a new religion had been founded on
them. To my amazement none of these sympathetic readers saw Swedenborg's
reports as scientific revelations.
It appears then that I am a
forerunner of the future of science in that I clearly see and understand
that the Writings of Swedenborg are scientific revelations. This book on theistic psychology
is therefore the first time in history that
the reports from the Writings of Swedenborg are used in a seminar in
psychology as science. Note however that other scientists who disagree with
my approach would say that I am extending and enlarging the meaning of
science in an illegitimate way that is neither rational nor productive, just
personal and subjective. Let us keep this criticism in mind as we go through
the evidence from the Swedenborg reports. I intend to show that they are rational,
factual, and verifiable in some modified sense. Also, that these scientific
revelations collected and integrated into a theistic psychology imparts
knowledge of a new source of mental power by which we can engineer our
eternal future and happiness.
The potential benefits of theistic psychology are quite
significant. As you study theistic psychology you will have a choice between
two common reactions. One is to decide that the evidence I present is
insufficient in your opinion to prove the case that theistic psychology is a
science. The other is that the evidence is sufficient to merit further
study, and especially, reading the Writings. People making either choice
will benefit from the study of theistic psychology, as long as they allowed
themselves freedom from the negative bias while examining the evidence.
I recommend that you keep track of the progression of
your thoughts as you read theistic psychology. Write them down in a notebook
so that you can examine the course of your involvement and reactions. The
topics of theistic psychology are inherently interesting to most people
because they deal with God and the afterlife in a factual manner rather than
hypothetical or subjective. For 27 years Swedenborg daily travels through
the lands of the afterlife called heaven and hell and takes careful notes,
then he adds his rational genius to give us a scientific explanation of what
he hears and sees, to whom he talks and what they said, including God,
spirits, devils, and angels. This sounds psychotic to the negative bias
psychology of materialism. This is an inescapable judgment in the negative bias--What
else but crazy is a man who talks to God, devils, and angels, and especially
crazy if he is a scientist. And yet Swedenborg was a famous scientist, well
respected and the opposite of crazy.
There is a legitimate reaction to hearing about
the contents of Swedenborg's Writings. And this is to take into account that
I am not crazy, that the other scholars and scientists referred to in the
Readings are not crazy, and that the hundreds of authors in the literature
who give homage to Swedenborg, are not crazy. The craziness impression comes
only when one refuses to budge from the negative bias materialism of
atheistic psychology. It would be reasonable to say that in view of what
I am saying and what the others have said about Swedenborg, one has the rare
opportunity here to examine evidence of the afterlife in a systematic way,
as presented by a practicing modern scientist like myself. All you need to
do to make this examination real and objective, is to be willing to grant that
the Swedenborg reports may be reliable and scientific observations
rather than delusions. This is called adopting the positive bias in science.
The negative bias in science would be to decide in advance that the
Swedenborg reports cannot be scientific (hence he is
delusional, and I am a fool for believing them).
1.4 Partial List of
Scientific Revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg
The following list encompasses many of the topics of theistic psychology.
You can read them as a summary of what's to come in the rest of this book.
(1) cosmology or the origin of the universe
through the "two suns" and their intervening atmospheres, and the methods of
its current maintenance by the Laws of Divine Providence and Permissions. Also: the character of evolution of civilizations on planets, such as
the fact that our planet is the only one to have a mechanized or
industrialized society.
(2) medical science including the
characteristic functions and origins of some viruses not yet identified in his
lifetime.
(3) the nature of psycho-somatic
operations, such as the observation that "anxieties about the future affect
the stomach more than the rest of the viscera"
(4) the anatomy of brain structures too
small to identify with the microscope
(5) the lack of sensation and thought in
the fetus
(6) anthropology and archeology, including many
unknown facts about ancient peoples, sacred scriptures, culture, religion,
lifespan, death rituals, symbols, hieroglyphics, science of correspondences,
the nature of unconscious motivation in human affairs, and still others
(7) psychology and neurophysiology, especially the detailed working of the
mind--body interaction, including the unobservable elements and components of
brain cells, their respiration, and their initiation of activity through the
will and the understanding. Also, the relation between the cerebellum and the
affective domain, on the one hand, and on the other, the relation between the
cerebral cortex and the cognitive domain. Also the identification of the right
brain as dealing with love and affections, and the left brain as dealing with
digital information or "cognitions." Also included, are many
psychological revelations about relationships, marriage, and life's
developmental phases, including language, thought, memory, and reasoning.
(8) physics and chemistry, such as the
impossibility of a vacuum or the description of the inner structure of objects
in terms of three degrees of discontinuity analogous to the universal law that
applies without exception to every single phenomenon, object, process, or
functional quality:
(9) the shape of the spiritual world or
mind is not spherical but humanoid, as visually witnessed by Swedenborg when
he was taken to an "outside position" to view it, as if from a great
distance.
(10) the universe contains two suns, with the
Sun of the spiritual world forming and generating all the suns or stars in the natural world
on a continuous basis so that the physical universe constantly expands; further, after generating
the physical suns, the spiritual Sun remains "within" them
on the basis of simultaneous degree, and from that underlying causative
position, acts on them from "within," and brings about lawful development and
evolution.
(11) events in the natural universe are totally
constricted within limits imposed by events in the spiritual world, the latter
being "within" the former as cause is "within" effect in simultaneous degrees
of existence;
(12) randomness (or chance) and evolutionary
patterns such as selection and adaptation, are in reality non-random but
totally determined by Divine-Human purposes involving love, good, value,
wisdom, morality, truth, justice, usefulness. From these come also their
opposites when they are received in the human mind and deliberately corrupted
by free choice. For
instance, the variety and evolution of animal forms parallel and are
constrained by the variety and hierarchical structures of human affections,
emotions, and sentiments. Every species and genus, every homological
structure, every biochemical process is constrained by, and parallels exactly,
the taxonomy of the human mind-- its affections, thoughts, and sensations
built up into subjective agencies called "selves," living within cultures through personality and society. Nature
is a theater of the spiritual: Swedenborg gives this principle a scientific
basis.
(13) the evolution or developmental
phases of Divine revelations over history, or the history of religious
"churches" from the earliest generations on this earth.
(14) the spiritual meaning of the Bible
and the method of correspondences by which this meaning can be extracted,
formed into Doctrine that then serves as the basis of one's regeneration (or
preparation for heavenly life).
(15) the nature of one's life in heaven
or eternity, and in hell, revealed in great detail through his journeys and
conversations in the spiritual world.
(16) the methods of regeneration we must follow in order to prepare for heavenly
life, how we must live our daily lives in orderly obedience to God through
religion and conscience. Thus we choose heavenly or hellish life
in eternity by our cumulative choices which form our permanent inner character
as an immortal "spirit". People who have a good character enter
heaven regardless of their religion or belief system.
(17) the human
mind has three rational regions (natural, spiritual, and celestial), and their
sub-regions. For detailed discussion on this, consult my book Moses, Paul,
and Swedenborg: The Three Phases of Religious Behavior, available on the
Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html
(18) every individual's mind functions in conjunction with
numerous other individuals through a chain of unconscious interconnections
with other individuals, from those whose state of consciousness is in the
highest regions of the human mind (“Third Heaven"), to those who are
in the lowest state ("hell"). I call these unconscious
interconnections the "vertical community" to distinguish it from the
horizontal community of our neighborhood or country on earth.
(19) every
planet is created for carrying human life and numerous planets are now
inhabited and new ones are constantly being created--all in a grand Divine
plan to create immortal human beings that live in eternal bliss in the
heavenly regions of the mind.
(20) animals are
not immortal and their soul dissipates back into the spiritual world. Only
human beings can be immortal because they are created with an upper region in
the mind called rational, while animals are not so created. Thus we have freedom of the will in
accordance with our understanding, and it is this freedom of decision making
that forms the organic spiritual body that can be immortal. Only rational
thinking operations can receive continuous spiritual influx without which we
cannot be immortal. Nevertheless, the spiritual world--or higher regions of
the mind, are filled with animals of all sorts, with greater variety and
beauty than what exists on earths. Swedenborg has seen them thousands of
times. But these are not animals born on earth who passed on to the higher
regions. These are spiritually created animals and they have spiritual
characteristics.
(21) there
is no vacuum. Space is not empty. We can call it ether, or dark matter, or
fields, etc., but not empty nothing--an irrational concept. Here's what
Newton
had to say about his idea of vacuum when Swedenborg addressed him in the
spiritual world.
|
From Swedenborg's Writings
LJP 289. [265] NEWTON. I spoke with Newton concerning a vacuum, and
concerning colors.
LJP 290. [266] Concerning a vacuum he said, that in the world he had
believed in the existence of a vacuum; but when the angels perceived that
he had an idea of a vacuum, as an idea of nothing, they turned themselves
away, saying that they cannot bear the idea of nothing, since when there
is an idea of nothing the idea of the essence of things perishes. And when
the idea of the essence of things perishes, the idea of thought,
understanding, affection, love, and of will with men and angels perishes,
which things are not given in nothing. They asked him whether he believed
that the Divine, whence is all angelic wisdom, and all intelligence to men
in both worlds, the spiritual and the natural, is a vacuum, and thus that
any Divine operation inflows through a vacuum into their vacuum and can
present itself to perception. At that question he was disturbed.
He replied
that it cannot through an absolute vacuum, which is nothing, but through
an apparent vacuum, because the Divine is the Esse itself of wisdom and
love with the angels in heaven and with men in the world, and it fills all
things. Also Esse itself and nothing are so contrary to each other, that
if one be admitted the other cannot. Therefore the angels entreated that
he and all those who cherished the idea of a vacuum as of nothing would
desist from it, that they might be together, knowing that nothing of their
life can ever be given in nothing, but in those things which are, and
which are or exist from the Esse.
They added
that not anything can be said of a vacuum which is nothing, which has
relation to acting, reacting, receiving, or attracting, thus to the life
of their wisdom and love; in which there are so many infinite affections
with their variations, perceptions, and sensations; for nothing is
nothing, and of nothing we cannot predicate something.
When he
had heard these things, Newton said that before this he had desisted from
that idea, and he would desist from it hereafter; knowing that he is now
in the spiritual world, in which, nevertheless, according to his former
idea, would have been his vacuum; and that even now he is a man, and
therein he thinks, feels, acts, yea breathes, and this could not take
place in a vacuum which is nothing, but in something which is, and from
Esse exists and subsists, and that an interstitial nothing is impossible,
because that would be destructive of something, that is of essences and
substances which are something. For something and nothing are altogether
opposites, even so that he was horrified at the idea of nothing, and would
beware of it, lest his mind fall into a swoon. |
What is space
made of? Not of nothing. Scientists today are beginning to use the word
"ether" again, which was in use in Swedenborg's time (18th century). Ether
would thus be a thinner layer of matter than particles, waves, and energy
fields. Thinner than energy fields? Yes, why not? Swedenborg refers to the
thinnest materials of the natural world that are formed between the body and
the mind as a mediating construction, partly material, partly spiritual, thus having a dual
existence. The mind is built up of spiritual substances from the spiritual
Sun, but also from these thinnest natural substances that contain sensorimotor
information from experience. This thin layer of matter that encloses the
natural mind is called "the limbus" (Latin for border). Theistic
psychology research
needs to investigate the nature of the limbus and whether the fabric of space
is stretched out on a similar limbus that allows the two worlds to communicate
through the functional laws of correspondence.
(22) we are the
only industrialized society of all the planets that Swedenborg was allowed to
perceive through the minds of the local inhabitants, and it is explained why
this will remain so.
(23) the
universe is maintained and created larger and larger continuously, through the operation
of two suns--the Sun of the spiritual world and the suns (or stars) of the natural world.
Spiritual substances called goods and truths stream out of the Sun of the
spiritual world, forming the upper regions of the human mind and habitations,
while physical substances stream out of the suns of the physical world,
forming the lower regions of the human mind and all the physical matter of
which the natural mind and the physical body are made of. These two suns act
in concert through the laws of correspondences.
(24) when we
become inhabitants of the upper regions of the mind (called the Heavens) we
live forever, we live as married couples (called the Conjugial Love unit), we live in a society, we operate spiritually in both
spiritual body and mind, and this is totally different from how the physical body and
mind operate.
(25) the action
of a virus on the physical body acts in correspondence with the function and
characteristics of spiritual regions of the mind. The virus cannot act without
this spiritual correspondence simultaneously going on. The spiritual
correspondences are determined by particular societies in the vertical
community to which we are associated as individuals. The mental
characteristics of these spiritual associates (all of whom were people on earth
until they passed on), determines the biochemical actions of the virus. Thus,
knowing the characteristics of the associates allows us to know the viral
characteristics. For a detailed description of this methodology and its
implications for both theistic and materialistic science, consult this unique
work The Third Source, on the Web at.
www.theisticscience.org/blomdahl/Sweden.htm
(26) life after
death begins approximately 30 hours after the death of the physical body.
Resuscitation is described in detail in Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia
(12 volumes).
(27) in all
plant reproduction the materialistic appearance is that the male plant
component fertilizes the female plant component. But this appearance must be
contextualized in its actual operation, which is, that in the bringing forth
of plants (growth), the earth is the mother (female) component to all plants,
while the seed is the male component. I understand this to mean that all
plants (what we call male and female) are to be considered male while the
growing matter, soil, or minerals are to be considered as part of earth, it
being the female womb that brings the plant forth through the action of the
male seed. This action is through the genes or inmost component of the seed,
and this is male. Also: seed=truth, but there are many truths--natural,
spiritual, celestial.
(28) children
inherit the parents' character traits as a character tendency which becomes their own
unless they undergo regeneration or character rebuilding (reformation). Those who do not undergo regeneration remain
inhabitants of the lower regions of the mind, in this world, and they continue
this state of mind in the afterlife to eternity. While we're still in the
physical body, inhabiting the lower regions of the mind appears normal, and
only once in a while delusional or insane. But once the physical body is
separated, the resuscitated rational ether body
(or mind) which now forms our external sensorimotor self, can no longer maintain the
appearance of being normal and quickly explodes into delusion , insanity, and
gross insanity such as characterizes the lowest regions of the mind called
animal, beastly, and hellish.
(29) regeneration is a necessary operation to recover from our inherited and
injured character. This recovery operation proceeds in two steps repeatedly
performed on a daily basis for many years. The first step is called
reformation and starts the moment we feel remorse about some character trait
that comes to our attention through self-examination of our acts and thoughts.
The second step is to make a conscious decision to avoid that behavior or
thought because it is injurious to the upper regions of our mind. If this
process of reformation and regeneration is avoided or neglected, the inherited
character remains, is passed on as a tendency to our children, and in the
afterlife, takes us down to the lowest regions of the mind where we endure a
miserable existence. This hellish existence in eternity is not a punishment
for misdeeds, for this would be cruel and unreasonable punishment, irrational,
contrary to God's Personal Character and order. Instead, they who pass on
without regenerating their injured character, insist on being what they are,
namely, wild hateful cunning beasts in human form striving to injure and
torture anyone they can overpower. For such is our inherited character and
this is why it must be regenerated. Here in the natural world, external laws of
society and their enforcement, prevent us from breaking out into uncivilized
barbaric acts--most of the time, though not always. But in the other life we
cannot fake it. People in that dangerous state of mind must therefore be
segregated in mental regions called "hells" where they live in company with
others who share similar wild emotions and enjoyments.
(30) character
is our spiritual body and is formed of spiritual substances that are immortal
and permanently part of our self. We are kept in spiritual freedom
continuously. This is effected by being associated with spiritual societies on
both sides of a decision-making process (our "vertical community"). Every time we make a decision, a
permanent immortal
substantive engram is formed in the spiritual body or the organ of the "character"
in the mind. This physiological record is
indelible, though it can be covered up and moved to the side during the
regeneration process. The nature of the spiritual engram encompasses a variety of good
tendencies and a variety of evil tendencies. Many of these decisions are tiny and automatic, like where we
move our eyes and what pleasure or interest we derive from such investigation
or information processing. Each eye movement is a response to some inherited
love or interest and leaves a permanent record as an indelible engram in the
immortal mind. Small or large, every one of these counts, cumulates, and
remains
permanent. While these cumulations hardly show in this life, in the spiritual body the
character assumes total control--nothing can stop it for it is in total
freedom to choose and express. If this character is anti-social and
irrational, the individual is unable to withhold the self from injuring others.
They must then be restrained and kept segregated in the lower regions of their
mind called the hells.
(31) the
structural mechanics of the physical universe is formed according to the human
character. Every atom or particle has a form traceable to the human character.
This is true of minerals, plants, and animals, that is, all geology and
biology, hence all their derivatives. The shape of the human character when
well formed is that of an angelic person, but when injured, it has the shape
of a monster or devil. The entire spiritual universe is in the shape of the human form.
The entire human race, past and present, on all the inhabited planets, and as
it continuously grows in size, is integrated in God's Perception as one human
and one monster.
(32) the upper
regions of the mind are marked for the unity between one husband and
a wife. However, there are variations to be taken into account. A man's
character is constructed on a reciprocal basis to a woman's character so that
the two may become one united person in the uppermost regions of the human
mind. For this unity to be effected to its full potential perfection, it is necessary
that not a single component of the man's character be like any component of
the woman's character.
A general article discussing the
scientific revelations in Swedenborg may be found at this address:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/theistic.html
Besides "the Writings of Swedenborg"
which contain the scientific revelations about the spiritual world,
Swedenborg (1688-1772) also made various contributions and inventions to
natural science. He was a state employed engineer and a member of the
Swedish legislative parliament. A partial list of his inventions includes:
- A Glider-Aircraft
- An Archimedean Glass
- A Water Pump
- An Ear Trumpet
- An Airtight Stove
- The Wave Motion of Light
- The Molecular Basis of Magnetism
- The Relationship between Magnetism and Electricity
- The Nebular Hypothesis
- The Function of the Endocrine Glands
- Functions of the Cerebellum
- Centers of Thinking and Memory in the Cerebral
Cortex
- Formation of Cerebro-Spinal Fluid
- Integrative Action of the Nervous System
original here |
From
my fourth to my tenth year, I was constantly engaged in thought upon
God, salvation, and the spiritual sufferings of men, and several times I
revealed that at which my father and mother wondered.... From my sixth to
my twelfth year my delight was to discourse with clergymen concerning
Faith-that the life thereof is love, and the love that gives life is the
love of one's neighbor.
Swedenborg: Letters
1769
1.5
Some of the People Who Have Acknowledged Swedenborg
I present this list to demonstrate that Swedenborg, though unknown in science,
is quite well known in the history of literature. But I should indicate that these
"endorsements" and opinions do not contribute to establishing the scientific
status of Swedenborg's Writings. Theistic psychology has quite a different
approach to Swedenborg than these non-scientific opinions.
"The most remarkable step in the religious history of
recent ages is that made by the genius of Swedenborg." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I admire Swedenborg as a great scientist and a great
mystic at the same time. His life and work have always been of great interest to
me." Carl Jung, Psychologist
"For you Westerners, it is Swedenborg who is your Buddha,
it is he who should be read and followed!" D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhist
Scholar
"The correlations between what Swedenborg writes of some
of his spiritual experiences and what those who have come back from close calls
with death report is amazing." Raymond Moody, author of Life After Life
"People who have had near-death experiences peek through
the door of the after-life, but Swedenborg explored the whole house." Kenneth
Ring, founder of International Association for Near Death Studies (I.A.N.D.S.)
"Let me explain why Swedenborg merits scrutiny. It is a
fact that the greatest poets and prose writers have borrowed liberally from him.
The list is long: first Blake, as his direct spiritual descendant; then Goethe,
a fervent reader of Swedenborg (as was Kant followed by Edgar Allan Poe,
Baudelaire, Balzac, Mickiewicz, Slowacki, Emerson, Dostoevsky...." Czeslaw
Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize, Literature
"Swedenborg's enormous work has been my companion
throughout my entire life." Henry Corbin, Islamic Scholar
"Swedenborg's message has meant so much to me! It has
given color and reality and unity to my thought of the life to come; it has
exalted my ideas of love, truth, and usefulness; it has been my strongest
incitement to overcome limitations." Helen Keller
"I have come back to Swedenborg after vast studies of all
religions... Swedenborg undoubtedly epitomizes all the religions - or rather the
one religion - of humanity." Honore de Balzac
"More truths are confessed in Swedenborg's writings than
in those of any other man... One of the loftiest minds in the realm of mind...
One of the spiritual suns that will shine brighter as the years go on."
Thomas Carlyle, Theologian
"Swedenborg was one of the world's greatest geniuses. With
his rare intellect and deep spiritual insight he has much to contribute to our
modern life." Norman Vincent Peale
"To my mind, the only light that has been cast on the
other life is found in Swedenborg's philosophy. It explains much that was
incomprehensible." Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Other artists, writers, thinkers and leaders influenced by
Swedenborg include:
|
William Blake
Jorge Luis Borges
Robert Browning
John "Johnny Appleseed" Chapman
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
John Flaxman
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Frost
Northrop Frye
Victor Hugo |
George Innes
,
Henry James, Sr.,
George Macdonald
Ezra Pound
Howard Pyle
Georges Sand
August Strindberg
Henry David Thoreau
George Washington
William Butler Yeats
Bill Wilson (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous)
and others. |
|
©2001 Information Swedenborg
Inc. All Rights Reserved. Original here:
www.swedenborg.ca/swedenborg/influence.html |
1.6
Swedenborg's Description of How We Are
Resuscitated After Death
Possibly the most "newsworthy" facts that most people can read
in the Writings of Swedenborg are the empirically based observations he has made
of the process of resuscitation. No one in the modern world of science prior to
Swedenborg had been able to say anything empirical about what happens to the
individual upon the death of the physical body. I emphasize that I'm referring
to the scientific world and literature. No scientist before Swedenborg was able
to give any proof of life after death. At the height of his career as a Swedish
mining engineer and science publisher, Swedenborg suddenly found himself
conscious in both worlds simultaneously. From the positive bias perspective we
can see that this dual consciousness of a respected 18th century European
scientist, ushers in a new era in science. He maintained this dual citizenship
from age 57 to his death at 84 in 1772. He wrote voluminous daily notes of his
observations and experiments, and today in English translation, the Writings of
Swedenborg contain some 30 volumes published by him between 1745 and 1771.
This section presents a sample of the style and content of
Swedenborg's reports. I will comment and expand upon some sections to bring
attention to their significance for theistic psychology. Some of Swedenborg's
observations are based on his own experimental states of resuscitation which he
was able to undergo as part of his Divinely given mission to give a scientific
account of dying and the life in eternity. Other parts of his observations are
based on being present and observing the resuscitation of others, and of
describing their state of mind and their behavior upon awakening from
resuscitation.
I recall reading somewhere in the Writings (which I have not
been able to find) that the resuscitation process takes about 30 hours. In most
places, as below, he merely states that it takes "some hours."
As to the senses of the body I was brought into a state of insensibility,
thus nearly into the state of the dying, but with the interior life and
thought remaining unimpaired, in order that I might perceive and retain in the
memory the things that happened to me, and that happen to those who are
resuscitated from the dead.
I perceived that the respiration of the body was almost wholly taken away;
but the interior respiration of the spirit went on in connection with a slight
and tacit respiration of the body. Then at first a communication of the pulse
of the heart with the celestial kingdom was established, because that kingdom
corresponds to the heart in man. Angels from that kingdom were seen, some at a
distance, and two sitting near my head. Thus all my own affection was taken
away although thought and perception continued.
[2] I was in this state for some hours. Then the spirits who were around me
withdrew, supposing that I was dead; and an aromatic odor like that of an
embalmed body was perceived, for when the celestial angels are present
everything pertaining to the corpse is perceived as aromatic, and when spirits
perceive this they cannot approach; and in this way evil spirits are kept away
from man's spirit when he is being introduced into eternal life.
The angels seated at my head were silent, merely sharing their thoughts
with mine; and when their thoughts are received, the angels know that the
spirit of man is in a state in which it can be drawn forth from the body. This
sharing of their thoughts was effected by looking into my face, for in this
way in heaven thoughts are shared.
[3] As thought and perception remained with me, that I might know and
remember how resuscitation is effected, I perceived that the angels first
tried to ascertain what my thought was, whether it was like the thought of
those who are dying, which is usually about eternal life; also that they
wished to keep my mind in that thought. Afterwards, I was told that the spirit
of man is held in its last thought when the body expires, until it returns to
the thoughts that are from its general or ruling affection in the world.
Especially was I permitted to see and feel that there was a pulling and
drawing forth, as it were, of the interiors of my mind, thus of my spirit,
from the body; and I was told that this is from the Lord, and that the
resurrection is thus effected. (HH 449)
More details are presented in the passages that are cited below.
In the above passage Swedenborg discovers that there is an external sensation
from the physical body and an interior sensation that is not in the physical
body. Since he always insists (as in the selections below) that thinking is an
activity and an activity must be carried out with organs, in this case mental
organs constructed of spiritual substances. The mind is therefore born immortal
in the spiritual world and is tied functionally to the temporary physical body
born on earth. In other words, we are spirits in a physical body. Our mind is
called the "spirit" because it is an organ constructed of spiritual substances
from the spiritual world just as the physical body is constructed from matter
originating from the sun or stars. The spiritual world also has a sun called the
Spiritual Sun, from which stream out immortal substances out of which the mind
is built up through experiences.
Resuscitation is therefore a process of "extracting the spirit"
from the physical body. The spirit or mind is in it sown spiritual body. The
physical and spiritual bodies are copies of each other, but they are made of
very different substances, as proven by the fact the physical body dies, while
the spiritual body is immortal. From the description above, we can see that the
spiritual body possesses every organ that the physical body possesses, and that
it also has the function of respiration. But this interior breathing of the
spiritual body is not perceptible to us until the physical body dies.
Note also that when we are resuscitated we awaken in the world
of spirits. We quickly discover this new kind of life and one of the new
experiences is that people in their spiritual body, or "spirits," are able
perceive the content of the thoughts of those we are with, though this a complex
subject upon which much is written in the Writings.
Continuing with Swedenborg's reports:
CONCERNING THE RESUSCITATION OF MAN FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO
ETERNAL LIFE
Being permitted to describe in connected order how man passes from the life of
the body into the life of eternity, in order that the way in which he is
resuscitated might be known, this has been shown me, not by hearing, but by
actual experience. (AC 168)
I was reduced into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus
almost into the state of dying persons, retaining however my interior life
unimpaired, attended with the power of thinking, and with sufficient breathing
for life, and finally with a tacit breathing, that I might perceive and
remember what happens to those who have died and are being resuscitated. (AC
169)
This passage tells us that the resuscitation process begins when the physical
body no longer has any sensory activity and is in a "state of insensibility."
Also, while this external physical source of stimulation is cut off, there
is a an internal source of stimulation that remains active. This "interior life
remains unimpaired" including a "tacit breathing" which is a more interior form
of breathing in the spiritual body or mind. This internal breathing is
sufficient to support thinking and perception of the inner stimulation that
takes place during the process of resuscitation. The next Number says:
Celestial angels were present who occupied the region of the heart, so that
as to the heart I seemed united with them, and so that at length scarcely
anything was left to me except thought, and the consequent perception, and
this for some hours. (AC 170)
The resuscitation process is attended or assisted by
"celestial angels" which are the inhabitants of the highest or Third Heaven.
These people live in the region of the heart in the Grand Human configuration
that Swedenborg used to map out his travels in the spiritual world (see Section
xx). The
resuscitated person is mentally "united" to the celestial angels who are able to
perceive and influence the thinking of the dying person. The next Numbers:
I was thus removed from communication with spirits in the world of spirits, who
supposed that I had departed from the life of the body. (AC 171)
During resuscitation the person is shielded from further contact with other
spirits. Prior to this stage of the resuscitation process we are in
communication with various spirits who are associated with us in the vertical
community (see Section xx). But at this point the unconscious spiritual contact
is broken and only the celestial angels assisting in the resuscitation are
allowed to associate with our mind. In the following Numbers:
Besides the celestial angels, who occupied the region of the heart, there
were also two angels sitting at my head, and it was given me to perceive that
it is so with everyone. (AC 172)
The angels who sat at my head were perfectly silent, merely communicating
their thoughts by the face, so that I could perceive that another face was as
it were induced upon me; indeed two, because there were two angels. When the
angels perceive that their faces are received, they know that the man is dead.
(AC 173)
After recognizing their faces, they induced certain changes about the
region of the mouth, and thus communicated their thoughts, for it is customary
with the celestial angels to speak by the province of the mouth, and it was
permitted me to perceive their cogitative speech. (AC 174)
An aromatic odor was perceived, like that of an embalmed corpse, for when
the celestial angels are present, the cadaverous odor is perceived as if it
were aromatic, which when perceived by evil spirits prevents their approach.
(AC 175)
Meanwhile I perceived that the region of the heart was kept very closely
united with the celestial angels, as was also evident from the pulsation. (AC
176)
It was insinuated to me that man is kept engaged by the angels in the pious
and holy thoughts which he entertained at the point of death; and it was also
insinuated that those who are dying usually think about eternal life, and
seldom of salvation and happiness, and therefore the angels keep them in the
thought of eternal life. (AC 177)
In this thought they are kept for a considerable time by the celestial
angels before these angels depart, and those who are being resuscitated are
then left to the spiritual angels, with whom they are next associated.
Meanwhile they have a dim idea that they are living in the body. (AC 178)
As soon as the internal parts of the body grow cold, the vital substances
are separated from the man, wherever they may be, even if enclosed in a
thousand labyrinthine interlacings, for such is the efficacy of the Lord's
mercy (which I had previously perceived as a living and mighty attraction),
that nothing vital can remain behind. (AC 179)
The celestial angels who sat at the head remained with me for some time
after I was as it were resuscitated, but they conversed only tacitly. It was
perceived from their cogitative speech that they made light of all fallacies
and falsities, smiling at them not indeed as matters for derision, but as if
they cared nothing about them. Their speech is cogitative, devoid of sound,
and in this kind of language they begin to speak with the souls with whom they
are at first present. (AC 180)
As yet the man, thus resuscitated by the celestial angels, possesses only
an obscure life; but when the time comes for him to be delivered to the
spiritual angels, then after a little delay, when the spiritual angels have
approached, the celestial depart; and it has been shown me how the spiritual
angels operate in order that the man may receive the benefit of light, as
described in the continuation of this subject prefixed to the following
chapter. (AC 181)
Many remarkable details are given in the above Numbers about resuscitation.
It's clear that this is a kind of medical process attended by the wisest and
most advanced minds who live in the "Third Heaven" and have earned the title
of Celestial Angels. It's also clear that they are able to communicate or
influence our thoughts directly by a kind of telepathic exchange. Their
purpose apparently is to assist us in the awakening process as our spiritual
body undergoes the extraction phase. One technique they use is to pass up and
ignore all the false beliefs the person has. and to concentrate instead on
transmitting their own peaceful and happy emotions by a kind of induction
process or emotional contagion.
During this process other spirits or inhabitants of the spiritual world are
kept away from communicating or influencing the person being resuscitated.
This is done by a distinct odor around the person which warns others and
prevents them from approaching in thought or communication. Going on with the
next Numbers:
CONTINUATION CONCERNING THE ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE OF THOSE WHO ARE
RAISED FROM THE DEAD.
When the celestial angels are with a resuscitated person, they do not leave
him, for they love everyone; but when the soul is of such a character that he
can no longer be in the company of the celestial angels, he is eager to depart
from them; and when this takes place the spiritual angels arrive, and give him
the use of light, for previously he had seen nothing, but had only thought.
(AC 182)
I was shown how these angels work. They seemed to as it were roll off the
coat of the left eye toward the septum of the nose, in order that the eye
might be opened and the use of light be granted. To the man it appears as if
this were really done, but it is only an appearance. (AC 183)
After this little membrane has been thus in appearance rolled off, some
light is visible, but dim, such as a man sees through his eyelids when he
first awakes out of sleep; and he who is being resuscitated is in a tranquil
state, being still guarded by the celestial angels. There then appears a kind
of shadow of an azure color, with a little star, but I perceived that this
takes place with variety. (AC 184)
Afterwards there seems to be something gently unrolled from the face, and
perception is communicated to him, the angels being especially cautious to
prevent any idea coming from him but such as is of a soft and tender nature,
as of love; and it is now given him to know that he is a spirit. (AC 185)
He then commences his life. This at first is happy and glad, for he seems
to himself to have come into eternal life, which is represented by a bright
white light that becomes of a beautiful golden tinge, by which is signified
his first life, to wit, that it is celestial as well as spiritual. (AC 186)
His being next taken into the society of good spirits is represented
by a young man sitting on a horse and directing it toward hell, but the horse
cannot move a step. He is represented as a youth because when he first enters
upon eternal life he is among angels, and therefore appears to himself to be
in the flower of youth. (AC 187)
His subsequent life is represented by his dismounting from the horse and
walking on foot, because he cannot make the horse move from the place; and it
is insinuated to him that he must be instructed in the knowledges of what is
true and good. (AC 188)
Afterwards pathways were seen sloping gently upward, which signify that by
the knowledges of what is true and good, and by self-acknowledgment, he should
be led by degrees toward heaven; for no one can be conducted thither without
such self-acknowledgment, and the knowledges of what is true and good. A
continuation of this subject may be seen at the end of this chapter. (AC 189)
These fascinating details have never before been reported by a respectable
and well known scientist. It's interesting to note that people in the
afterlife continue to be differentiated and diverse in ability and motivation.
When the resuscitated person is still not thinking clearly the highest caliber
people can be present and assisting the individual. But when the person begins
to reawaken to the self such as it was during the life in the physical body,
there emerges a clash in thinking and feeling which compels the celestial
people to be left behind. Other people then take their place in the assisting
process. They are from the "Second Heaven" and are called spiritual angels.
Elsewhere, Swedenborg describes the difference in mentality and intelligence
between celestial and spiritual angels.
Another interesting detail above is that in the world of spirits where we
are resuscitated people can represent thoughts and feelings to each other by
outward appearances of things that correspond to the thoughts, feelings, and
mood of the people present. Here a white light is represented to indicate the
new life and sitting on a horse to indicate the new intelligence of the
spirit's life. This new intelligence is based on rational ideas that the
person must now learn to understand. Their old intelligence and beliefs are
not accurate with respect to the life in the spiritual world, and therefore
cannot serve for their new state. This is represented by the horse that wont'
budge, so that they have to walk on foot, which represents the effort of
acquiring new rational ideas and concepts about the afterlife.
CONTINUATION CONCERNING MAN'S ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE.
After the use of light has been given to the resuscitated person, or soul, so
that he can look about him, the spiritual angels previously spoken of render
him all the kindly services he can in that state desire, and give him
information about the things of the other life, but only so far as he is able
to receive it. If he has been in faith, and desires it, they show him the
wonderful and magnificent things of heaven. (AC 314)
But if the resuscitated person or soul is not of such a character as to be
willing to be instructed, he then desires to be rid of the company of the
angels, which they exquisitely perceive, for in the other life there is a
communication of all the ideas of thought. Still, they do not leave him even
then, but he dissociates himself from them. The angels love everyone, and
desire nothing more than to render him kindly services, to instruct him, and
to convey him to heaven. In this consists their highest delight. (AC 315)
When the soul thus dissociates himself, he is received by good spirits, who
likewise render him all kind offices while he is in their company. If however
his life in the world has been such that he cannot remain in the company of
the good, he desires to be rid of these also, and this process is repeated
again and again, until he associates himself with those who are in full
agreement with his former life in the world, among whom he finds as it were
his own life. And then, wonderful to say, he leads with them a life like that
which he had lived when in the body. But after sinking back into such a life,
he makes a new beginning of life; and some after a longer time, some after a
shorter, are from this borne on toward hell; but such as have been in faith
toward the Lord, are from that new beginning of life led step by step toward
heaven. (AC 316)
The Numbers above discuss the second phase of resuscitation, at the end of
which, one undergoes a "second "death" as it were, at which time we enter our
final state of mind, either in the upper regions of the mind called "heaven,"
or in the Lower regions called "hell." This second phase of resuscitation is
more inward than the first. It is said above that we undergo various types of
experiences that help us to get in touch with our deeper feelings and
character. What is it that we really really enjoy and want to do? It takes
awhile to shirk off the external personality traits we acquired and displayed
in social life prior to our death. Our inner motives, feelings, and thoughts
were hidden from others to protect ourselves from retaliation or disapproval.
But many are hidden from our eyes because we may not be introspective or
reflect much on what we think and how we feel.
Now in this final phase of the resuscitation process the outward act falls
off and disintegrates as we realize more and more that we are no longer in the
same world as before and the rules are completely different. As we let
everything hang out, so to speak, things happen around us by which we come
into contact with others who have similar feelings and thoughts. We feel
reinforced and excited by being in the company of these people who seem so
familiar and compatible. At last our inmost loves and desires come out to the
surface and we life a life of complete freedom and immersion in whatever we
want and desire.
But this life quickly and suddenly ends as we now enter our final state of
resuscitation and awakening. We then appear outwardly as either a devil or an
angel. Those who appear as devils with many deformations of the human form
portray their inner life through this outward appearance. It's not just their
boy appearance that changes but also their surrounding environment. Those who
have hellish loves in charge of their character seem to themselves to be in
places similar to what the imagination makes up about hell--dark caverns,
hideous people, dangerous animals, foul smells, unspeakable actions and
horrors that people there inflict upon each other. But those who have heavenly
love sin the interior of their character appear beautiful, young, and
peaceful, and their environment is paradisal--wonderful gardens, magnificent
architecture, brilliant light and color.
The laws of the spiritual world are such that whatever thoughts and
feelings we have the power to project outwardly what their nature is in
relation to the rational and the good. Continuing:
Some however advance more slowly toward heaven, and others more quickly. I
have seen some who were elevated to heaven immediately after death, of which I
am permitted to mention only two instances. (AC 317)
A certain spirit came and discoursed with me, who, as was evident from
certain signs, had only lately died. At first he knew not where he was,
supposing himself still to be in the world; but when he became conscious that
he was in the other life, and that he no longer possessed anything, such as
house, wealth, and the like, being in another kingdom, where he was deprived
of all he had possessed in the world, he was seized with anxiety, and knew not
where to betake himself, or whither to go for a place of abode. He was then
informed that the Lord alone provides for him and for all; and was left to
himself, that his thoughts might take their wonted direction, as in the world.
He now considered (for in the other life the thoughts of all may be plainly
perceived) what he must do, being deprived of all means of subsistence; and
while in this state of anxiety he was brought into association with some
celestial spirits who belonged to the province of the heart, and who showed
him every attention that he could desire. This being done, he was again left
to himself, and began to think, from charity, how he might repay kindness so
great, from which it was evident that while he had lived in the body he had
been in the charity of faith, and he was therefore at once taken up into
heaven. (AC 318)
ON THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF THE SOUL OR SPIRIT.
With regard to the general subject of the life of souls, that is, of novitiate
spirits, after death, I may state that much experience has shown that when a
man comes into the other life he is not aware that he is in that life, but
supposes that he is still in this world, and even that he is still in the
body. So much is this the case that when told he is a spirit, wonder and
amazement possess him, both because he finds himself exactly like a man, in
his senses, desires, and thoughts, and because during his life in this world
he had not believed in the existence of the spirit, or, as is the case with
some, that the spirit could be what he now finds it to be. (AC 320)
A second general fact is that a spirit enjoys much more excellent sensitive
faculties, and far superior powers of thinking and speaking, than when living
in the body, so that the two states scarcely admit of comparison, although
spirits are not aware of this until gifted with reflection by the Lord. (AC
321)
Beware of the false notion that spirits do not possess far more exquisite
sensations than during the life of the body. I know the contrary by experience
repeated thousands of times. Should any be unwilling to believe this, in
consequence of their preconceived ideas concerning the nature of spirit, let
them learn it by their own experience when they come into the other life,
where it will compel them to believe.
In the first place spirits have sight, for they live in the light, and good
spirits, angelic spirits, and angels, in a light so great that the noonday
light of this world can hardly be compared to it. The light in which they
dwell, and by which they see, will of the Lord's Divine mercy be described
hereafter. Spirits also have hearing, hearing so exquisite that the hearing of
the body cannot be compared to it. For years they have spoken to me almost
continually, but their speech also will of the Lord's Divine mercy be
described hereafter. They have also the sense of smell, which also will of the
Lord's Divine mercy be treated of hereafter. They have a most exquisite sense
of touch, whence come the pains and torments endured in hell; for all
sensations have relation to the touch, of which they are merely diversities
and varieties. They have desires and affections to which those they had in the
body cannot be compared, concerning which of the Lord's Divine mercy more will
be said hereafter. Spirits think with much more clearness and distinctness
than they had thought during their life in the body.
There are more things contained within a single idea of their thought than
in a thousand of the ideas they had possessed in this world. They speak
together with so much acuteness, subtlety, sagacity, and distinctness, that if
a man could perceive anything of it, it would excite his astonishment. In
short, they possess everything that men possess, but in a more perfect manner,
except the flesh and bones and the attendant imperfections. They acknowledge
and perceive that even while they lived in the body it was the spirit that
sensated, and that although the faculty of sensation manifested itself in the
body, still it was not of the body; and therefore that when the body is cast
aside, the sensations are far more exquisite and perfect. Life consists in the
exercise of sensation, for without it there is no life, and such as is the
faculty of sensation, such is the life, a fact that anyone may observe. (AC
322)
At the end of the chapter, several examples will be given of those who
during their abode in this world had thought otherwise. (AC 323)
How wonderful it is to discover that the life we have after the physical
body dies is far more intense and alive than the life we were used to in the
physical body. Swedenborg describes many things about the life in heaven and
hell throughout the books of the Writings. These passages are a small sample
of the whole account in which he describes their language, their script, their
books, their cities, their occupations, and how they interact with people on
earth. None of these interactions are perceptible to us while we are still
living in the physical body. Going on:
SOME EXAMPLES DRAWN FROM EXPERIENCE WITH SPIRITS CONCERNING WHAT THEY HAD
THOUGHT DURING THEIR LIFE IN THE BODY ABOUT THE SOUL OR SPIRIT.
In the other life it is given to perceive clearly what opinions people had
entertained while they lived in the body concerning the soul, the spirit, and
the life after death; for when kept in a state resembling that of the body
they think in the same way, and their thought is communicated as plainly as if
they spoke aloud.
In the case of one person, not long after his decease, I perceived (what he
himself confessed) that he had indeed believed in the existence of the spirit,
but had imagined that it must live after death an obscure kind of life,
because if the life of the body were withdrawn there would remain nothing but
what is dim and obscure; for he had regarded life as being in the body, and
therefore he had thought of the spirit as being a phantom; and he had
confirmed himself in this idea from seeing that brutes also have life, almost
as men have it. He now marveled that spirits and angels live in the greatest
light, and in the greatest intelligence, wisdom, and happiness, attended with
a perception so perfect that it can scarcely be described; consequently that
their life, so far from being obscure, is most perfectly clear and distinct.
(AC 443)
Conversing with one who while he lived in this world had believed that the
spirit has no extension, and on that ground would admit of no word that
implied extension, I asked him what he now thought of himself, seeing that now
he was a soul or spirit, and possessed sight, hearing, smell, an exquisite
sense of touch, desires, thoughts, insomuch that he supposed himself to be
exactly as if in the body. He was kept in the idea which he had when he had so
thought in the world, and he said that the spirit is thought. I was permitted
to ask him in reply, whether, having lived in the world, he was not aware that
there can be no bodily sight without an organ of vision or eye? and how then
can there be internal sight, or thought? Must it not have some organic
substance from which to think? He then acknowledged that while in the bodily
life he had labored under the delusion that the spirit is mere thought, devoid
of everything organic or extended. I added that if the soul or spirit were
mere thoughts man would not need so large a brain, seeing that the whole brain
is the organ of the interior senses; for if it were not so the skull might be
hollow, and the thought still act in it as the spirit.
From this consideration alone, as well as from the operation of the
soul into the muscles, giving rise to so great a variety of movements, I said
that he might be assured that the spirit is organic, that is, an organic
substance. Whereupon he confessed his error, and wondered that he had been so
foolish. (AC 444)
It was further remarked, that the learned have no other belief than that
the soul which is to live after death, that is, the spirit, is abstract
thought. This is very manifest from their unwillingness to admit of any term
that implies extension and what belongs to extension, because thought
abstractedly from a subject is not extended, whereas the subject of the
thought, and the objects of the thought, are extended; and as for those
objects which are not extended, men define them by boundaries and give
extension to them, in order that they may comprehend them. This shows very
clearly that the learned have no other conception of the soul or spirit than
that it is mere thought, and so cannot but believe that it will vanish when
they die. (AC 445)
I have discoursed with spirits concerning the common opinion that prevails
among men at the present day, that the existence of the spirit is not to be
credited because they do not see it with their eyes, nor comprehend it by
their memory-knowledges [scientias], and so they not only deny that the spirit
has extension, but also that it is a substance, disputing as to what substance
is. And as they deny that it has extension, and also dispute about substance,
they also deny that the spirit is in any place, and consequently that it is in
the human body; and yet the most simple might know that his soul or spirit is
within his body.
When I said these things, the spirits, who were some of the more simple
ones, marveled that the men of the present day are so foolish. And when they
heard the words that are disputed about, such as "parts without parts" and
other such terms, they called them absurd, ridiculous, and farcical, which
should not occupy the mind at all, because they close the way to intelligence.
(AC 446)
It is remarkable to be able to hear about these details. When we are
resuscitated into the afterlife it becomes obvious that materialism and the
negative bias are ludicrous perspectives on reality. Materialism and the
negative bias do not seem to be ludicrous while we are living in the physical
world, and many believe that the positive bias and religion are ludicrous.
This balance is necessary for this world in order to allow people to develop
their rational consciousness of the life in eternity. This life is a
life in "rational ether" which is the human mind. As explained later, the
fundamental principle in theistic psychology is represented by the equation:
the geography of the spiritual world = the anatomy of the mind. But this
equation is not perceptible by the senses and can only be understood
rationally. In this way we can develop our rational consciousness of
spirituality, which is where our heaven is, or our hell, when the heavenly is
denied and inverted. Continuing:
A certain novitiate spirit, on hearing me speak about the spirit, asked,
"What is a spirit?" supposing himself to be a man. And when I told him that
there is a spirit in every man, and that in respect to his life a man is a
spirit; that the body is merely to enable a man to live on the earth, and that
the flesh and bones, that is, the body, does not live or think at all; seeing
that he was at a loss, I asked him whether he had ever heard of the soul.
"What is a soul?" he replied, "I do not know what a soul is." I was then
permitted to tell him that he himself was now a soul, or spirit, as he might
know from the fact that he was over my head, and was not standing on the
earth. I asked him whether he could not perceive this, and he then fled away
in terror, crying out, "I am a spirit! I am a spirit!" (...) (AC 447)
I have conversed with many who had been known to me in this life (and this
I have done for a long time-for months and years), in as clear a voice,
although an inward one, as with friends in this world. The subject of our
conversation has sometimes been the state of man after death, and they have
wondered exceedingly that during the bodily life no one knows or believes that
he is so to live when the bodily life is over, when yet there is then a
continuation of life, and such a continuation that the man passes from an
obscure life into a clear one, and those who are in faith in the Lord into a
life that is more and more clear.
They have desired me to tell their friends that they are alive, and to
write and tell them what their condition is, even as I had related to
themselves many things about that of their friends here. But I replied that
were I to tell their friends such things, or to write to them about them, they
would not believe, but would call them delusions, would scoff at them, and
would ask for signs or miracles before they would believe; and I should merely
expose myself to their derision.
And that these things are true, perchance but few will believe. For at
heart men deny the existence of spirits, and even those who do not deny it are
unwilling to hear that anyone can speak with spirits. In ancient times there
was no such state of belief in regard to spirits, but so it is now when by
crazy ratiocination men try to find out what spirits are, and by their
definitions and suppositions deprive them of all the senses, and do this the
more, the more learned they desire to be. (AC 448)
Here Swedenborg explains why he could not use his dual consciousness as a go
between the departed of this life and those who are still here. He explains the
injurious effects of spiritism, which is the attempt to contact those who have
passed on. Contact with spirits destroys the balance of freedom of believing
materialism or dualism through rational considerations. Such direct contact is
sensory and sensory consciousness interferes with the development of rational
consciousness. Sensory consciousness leads to mysticism, superstition, and
sorcery, all of which are called "persuasive faith" in which there is no
rational freedom. Our rational consciousness develops when we have to struggle
to understand the afterlife rationally and to form spiritual ideas that are
rational, not sensuous. Swedenborg reports that those who come into the
afterlife with a sensuous consciousness or a persuasive faith or religion, have
their rational mind shut down or inoperative. Such a state leads to irrational
beliefs, delusions, and obsessions, all of which create a hell in our life of
eternity.
Note: Chapter 2 is available as a separate file
at this address:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic-psychology-chapter2-v35a.htm
For printing use this
Word file:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic-psychology-chapter2-v35a.doc
Chapter 2
Q&A
on Theistic Psychology
2.1.
What’s the difference between religion and theistic psychology?
The difference is that between mystical and
scientific. Mystical systems
depend on blind faith or credulity and as a result, there are a variety of
mystical systems, or religions, and each believes to have
the real truth while thinking that the others do not. This is why religion
depends on declared membership, on affirmations of a common creed, and
dependence on the willingness to believe something that cannot be explained in a
scientific manner. As a result, when we examine religions in a
rational or scientific way, we cannot arrive at a conclusion since the creed or
faith resists breakdown and rational analysis.
On the other hand theistic
psychology is not a religion but a science. Theistic psychology contrasts with
atheistic psychology which automatically excludes God as an explanatory concept.
Theistic psychology automatically includes God as a concept in all explanations
about human behavior and dynamics. While religion depends on creed and faith,
theistic psychology depends on rational and scientific explanations of the laws
and mechanisms by which God causes every event and behavior to occur. Therefore
theistic psychology advances by cumulative research and critical analysis of all
models, theories, and data.
The idea and knowledge of God in theistic
psychology is not based on direct experience. If this were the case, it would
cease to be a science because one individual's experience of God is not the same
as another's, and neither has access to the other. Sensuous consciousness of God
is rightly categorized as mystical. Theistic psychology is based on rational
consciousness of God. This means that no one can make up what God is or is not,
or what God wants or does not want, or how God manages the created universe, or
what our fate is in the afterlife. No one can know these things. They can invent
them, but those are mere hypothetical and imaginative portrayals. I for one was
never attracted to anyone's idea of God or experience of God because I had no
way of verifying their notions. Unless I could understand God from my rational
perspective as a trained and practicing scientist, I was unable to get involved,
or be interested for very long, in other people's theories and systems.
Rational consciousness of God is based, not on human
imagination and intelligence, but on Divine revelation of Himself by God.
This is clearly the only possibility. God created human
beings with a mind that can comprehend God's Truth. Truth is rational, hence
God's basic character or nature is a Being who is rational. All the laws of
nature we have discovered are rational, and the whole fits together rationally.
Therefore, to know God rationally is the only way to know God in truth. God is a rational
Being. Obviously, God created human beings to possess a rational mind that is
capable of knowing and understanding God. From this knowledge we are able to
love God if we so choose. This is what God wants, that we love Him more than
anything else He has created. Why?
Because by loving God He is able to give us what we were
created for, but not otherwise. The purpose God had in creating human beings is
that they be born on some physical earth, develop a rational mind, and at death,
be resuscitated into an eternal world of conjugial happiness called heaven. This
is a noble and loving purpose and we can appreciate it by feeling gratitude. So
it makes rational sense to say that the rational mind God creates in us needs to
be given information about God so that we can know God and love Him more
than anything else we know. This information comes to us through Divine Speech
or Sacred Scripture dictated by God.
This is the same as Divine Truth which gives us the facts about God and true
reality, rationally understood. Divine Speech must be the source of all
information for theistic psychology.
Clearly, if information about reality, God, and the universe
is made up as someone's theory, we will never know the real reality, the real
truth, which only God the Creator possesses. Obviously, the human mind is
created to receive communication from God as Divine Speech. If this were not the
case science would never know about true reality. It doesn't make sense to
separate reality into two parts, one that we can test and another we can only
speculate about. Reality is integrated and cannot be separated. If you separate
reality into non-overlapping components you can never understand reality
rationally, which it is. God is rational and runs the universe rationally as
shown by the rationality of laws we can discover about the physical universe and
the rationality of God's revelations.
Theistic psychology is therefore based exclusively on Divine
scientific revelations. Nothing is added to it that is from another source.
Theistic psychology was created by Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688-1772) who was given the unique ability in modern history to be conscious
simultaneously in this world and in the spiritual world. This special ability,
which he had between the ages of 57 and 84, was given to him by God who elevated
his rational consciousness all the way to the highest level of thinking possible
called the "third heaven" in the human mind. He was thus given the unique task
of authoring the third component of Sacred Scripture which took several thousand
years of human evolution to deliver to our conscious mind (see Preface). Today
the Western tradition has received the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the
Writings of Swedenborg. These three components of Sacred Scripture have been
given to humankind in order to allow us to have a rational consciousness of God.
Theistic psychology is based exclusively on these three collections of
revelations, also known as the "Threefold Word."
The Writings reveal and demonstrate that all Sacred Scripture
is Divine Speech transformed into a natural language.
The Writings reveal a rational method of reconstructing the
original content of Divine Speech before it was transformed and written down in
a natural language. We need to do be able to do this reconstruction or recovery,
since the natural version of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture is mostly natural
in content and appears as history and prophecy. The spiritual information about
God, the afterlife, or God's management laws of the universe, are hidden from
the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. And yet it is the spiritual information
that we need in order to form a rational understanding of God and how God runs
the universe. We cannot invent hypothetical interpretations and hope to be fully
right. Then we won't know when we are right and when wrong, and our spiritual
progress will end in contradiction and conflict. Therefore God must reveal to us
a rational method for recovering from Divine Speech what He tells us about the
spiritual world and the rational laws He uses to manage the universe.
The Writings of Swedenborg are therefore a scientific
revelation because they give us rational methods for discovering what God has
been telling us through Divine Speech encoded and transformed into a natural
language. Theistic psychology is the knowledge we can extract from these
scientific revelations. Whatever is thus extracted must follow the laws of
extraction set forth in Divine revelation. If we use other methods of extraction we
get nowhere towards the truth.
This is why God revealed to us precisely what methods
of extraction must be followed.
Sacred Scripture must therefore be viewed in both its literal
historical meaning and its correspondential or universal meaning. This is the meaning we extract or
recover when we apply the method of correspondences as specified in the Writings.
When viewed in its literal meaning, Sacred Scripture discusses religion and
history. But
when viewed in its universal meaning derived from the science of correspondences, Sacred
Scripture is science. Both positions--religious and scientific-- are legitimate and do not contradict each
other. Literally, the Writings appear to be written for the New Christian Church
prophesied in the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament of the
Bible. The Writings are therefore a continuation of that revelation but at a
more rational level of presentation as suitable to the modern scientific mind.
Religion is always bound up with
culture and history, while theistic psychology is universal, of relevance to all
religions and cultures and times. Different religions have different and
contradictory explanations for the same phenomenon, while there is only one
theistic psychology. Within theistic psychology there cannot be any disagreement or
contradictory scientific theories since its knowledge base consists solely and exclusively of the
scientific revelations given in the Writings of Swedenborg--a one time event in
history that cannot repeat itself. The reasons why there cannot be new
additional revelations in the future are fully explained and established in the
Writings. Therefore the giving of these scientific revelations mark the
beginning of a new evolutionary path for the human race.
This new state of development is made
possible because of these Divine rational revelations. A biological analogy
might be this: when a new breed of dogs or species of flowers is engineered, the new breed
is permanently altered and is different from all previous breeds. Similarly, the
new comprehensive scientific revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg create a
new elevated state for the human mind since the revelations give us knowledge of
causes of the events in this world. Our consciousness and awareness are
therefore permanently altered allowing for new lives, new lifestyles, new
societies, and also, new heavens and hells in the continuation of our lives
after the death of the physical body. This is most important since our life in
the spiritual body is eternal and immeasurably longer than our relatively short
life in the physical body.
Theistic psychology is possible only when
one can read the Writings of Swedenborg and understand them rationally. That
rational understanding gives readers the perspective that it is a true account
of what Swedenborg saw and heard. Readers who doubt the validity of Swedenborg's
reports and analyses give themselves no other choice but to reject them as
delusional or made up. As scientists we cannot accept the observational reports
of another scientist unless we can fit them into a rational and coherent
structure that is not contradicted by what we ourselves can observe.
As a scientist I have read the Writings of
Swedenborg thoroughly more than once, and I was able to understand them
rationally. There were no contradictions with anything that I already knew.
Neither were there any internal inconsistencies in the Writings even though they
cover many topics in some 30 volumes in English. I've also read the opinions of
hundreds of commentators and experts on Swedenborg and his life (1688-1772). Not
one of them was able to find a single inconsistency or omission. They all
acknowledge the rationality and consistency of Swedenborg's explanations. But
those readers who merely read some of the Writings and could not understand
them, rejected them as the delusions and fantasies of an unusual genius.
Theistic psychology is a science and
therefore cannot depend on belief, faith, or personal preference. As we study
theistic psychology it's important to proceed by what is rational and makes
sense at every step so that nothing is based on mere acceptance by persuasion,
authority or fancy. When an apparent contradiction arises in the mind, it's
useful to trace the contradiction to our existing beliefs and assumptions. It's
necessary to stick with the issue in the mind until we are able to see that
Swedenborg's explanation is rational and consistent while our own former beliefs
are fragmentary, of unproven validity and doubtful rationality. In this way we
are able to continue building up in our mind the concepts of theistic
psychology. At every point we must examine each issue rationally, consistently,
and without rejecting what is not yet fully understood. This will
allow the orderly and cumulative growth in our knowledge and understanding of
human behavior, along with their enormous benefits to society and the
individual, both in this world, and in our immortal life in the spiritual world.
If you examine the doctrines and dogmas of
religions today you will see that the level of thinking is not fully rational
and not scientific. This doesn't prove that religions are wrong about their
beliefs, especially since they are based on revelations. But the level of
explanation and rationality is not scientific. For instance, "creationism" is
not a scientific theory but a religious interpretation of the literal meaning of
the first few Chapters of the Bible. In the Writings of Swedenborg, the ancient Science of Correspondences
is once more revealed to humankind. When you apply this code to the literal
sentences of the Bible you can see that the Bible was written at two
levels--literal and correspondential. Religions are based on the literal of
Sacred Scripture while theistic
psychology is based on the correspondential meaning of revelations (see below the answer to
Question 12).
Note carefully: The symbolic
meaning of revelation is decoded by applying the code that has been revealed. If
this revealed code is not used, but some other one invented or preferred by
someone, the result is not science but pure conjecture and imagination of the
author, as you can know by reading dozens of books people have written on "Bible
exegesis" or Bible codes. The only way science can be maintained is by using
the science of correspondences revealed in the Writings. This makes the decoding
process fully rational and empirical. It's essential to understand that this
unique code called "correspondences" is not something Swedenborg invented. It is
called "science" of correspondences because each correspondence or symbolic
representation, is a universal scientific law that governs the interaction
between cause and effect in the universe. This is fully explained and
demonstrated by Swedenborg. For 27years he was able to be conscious
simultaneously in the natural world through his physical body, and in the
spiritual world through his spiritual body. I can only imagine what that must
have felt like! But he kept a daily Journal and wrote all his observations down.
He was thus able to provide empirical evidence for the laws of correspondences
through which all Divine revelation is written. I have examined all of the
Writings and
there is no doubt in my mind that anyone who has scientific literacy can read
the Writings and confirm that they are rational, scientific, universal,
empirical, objective, and applied.
Theistic psychology encompasses religion
that is based on the literal sense of revelation. While religion defines God in
personal and historical terms, theistic psychology provides a rational account of
the mechanisms or rational procedures that God uses to manage every cause and effect.
Theistic psychology therefore has a scientific explanation for the terms and
concepts used in religion, e.g., omnipotence, Divine Providence, sin, salvation, heaven, hell, angel, devil,
regeneration or rebirth, prayer, sacraments, and so on. Every religious practice
and idea is given a scientific explanation in theistic psychology. This is possible
because these scientific revelations were embedded or hidden in the literal
sense of revelation. There they lay for many centuries unsuspected by all those
who studied and wrote about revelation and the Bible. But now that the science
of correspondences has been revealed, we have available to us a vast source of
new facts about God and how the universe is managed. Sin is real but what makes
it real and how does it injure us? Heaven and hell are real but they exist as
states of our mind. Miracles are real but they are no different from ordinary
every day phenomena in terms of how God makes events happen. No event can occur
except that God makes it happen in that particular way. This is the rational
consequence of the concept of "omnipotence" and "infinity" as applied to God.
But to believe that God is omnipotent is
religion. To show rationally and in empirical detail how God exercises this
omnipotence, is theistic psychology. This is fully accomplished in the Writings of
Swedenborg and it is understandable and confirmable by anyone who has the
motivation to make the effort.
Consider this amazing fact in relation to proving
the premises of theistic psychology:
The Bible was authored by dozens of
"prophets" who claimed to receive Divine revelation which they wrote down. These
authors were completely independent of each other, separated by many centuries.
What they wrote down was some history, some visions of the spiritual world, and
some quotes from God who was speaking to the them as messengers to go to the
people and report God's words. They did so. Now two thousand years later along
comes another prophet or Divine revelator whose name is Emanuel Swedenborg
(1688-1772). From his revelation, this author now reports that all the previous
authors of the Bible over the centuries were inspired to write down history and
visions, not knowing that in every sentence and every word there was hidden
through a secret code, another meaning which was universal or spiritual. This
hidden meaning was actually a scientific revelation about the anatomy of the
human mind and its relationship to heaven and hell; also, about how God runs the
universe through rational laws; and also many other scientific revelations about
the structure of the universe, about cause and effect relations, about communication
between the inhabitants of earth and the spiritual world, about plants, animals,
history, and many more things.
On the one hand, if Swedenborg merely
invented these scientific revelations and claimed to see them in the ancient
language of the Bible, there world be no scientific or rational reason to
believe him. He may simply have been a great genius who believed that
these scientific explanations and facts came from his reading the Bible. But why
should we necessarily believe him? There is no compelling reason just on account
of his own beliefs.
On the other hand, the situation is
completely different if Swedenborg can show and prove how these independently
written Bible chapters do contain the same code. Furthermore, he needs to prove
that this code is related to reality by empirical and experimental observations
and facts. Finally, the code must make rational sense so that anyone can use the
code to explore, analyze, and extract the scientific revelations that are
contained in Sacred Scripture. And all this must be done by independent researchers or
scientists who must then agree on the results.
This is exactly what Swedenborg
has accomplished, according to my own analyses over several years, and as well,
the independent analysis of hundreds of other scholars and scientists.
Therefore we can say rationally that the premises of theistic psychology are
provable.
The most obvious difference between
religion and theistic science is the explanatory level of phenomena or events.
In religion God is personal, historical, and cultural or ethnic. God rules the
world like a King with super powers. He speaks, and things happen. He commands
and physical things obey. He gets angry when disobeyed but He also forgives and
loves with mercy and grace. If you beg Him through prayer, He relents and does what
He is asked. He has His favorites in people. He can be placated by sacrifices.
He sometimes changes His mind. In short, for religion, God is a super-Man with
human emotions and sometimes acts inconsistently with His prior decisions for the
sake of some person or people. In all this there is very little science that can
be obtained. All of it is based on the literal sense of history and visions of
"chosen" prophets. Let us accept that the religious and historical
things said in Sacred Scripture are completely true, since it is Divine Speech.
At the same time, let us realize that
there is a universal meaning beneath the literal meaning, since this is a
characteristic of all Divine Speech. It's not until the 18th century that God
saw fit to reveal how to extract this universal meaning from the literal of
Sacred Scripture. This new revelation had to be done by some person or through
that person's rational mind. God's Divine Speech to humankind goes through many
layers of understanding and meaning (see Section xx). When the rational mind
finally came into existence in18th century Western science, the new revelation
was given through the mind of a man in Sweden who had been prepared for this
universal mission since his early childhood.
Using the now revealed code of correspondences
we are able for the first time to know what spiritual or universal content is
hidden within the literal sentences of Divine Speech. This inner sense can be
extracted rationally, logically, and systematically by applying the method of
correspondences. What is thus obtained is a vast collection of new scientific
revelations that were hidden in the literal sentences of the Bible, and those of
the Writings. Through this new spiritual knowledge we can piece together a more
advanced scientific explanation of how God operates. We discover that God does
not operate by merely speaking commandments to physical objects, who then obey,
for this is not a scientific explanation of how it happens. It turns out that
God operates every physical event by means of natural-spiritual laws of
interaction called the laws of correspondences. There is a chain of logical
cause-effect events that proceed from God through various stages of
externalization or transformation, until the bottom of the chain is reached with
physical events.
This is no different than what we are used
to in managing our every day affairs. How does the Congress rule the country?
First there is debate and passage of a law. Then there is monitoring and enforcement
through various levels including inspectors, judges, lawyers, police, etc. It's
a complicated chain of events that is rational and scientifically describable,
understandable, and controllable. Similarly, how are cars possible in our
society? It's through a complex chain of events that includes
mining and transporting iron and aluminum to smelters, shaping the metal, adding
other materials made of rubber, glass, etc., assembling together, selling the
cars, maintaining them, and driving them. If you ask a child or illiterate
person how we have cars, the answer would be unscientific and unworkable in
reality. We have a similar distinction between the idea of God in religion,
which does not go into rational and logical mechanisms, and the idea of God in theistic
psychology, which shows the logical intervening steps of how events take place from
God's Will downward to the created world.
These cause-effect intermediate steps are
completely unknown and undiscoverable by science, which is why God needs to
make scientific revelations, bringing the knowledge and the facts to us.
Once the facts are known from revelation, they can be explored, confirmed,
extended, and applied just like we do with other scientific facts and
explanations.
Once again note that the scientific
revelations are not opposed to the religious perspective. In fact, the
scientific approach confirms the religious one, and goes further in explicating
the reality of God.
2.2
What about evil, sin,
hell, devil, and heaven in relation to theistic psychology?
Look at the Chart or model of theistic
psychology (above). At level 2, mystical
religion, heaven and hell are defined personally: "Those
who are faithful to their religion are rewarded with a new life in a heavenly
environment; others are punished with a life in hell." This level is not yet
universal even though it is more rational than materialistic science (level 1) which
prohibits the scientific use of heaven and hell in explanations about human
behavior. Since, according to theistic psychology, there is a heaven and a
hell, to deny its existence or refuse to include it, is not rational. But there
needs to be a level 3 thinking in order to properly make use of heaven and hell
as universal scientific concepts for explaining all human behavior, regardless
of times, religion and culture.
Level 3 thinking about heaven and hell, as
formulated in the Writings of Swedenborg, raises the rationality of these concepts to
a universal pan-human, and timeless level. "Those
who modify their character to become altruistic and rational continue life to
eternity in heaven; others in hell." (see Chart
above) The Writings present a precise description of the anatomy of the
human mind as a spiritual-biological organ located in the spiritual body which
Swedenborg studied and observed daily for 27 years. These details indicate that
the human mind has two major levels, each level having its particular organs of
the affective and cognitive operation.
The lower level is the
natural mind with two sub-levels: the corporeal-sensory mind (receiving input
from physical sensations reaching the brain), and above this, the
natural-rational mind (receiving input from the corporeal-sensory mind, and
deriving abstract ideas from it). The natural mind is also called the "external"
mind.
The higher level called the spiritual mind, also has two sub-levels of physiological operation: the rational-spiritual
mind and the rational-celestial mind. The spiritual mind does not receive input
from the natural world, as in the case of the lower external mind. The
higher spiritual mind operates with input from the spiritual world only. It cannot receive
input from the natural world. The operations of the spiritual or
"interior" mind are unconscious while we are connected to a physical body. Upon
death of the physical body, we are cut off from input from the natural world. At
that point we "awaken" and become conscious in the spiritual mind (see
"resuscitation" in Chapter 1). Once fully resuscitated (about 30 hours after
death), we are
able to observe the environment in the spiritual world, which we could not do
before. At that point we begin to observe and confirm what Swedenborg was able
to see and hear for 27 years prior to his death in 1772.
Upon "death" the spiritual mind continues
its operation and serves for our immortal life in the spiritual world. You can
see that the quality of the spiritual mind that we each bring "with us"
determines the quality of our life in the spiritual world. The spiritual
mind is the containant of our inner character--what we love more than
anything--the hierarchy of our motives and satisfactions. The quality of
the human mind is defined by the level of its affective and cognitive
functioning. The quality of the "external" natural mind is determined by the
quality of our experiences and knowledge, built up over years of development and
growth. The affective organ operates our feelings and motives, while the
cognitive organs operates our thinking and reasoning. According to theistic
psychology, there is a built-in hierarchy of functioning in the human mind
so that our thinking and feeling can be rational and altruistic, or by
deliberate inversion, irrational
and selfish.
Irrational and selfish thinking and
feeling in the external conscious natural mind prevents the interior spiritual
mind from developing within the conscious natural mind. On the other hand, rational and altruistic thinking and
feeling in the external conscious natural mind allows for the full development
of the interior spiritual-natural mind. When we "awaken" to our immortal
life in the spiritual body, it is the quality of this spiritual interior mind
that determines our fate forever. In level 2 religious thinking, hell is a place
of punishment for "sins" while heaven is a place of reward for faith
and charity. But at level 3 thinking, theistic psychology gives a rational,
medical, and scientific definition for sin and hell. Sin refers to the conscious
lifestyle we choose when we acquire habits of thinking and feeling that are
selfish and irrational. Sin is therefore a personality habit evaluated in terms
of the anatomy of the human mind and its built-in structure and operation.
Swedenborg interviewed many individuals in
the world of spirits whose permanent residence was called "the hells." They are
called "devils," "satans," and "genii," depending on the specific forms of their
evil lifestyle. Reading these interviews, one can recognize their habits of thinking
and motivation, which tend toward extreme forms of irrationality, egocentrism,
and delusion. By contrasting novice arrivals with those who had been there
for a long time, Swedenborg was able to show that the longer you live in the
spiritual world, the more advanced becomes the form of your character. If the
interior spiritual mind with which you arrive contains rational and altruistic
habits of operation, then you continue to grow in that direction. Swedenborg
interviewed inhabitants of "the heavens" who have been there a long time and
found superior forms of intelligence and community with them. Likewise,
Swedenborg found large individual differences among the inhabitants of the
hells, so that these are actually arranged in layers of "degrees of evil." The
inhabitants of the heavens are called "angels," and they are similarly arranged
in layers of "degrees of good."
Given these anatomical descriptions of the
human mind you can see that a major purpose of theistic psychology is to help
individuals develop rational and altruistic habits of character. Nothing in this
life on earth can be more important since how we train ourselves during a few
decades here on earth, determines how happy or miserable we will be forever in
our immortality. Note that heaven
and hell refer to mental states or operations. The human mind is an organ built
from immortal substances of the Spiritual Sun just like the brain is built from
temporary matter from the physical suns or stars in our galaxy.
When we operate at the lowest level in our
mind, our conscious awareness is flooded with "hell," that is, with feelings and
thoughts that are irrational and selfish, like aggressiveness, rage, cruelty,
prejudice, discrimination, injustice, unfairness, depression, envy, fear,
anxiety, compulsion, destructiveness, disrespect for others, etc. Living or
experiencing these negative mental operations is called "being in hell."
Conversely, when we operate at the higher level in our mind, our conscious
awareness is flooded with "heaven," that is, with feelings and thoughts tat are
rational and altruistic, like compassion, cooperativeness, respect for others,
obedience to moral norms, rational cumulative knowledge, inventiveness,
industriousness, peacefulness, honesty, sincerity, etc.
Note that while we are still living
attached to the natural world we are able to operate in both heaven and hell in
our mind, though not at the same time. Everyone experiences moments of terror,
depression, selfishness, or insane hatred and rage, just as everyone experiences
moments of sincerity, self-sacrifice, and respect for others. You cannot be
simultaneously in heaven and in hell, but you can alternate and take turns
rising to the upper level of your mental functioning and dropping to the bottom.
But this bimodal or ambivalent mental functioning radically changes when we are
cut off from the physical body and begin functioning in the spiritual body in
the world of spirits. We are called "spirits" when we lose our physical
body and awaken in our spiritual body. After a brief period of rapid change, we
continue life permanently either as "devils" living in our lower states of mind
("the hells"), or as "angels" living in our higher states of mind ("the
heavens").
It's extremely important to realize and
understand that the spiritual physiology of the mind does not allow mixing of
lower and upper states of thinking and feeling. Once we become "spirits" there
is no possibility of mixing or alternating our mental operations from low to
high, or high to low, as we do while we are still conscious in the
physical body. Swedenborg reports a number of experiments he conducted in which
he was able to observe what happens when some "devils" living in their lower
mind were experimentally introduced in the "heaven" of their mind. In other
words, the entire range of their mental potential was artificially activated and
made operational. Within a few moments these subjects reported that they can see
the heavens and the angels there and they were able to feel what it's like to be
an angel. Swedenborg observed them carefully and noted that they started feeling
very upset and were soon filled with such terror and agony that they lost
consciousness. They were then returned to their normal mental state of hell,
upon which they immediately started feeling normal. These experiments clearly
prove that it is not possible to switch from hell to heaven or vice versa, once
we become spirits.
The explanation is that the mental
physiology that is predominant becomes the only operation of life in the
spiritual world. Swedenborg describes the hellish portion of the mind as
containing masses of neurons and networks that curl counterclockwise, the
opposite of the neuronal pathways of our heavenly mind. Either one or the other
must predominate and then eliminates or silences the function of the other.
2.3.
Is theistic psychology really science?
Theistic psychology is science because it
meets all the requirements of science.
(a) It is based on cumulative research by
independent scientists who can rationally evaluate each other’s work.
(b) It employs empirical methods for
extracting knowledge from the scientific revelations in the Writings of
Swedenborg (1688-1772). These include
-
data on the spiritual world,
-
observations of experiments in the
spiritual world,
-
interviews with large samples of
individuals who are living in the afterlife,
-
descriptions and models of the anatomy of
the human mind which becomes visible in the spiritual world, historical details
about pre-historic life on this planet,
-
descriptions of life on other planets,
-
the science of correspondences, and
-
a rational model of God’s management
techniques.
(c) Systematic application of revealed
principles to the description of events and behavior. Theistic psychologists do
not invent their own theories as in atheistic psychology, which has ended up with
a potpourri of contradictory explanations of portions of human behavior. All theories in
theistic psychology must be drawn from these scientific revelations and
must agree with them. Other psychologists must be able to corroborate the
theories in two ways:
(i)
theoretical—any new theory must not contradict the rational structure
that has already developed by lawful extraction from the scientific revelations
in the Writings of Swedenborg . Instead, it must enrich it by explaining more
than what has been explained so far about any topic in human behavior. Other
psychologists must be able to comprehend and corroborate the new theory by
confirming it with the Writings of Swedenborg for consistency and acceptability.
(ii) predictive—every theory or model must also
be able to predict new data about human behavior and must explain related data
that other psychologists may bring in.
Given these prerequisites of science,
theistic psychology meets all of them.
Further, new knowledge about
human behavior can come into existence when the scientific revelations are used
as predictive models for empirical research. New applications can be discovered
through the self-witnessing approach which consists of self-study,
self-observation, self-monitoring in the affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor
areas of behavior (see Section xx). The mental states and their changes come about as a result of
being influenced through the vertical community. Knowledge of the
vertical community described in the Writings of Swedenborg allows theistic
psychologists to trace the effects to particular mental states. This approach
opens up new effective advances in therapy, education, and behavioral
engineering.
Of course if one rejects the idea that the
Writings of Swedenborg are Divine scientific revelations, there is then no basis
for most of the assumptions and explanations in theistic psychology. This would
be a negative bias associated with atheistic science. But it is rational
to take the positive bias and accept as a premise that these are Divine
scientific revelations. Those who claim that the very idea of "Divine scientific
revelations" is unscientific and irrational cannot prove this point because the
idea of Divine scientific revelations is rational and scientific. Since either
position is possible in science this course examines the consequences of
adopting the positive bias in science.
Consider this: Many writers have come up
with various ideas they claimed to be scientific, but they were not. How did
people know that they were unscientific? Several instances are discussed in the
history of psychology. For instance, people introduced phrenology as a science
based on the theory that "as the skull takes its shape from the brain, the
surface of the skull can be read as an accurate index of psychological aptitudes
and tendencies... For example, a prominent protuberance in the forehead at the
position attributed to the organ of Benevolence was meant to indicate that the
individual had a "well developed" organ of Benevolence and would therefore be
expected to exhibit benevolent behavior" (quoted on the Web at
pages.britishlibrary.net/phrenology/overview.htm ). Phrenology failed as a
science because of two reasons. One is that it made factual claims that were
proven wrong. The other was that it lacked internal consistency. This means that
it was not a rationally integrated system, so that if one extended one
explanation to its logical limit, it would clash with other explanations already
given.
Another example of rejecting the scientific claim made by
some people is the "science" of the paranormal. The Skeptics Society on the Web
gives numerous examples, of which I shall quote just one:
clairvoyance or second sight
Clairvoyance is an alleged psychic ability to see things beyond the range of
the power of vision. Clairvoyance is usually associated with precognition or
retrocognition. The faculty of seeing into the future is called "second sight"
if it is not induced by scrying, drugs, trance, or other artificial means.
People can predict the future. We do it all the time, but we usually, if
not always, do it by taking into account our experience, knowledge and
surroundings. Some predictions by psychics come true. So do some predictions
by non-psychics. No doubt much of our anticipation of the future is
unconscious and second nature, but it is based on quite natural and mundane
abilities not on mysterious or supernatural powers. (The Skeptic's
Dictionary at
skepdic.com/clairvoy.html ).
In other words, the claim to science by the paranormal investigators failed
because their explanations for the facts they observed did not make a coherent
system and other already existing explanations were available to explain the
observed facts.
In the case of theistic psychology these problems are not
present. There are no better explanations for the facts Swedenborg reports.
Those who deny that these facts are real have no explanation for them other than
that Swedenborg was delusional or deceptive. This is the negative bias. In fact
there have been many independent biographical investigations on his life and it
was universally determined that Swedenborg was a reputable, honest, sincere, and
moral person with strong religious convictions all his life. Swedenborg is
recognized as a great genius from his literary works and scientific inventions.
The explanations he offers for the facts in his reports are rational and
scientific because that's who he was. And he is so successful that nothing can
be found in his 30 volumes that is inconsistent with something else. Instead of
contradictions we find richness of meaning so that we can investigate specific
topics or concepts by comparing passages and cumulating what is said about that
topic. Unexpected new understanding comes from such "extractive" research (see
Section xx).
2.3.1
Psychology as Science
In terms of evaluating Swedenborg's explanations and
principles, consider that many theories and concepts exist in
psychology today that have never been proven to be valid or correct, and many
that have been proven false or incorrect. It is not easy to prove that a
scientific theory is correct or incorrect because a theory leads to multiple
predictions and not all conditions can be controlled or accessed. Further,
several contradictory theories can yet explain the same facts, though not all
the facts. Hence the "science" of psychology is a diverse collection of theories
and concepts that are not consistent with each other. It's common for
psychologists to have disagreements about methodology so that some psychologists
see themselves to have proven something, while their critics do not.
Consider further what is considered proof
in scientific psychology today. For example, the history of psychology is
replete with studies showing a significant positive correlation between
intelligence and performance on many types of tasks. Some of the best
correlations go up in the .80's. Now what kind of proof is this? A correlation
of .80 means that (.80x.80x100)=64 percent of the variance in performance is due
to intelligence. Clearly, intelligence influences performance but in one third
of the process it does not. Is this therefore a scientific explanation? Yes,
even though it's not provable. Science is so complex that it's not accurate to
describe it as consisting only of that which is provable. I would venture to say
that the majority of concepts used in the scientific journal literature today,
is probably not provable.
Take another example. Experiments have
been done that prove that people who have been abused as children, later become
abusers themselves. Yet there is always a certain percent of people that do not
fit the proof (people who have been abused as children but have never abused
anyone).
Take another example. Clinical psychologists are strongly
research oriented yet they justify certain practices even though there is no
scientific proof for them. For instance, sex therapists advice some of their
clients to improve their marital sex by fantasizing being with others while the
married couple is having sex. The unproven theory is that fantasy is harmless
because it's just in the mind. It's not like having an affair. In theistic
psychology much is known about the mind that is not known to clinical
psychologists. Fantasy is in fact more real than having an affair, so that both
are destructive of married love, which is based on permanent exclusivity and
totality (see Section xx).
Freud is consistently selected today among the greatest
psychologists who have helped create the science of psychology. Yet Freud's
theories were never proven to be correct. Mush research exists in the field of
"psychodynamic psychology" yet no one has been able to prove that the
unconscious exists, nor the ego, nor the superego, nor the sexuality of
children, etc.
In the area of "educational psychology" mush research has
been done on theories and methods of instruction, yet many of them are
contradictory to each other, and none of them are effective enough to benefit
many children. Clearly, theories of learning in instruction are not proven to be
correct yet they form part of the science of psychology. Similarly with theories
about parenting and about criminal behavior--research that is heavily supported
by the federal granting agencies. None of these theories are proven to be
correct and the research continues as theories come and go.
In fact there is little we can
find in the science of psychology that gives proof of any theory or hypothesis.
Instead, we have probabilities obtained with samples and we accept the 95
percent or 99 percent cut off point. In other words hardly any proof of any
theory exists in the science of psychology. All that exists is probability,
sampling, and conventional limits of acceptance. Clearly, the concept of God is
kept out of the science of psychology today not because there is proof that it
is an invalid concept or model, but because there is an agreement to keep it
out, and all its related topics. This is the negative bias.
To argue that the science of psychology proceeds only by
proof is therefore an oversimplified and inaccurate view. What does make
psychology scientific?
To understand this issue we need to look at it historically.
Looking at history from the Western perspective, psychology as a specialized
knowledge goes back thousands of years to Aristotle and Plato, and some before
that. In the 18th century, at the time Swedenborg was publishing the books of
the Writings, psychology as an academic discipline was mixed with philosophy.
It' not until the end of the 19th century that psychologists were given their
own department and filed of science. It was necessary to make a quick and sharp
break with philosophy so that psychology can become a science and join the
rapidly growing sciences in all fields of society.
Psychologists formed themselves into a distinct profession at
the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time there were just a few
hundred psychologists. by the time I joined the American Psychological
Association in 1959 it had 20,000 members. Today APA membership is around
100,000. You can see more details about APA growth in this article:
psychclassics.yorku.ca/Fernberger/1943/
The science of psychology is a science today not because it
works only with scientific proof of its theories, but because it follows
rational methods of inquiry. Since psychology is defined as the study of human
behavior, following rational methods of inquiry means that we have
methodological procedures for collecting facts about human behavior. We are able
to set up data collection procedures under certain stated conditions, and we
then cumulate the results from independent researchers, forming rational and
consistent explanations at both the level of the data collected and its
integration with other data. This is what makes psychology a science.
Contrast psychology with the fields of philosophy or
religion. Neither of these two academic disciplines claim to be a science
because they do not have methodological procedures for collecting data that some
theory predicts. Neither are they committed to the idea that all theories in
philosophy or religion should fit together into one rational and integrated
system.
2.3.2
Criteria for Theistic Psychology as
Science
Theistic psychology is a proposal to allow
God as a scientific concept as long as it meets scientific, rational, and
logical criteria, as follows: It must
(1) be rational, coherent, internally
consistent, comprehensive, understandable, capable of representation in models
and diagrams
(2) not contradict common sense and
scientific reasoning
(3) have a factual empirical basis of
systematic observations and experiments
(4) be capable of supporting normal
scientific cumulative research by a generational scientific community
Are there others that are not included
here? Any scientist like myself can study the Writings of Swedenborg and
critically evaluate them on the basis of these four essential criteria for what
constitutes a scientific proposal. I have done so for a number of years and I
have concluded that the Writings of Swedenborg conform fully to these four
criteria.
Note this important observation: Many scientists
feel free to reject the
proposals of theistic psychology without having read the Writings of
Swedenborg. Thus, they do not make a rational analysis, nor an informed
conclusion. This is the negative bias. There are hundreds of professional scientists and philosophers who
have made a thorough examination of the Writings of Swedenborg and have come to
a similar conclusion that I have, namely, that they are valid and rational
explanations of God, the mind, the spiritual world, the afterlife,
natural-spiritual correspondences, revelation, and many more topics (refer to the Reading List).
Swedenborg's name has been excluded from
the history of psychology because the field of psychology struggled to become
accepted as a full fledged science in the 20th century, and to
include Swedenborg's unique experience about another world, and his claim to
have talked to Aristotle, the Virgin Mary, Newton and many others, would have
threatened the ability of psychology to achieve the status of science in the
eyes of materialistic scientists. Excluding
Swedenborg, regardless of his genius, appeared necessary for self-preservation.
This is known to have actually happened in the case the famous philosopher
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a contemporary of Swedenborg. According to the
dictionary he was a German philosopher who "developed critical philosophy
determining the nature and limits of knowledge, categories of consciousness and
their ethical and aesthetic consequences." Kant had heard of some strange powers
possessed by Swedenborg and placed an order for one of his books with a
publisher. The letter he wrote has been published in biographies of Kant and it
shows that Kant asked the publisher not to tell anyone that he had ordered a
Swedenborg book because he thought that to be associated with Swedenborg might
hurt his chances of getting a professorship he was hoping for at the university.
Kant's reputation as the founder of "critical philosophy" had to be maintained
as rational and scientific, as defined by the materialistic course that science
was setting for itself in the 19th century.
Psychology was trying to separate itself
from philosophy. History of psychology literature and textbooks invariably trace
the birth of scientific psychology to Wundt in 1879. This momentous event is
founded on actually something very small -- a little room in the building where
Professor Wundt was teaching in Leipzig, Germany, which he officially designated
as a "Psychology Laboratory." It contained some tables and chairs and a few pieces
of equipment to measure vision, perception, and hand movements. That's it. How
could this be taken to be the beginning of scientific psychology? It seems so
modest and insignificant for such a momentous claim: In 1878 psychology was not
yet a science. In 1879 psychology became a science.
But this attitude can be understood if we
put it in the context of psychology in the 20th century wanting desperately to
be accepted as a full fledged science. Where can 20th century psychology as a science trace its roots
to? It makes sense to pick an event that highlights psychology's involvement
with a methodology based on physical measurements. That's what Wundt's action
did. He declared to the world that psychology from now on was going to be allied
to physics, chemistry, and anatomy. Note that Swedenborg's psychology antedates
Wundt by more than 100 years, but Swedenborg disqualified himself by talking
about the spiritual world, Sacred Scripture, and heaven and hell. This is what
psychology wanted to run away from so that it may independent of religion,
theology, and philosophy.
Kant was influential in the development of
scientific psychology but he himself was a philosopher and Kant appears mostly
in the history of psychology books rather than in psychology books. What
happened to Kant regarding Swedenborg happened to another philosopher who was
even more influential than Kant in the development of 20th century psychology.
His name is William James (1842-1910). You can see a useful chronology of his
life here:
www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/jphotos.html He belonged to a well known
literary family. His brother was the famous poet and novelist Henry James, and
his father, Henry James, Sr., was a well-known literary figure and critic. Henry
James had read Swedenborg before the birth of the two sons, and he was so taken
and passionate about the Writings that he wrote two books and dozens of magazine
articles trying to convince people of the uniqueness and greatness of these
Writings.
Henry James home schooled his two sons
Henry and William so I expect that the boys grew up familiar with Swedenborg's
ideas through their father. And yet here is the remarkable fact: neither Henry
nor William James ever mention the name of Swedenborg in their many famous and
influential publications. How can this be? My answer is that referring to
Swedenborg in circles of materialistic science at the end of the19th century would have
been the kiss of death for their career. William James received a professorship
at Harvard University and having studied in Germany it was natural for him to
create a laboratory of psychology and a department of psychology separate from
the philosophy department.
Before that James actually got and MD degree at
Harvard and taught courses in anatomy and physiology. His first course in
psychology was taught in 1875, four years prior to Wundt's famous laboratory. He
was appointed professor of philosophy in 1885. He published his famous
two-volume book Principles of Psychology in 1890. This is considered to
be the first textbook of the science of psychology. James had chapters on
habit, attention, perception, association, memory, reasoning, instinct, emotion,
imagination, psychological methods, hypnotism, consciousness, and self. He
relied heavily on laboratory research data and excluded concepts that could not
be tied down to laboratory measurements. James showed the rest of the 20th
century psychology how to transform philosophical ideas like attention,
consciousness, instinct into materialistic concepts that were measurable under
controlled conditions.
One can understand therefore that William
James did not want to refer to the name of Swedenborg in a book he hoped to be
the world's first scientific textbook in modern psychology.
But what about his subsequent
books, that are equally well known, even today: The Will to Believe (1897),
Talks to Teachers (1899) and especially, Varieties of
Religious Experience (1902), which discusses why people believe in God and
what emotions and feelings are involved in their relationship to God. His
approach is strictly objective, somewhat like the literature on the psychology
of religion is today and has been since the 1950s. Swedenborg is not mentioned
anywhere.
In 1900 the science of psychology stood at a critical
crossroad. The fateful dilemma facing the field was represented by two American
psychologists, one at Harvard by the name of William James and the other at
Cornell by the name of Edward B. Titchener. Both had studied in Germany with the
great Wundt at Leipzig who created the first laboratory of psychology. Both came
back and enjoyed a following of admirers. Both were doing research on
consciousness, perception, and learning. Titchener based his research on the
method of introspectionism while William James based his research on
materialistic measurements such as Wundt and Fechner had invented. The science
of psychology decided to stake its scientific future with the functional
behavioral methodology of William James, Watson, and Skinner. Introspectionism
as a method of studying the human mind was eliminated. By mid century in the
1950s when I began the study of psychology, it was no longer an option for Ph.D.
graduate students to do their research using the method of introspectionism.
Now, a century later, as we are launching ourselves into the
21st century, theistic psychology emerges on the horizon of the science of
psychology. One can only wonder what psychology would be today had the field
picked Titchener to follow instead of William James. It strikes me as a
historical irony that atheistic psychology counts William James as its American
founder given that William James was home schooled by Henry James, Sr., one of
the staunchest and well known 19th century supporter of the Writings of
Swedenborg.
The systematic exclusion of Swedenborg
from the development of psychology can therefore be understood as the attempt to
maintain a strict and pure negative bias regarding God in materialistic science. Along with
God, psychology excluded almost every concept Swedenborg wrote about -- heaven,
hell, spirits, immortality, angels, devils, resuscitation, revelation, sacred
scripture. All these ideas were lumped together as either religion,
superstition, or fantasy, but not science. Thus, although Swedenborg's Writings
were well known and influential in the literary intelligentsia of 19th century
life, he was totally unknown to scientists in the 20th century.
Nevertheless there were dozens of scholars
who studied Swedenborg and kept translating the Writings into modern languages
and publishing articles and books on him. At the end of the 20th century, and
today, at the start of the 21st century, a steady new trend has begun in the
halls of science. I call this new trend in science "the positive bias." This new
attitude will allow more scientists, especially psychologists, to approach
Swedenborg's Writing's in order to critically examine it as psychology, rather
than to dismiss them automatically without critically examining them. It is
noteworthy that theistic psychology uses a methodology called self-witnessing
(see Section xx). This consists of self-monitoring activities that are
essentially "introspective" and whose purpose is to allow us to know the content
of our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. William James rejected both
introspectionism and the theistic psychology of Swedenborg. But a century later
both return to science through this textbook.
For a less pessimistic view of William James' relationship to
Swedenborg, see the interesting article by Dr. Sonia Werner, a contemporary
Swedenborgian scholar (see Reading List).
For additional details on my perspective of behaviorism and
the history of psychology, consult this article on the Web:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/pun/ccp1.html
2.3.3
Can an atheist be an expert in theistic
science?
This is an odd question. It is similar to
this: Can an overweight psychologist be an expert in weight loss methods? Can a
three times divorced marriage therapist be an expert in marriage therapy? An
atheist retains the negative bias towards the Writings. This bias will influence
the interpretation given to every sentence. Reading the Writings in the negative
bias orientation guarantees that its facts will be dismissed as having been made
up by Swedenborg. The rationality that is so obvious and enlightening in the
positive bias orientation, will not be apparent in the negative bias mode of
reasoning. Failing to see the coherence and the rationality, one is then left to
the wishy washy conclusion that has been often voiced by mystical enthusiasts--"Swedenborg was one of the greatest geniuses of all times and he
traveled to realms of human experience few have reached." I refer to this as
wishy washy in the sense that it doesn't settle the issue. We are thrown right
back into something inconclusive from the perspective of rational understanding.
We are not convinced by anything we cannot
fully understand. If there is anything about an account that we do not fully
understand, yet we accept it as true--then we are being mystical. We are turning
into a mystic. We will be doing either of these two things, or alternately both:
(a) not believe anything and remain in the negative bias; or (b) believe anyway
even though it is a "blind faith." Some mystics even assert that blind faith is
the only genuine and true faith since you have to believe in what you don't
understand and what is a mystery to the human mind. Also, that God is beyond
human understanding, hence blind faith is greater than any faith based on what
we can understand. This is what I call an anti-intellectual argument. It is
based on questionable assumptions, and in fact the opposite is the case, as
demonstrated in the Writings.
Swedenborg was in the unique position of
interviewing thousands of novitiate spirits (or new arrivals) in the spiritual
world, as well as how they changed in the course of their transformation in the
second death, which is the phase where we undergo total separation between our
hellish and heavenly traits. It is clear when you read his reports that
inevitably all those who arrived with a blind faith, which is also called a
"persuasive faith," did not have enough power of rationality to acquire the
rational truths that every spirit must acquire in order to retain the heavenly
traits and let go of the hellish traits. This is the second death, and the
result is that people are either awakened in the heaven of their mind, or in the
hell of their mind. a fateful phase that is irreversible to eternity!
Why? Or better, how does this happen? What
are the specific mechanisms by which this fateful separation is carried out?
Theistic psychology can speak rationally to these issues.
Think of how a computer is run by its
program or how an awards banquet is run by the host. Each step is followed by
the next step as dictated by the program or protocol. Now consider what happens
when a disorderly guest decides to follow another order than what is prescribed.
There is a disruption created and if the guest insists, he or she is removed
by force so that the program or protocol can run its course. Consider now what
happens in rational ether in which our mind exists, and from which its organs
are made. The affective organ is different from the cognitive organ and both are
different from the sensorimotor organ. They each have their own working
rationality, which refers to the program or protocol that creates and activates
their operations. But all three organs must operate, if they operate, in rational
ether.
The “expanse” of the spiritual world may be called rational
ether which is also the expanse in our mind. It is like the grammar of the
language you speak. The grammar is made up of an integrated collection of
rational rules called "syntax." Linguists have given precise mathematical
descriptions to these abstract higher order psycho-linguistic units in language.
Everyone thinks in terms of
rational categories imposed by the structure of the mental organs in which
thinking takes place. Now if you arrive into the spiritual world you must be
able to function rationally, or else you are an irrational person living in a
rational world. And that produces a hell in the mind. In this
world one can be irrational in many things and be rational in some other things.
This is because our heavenly traits are all rational while our hellish traits
are all irrational. Traits are kept in place by the affective organ where our
loves and motives operate and live. Good loves or altruistic loves can only
unite with rational thoughts, while hurtful loves or selfish loves can only
unite with falsified truths which, if believed, make us irrational.
This is then the mechanism by which we
rise to our heaven or fall into our hell. It is a predetermined and unchangeable
universal law for all humans, just like pregnancy and birth are. While we are
still in this world we can alternate between rational and irrational states,
which means also, that we can alternate between good loves and bad. But this
alternation is impossible in the spiritual world where opposites destroy each
other if brought together. The only way heavenly and hellish character traits
can both survive forever, is by strict and total segregation, never to be
brought together again. Nothing of the bad can ever enter heaven, any more than
a house can pass through the pores in your skin. Nothing of the good can enter
hell, any more than an ice cube can survive under the heat of a torch. This is
quite clear if you consider the psycho-physiology and biochemistry of the
spiritual body (see Section xx). It would be similar to opening a
door lock by turning the key clockwise, which is the way it was closed in the
first place. It is mechanically, logically, and rationally not possible. Not a
single injurious or selfish trait can live, operate, or survive in the sphere of
rational ether purified, as it is in the heaven of every human being.
2.3.4 Who is to
tell us what are good traits and what evil?
There are two possible sources for
information on good vs. evil, one human,
the other Divine. Any theory developed by another human being is fallible and
potentially erroneous, as seen when more of the facts come to light. Hence
whatever people have said about good vs. evil over the generations was up for
debate between followers and antagonists of the theory. Evidence is often uses
in these debates but is not foolproof evidence and the other side can always
question it on this or that ground.
The second source to tell us what is evil
vs. good is Divine revelation in the form of Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech
which enters the conscious natural mind of a chosen individual who was prepared
for receiving it. The individual writes it down accurately word for word. A
collection of such Divine dictations has been given several times in the history
of peoples and cultures on this earth. Divine Speech is the source of our
rational ideas, ideas that are based on spiritual reality, not natural appearances.
This is how the succeeding generations knew that there is God, heaven and hell,
and what we must do to avoid hell and enter heaven. These revelations can be
called scientific because they are rational truths about the natural world and
how its phenomena are dependent on the spiritual world. In the history of
scientific revelations, only the Writings of Swedenborg come to us through the
rational mind of a scientist and engineer with an impeccable reputation and
admirable accomplishments--and not through mystical dictation not understood by
the prophet, as in the case of the Old and New Testaments.
Theistic psychology as science was not possible prior to
the Writings of Swedenborg because only mystical theories and subjective
speculations were available about a supposed spiritual world. We had to be
satisfied with someone's incomprehensible claims about mystical experiences such as a "feeling of
oneness with the All," etc. This never really impressed me because I had no
interest whatsoever in believing anybody's theory or experience. It seemed
useless to me in terms of my own mental development. But when I fell upon the
books of the Writings in our university library in 1981 I left my beliefs behind
and focused totally on the unprecedented state of clear rationality, page after
page, and book after book. Belief and faith are nothing to me while understanding
rationally is everything. Rational understanding is a relief that is difficult
to imagine in advance. We get used to living in a negative bias that is filled
with half-truths and incomplete understandings of the major issue in our
lives--love, truth, heaven, hell, marriage, God.
Now as one enters into the rationality of
scientific revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg, a cognitive dense fog
lifts from the mind and is replaced by crystal clear mental vision of all the
important things in life, and especially what is a good trait in our mind and
what is a bad trait. Upon this distinction our eternal future is based. It's a
practical or pragmatic issue for all of us. Nothing can be a more vital issue. Can you think of anything more important?
2.4
What about the spiritual world and the afterlife—how can that
be researched?
Theistic psychology
investigates the overlap between the mental world and the spiritual world by
means of the laws of correspondences revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg.
These scientific revelations indicate that we are born dual citizens in the
natural and spiritual world, living in both worlds simultaneously. Our physical
operations in the brain and its physical body parallel exactly our mental
operations in the mind and its spiritual body. Our brain is active in
correspondence with our mind—what we think and feel. The mind is in the
spiritual body while the brain is in the physical body, and the two are tied by
scientific correspondence laws. When the physical body dies, the connection is
broken, and the person becomes conscious in the spiritual body. This is
what Swedenborg was able to experience many times, but prior to the death of his physical
body. When we awaken in the spiritual world a few hours after death, we can
begin the process of corroborating directly everything that Swedenborg was able
to perceive.
Before the death of the physical
body, the individual’s conscious awareness is in the natural mind, which
receives input from the physical senses, and therefore what we see around us is
the natural world on the planet. But upon the death of the physical body we lose
our conscious awareness of the physical world, since our natural senses are no
longer functioning. Instead, we now have conscious awareness of the spiritual
world through the senses of the spiritual body or mind. Now we live an immortal
life in this spiritual world. The character of this life and the laws of the
spiritual world are described in detail through the direct observations of
Swedenborg for 27 years of daily living in both worlds. His conscious awareness
was working for both his natural mind and his spiritual mind so that he could
observe how the two interact. This kind of dual ability was not granted to any
scientist since the beginning of history.
He could also report what he noticed about
people when they were recent arrivals in the spiritual world. He was able to
make a comparison between their external mind, which they had at arrival, and
their internal mind, which became visible when their external mind was made functionless
(the "second death"). You can corroborate the existence of your two
minds by practicing self-witnessing or self-monitoring of the stream of your
thoughts and feelings all day long. As you practice you can notice that
your mind is organized at two levels. The internal mind is able to perceive the
thoughts of the external mind so that you can be conscious of what your "lower
self" is thinking and intending. Often our external mind is civilized and polite
while our internal mind is furious and resentful. Most people are not aware that
they are radically different on the inside, below their subconscious. Sometimes
we surprise ourselves by thinking or feeling something, and that's because we
don't really know our inner feelings and thoughts. Once we awaken in the
spiritual world at the death of the physical body, everyone is able like
Swedenborg, to observe how new arrivals in the spiritual world cast off their
outer personality of being nice and reasonable, and suddenly become ugly,
aggressive, and irrational. And sometimes the reverse also happens.
We can therefore investigate
the life after death through Swedenborg's data, and also, investigate how our
current behavior is influenced by the behavior of those who come into contact
with our spiritual body in the spiritual world--the vertical community (see
Section xx).
Swedenborg was able to talk to an acquaintance from Sweden while he was being buried at
the funeral,
and he was amazed that the mourners thought of him as being dead. He was not able to be conscious of events in the physical
world, as Swedenborg was, so he was relying on what Swedenborg was seeing by being
present at the funeral.
In the spiritual world
there is no physical space but only the appearance of space, as in dreams.
Mentally we can travel to any distance instantaneously and therefore in the
spiritual world, which is like the mental world, all "travel" is instantaneous
and depending on the state of mind. When you change your thinking or your mood
in the spiritual world, the surrounding environment completely changes to
reflect your new mental state. Stability and localization in spiritual space
depends entirely on your mental state. Two individuals who are in an entirely
different mood cannot approach each other or be in the same "space" for contact.
The spiritual world is thus a map of the mental world, and vice versa. This
correspondence offers various methodologies for research which we will explore
(see Section xx).
We may wonder in what way Swedenborg was
special that he was able to be conscious simultaneously in the natural and
spiritual worlds. Could this happen to anyone else?
In terms of human anatomy there was
nothing special or different about Swedenborg. Every human being possesses at
birth a spiritual body and mind, which is an organ with three sub-components
able to operate at three separate levels of feeling, thinking and sensing. The
first level of the mind is called the natural mind and it forms our normal
consciousness every day. Its content is our socialized life on earth. When
educated, the natural mind can ascend in consciousness to abstract thinking
about self and the world. This level of thinking is called the natural-rational
level of thinking. Above this natural mind we have our second mind which is the
middle mind. This spiritual mind is the intermediary between the outer natural
mind and the inmost celestial mind, which is the third and highest mind.
The middle mind is called the spiritual
mind and our thinking at this level is called spiritual-rational thinking. This
type of thinking is rational but it differs from the rational of the first level
called natural-rational thinking. What's the difference? The rationality of the
natural mind is a rationality based on sensory input through the physical
senses. This natural-rational way of thinking leads to atheism and materialism
unless redirected by our spiritual-rational mind which takes input from the
inmost celestial mind. The inmost celestial
mind takes input solely from the spiritual world. Its content is from what is
happening in the spiritual world surrounding our spiritual body.
You can see from this anatomical
description of the mind that every human being is capable, like Swedenborg, to
receive input from the spiritual world through our celestial mind. If we would
be able to be conscious of this input, we would be walking around in the
spiritual world like Swedenborg. The only difference is that we are not
conscious of the operations in our celestial mind while Swedenborg was allowed
to be conscious in both his natural mind and in his celestial mind. He records
an encounter with the Divine-Human that happened when he was 57 years old. The
Divine-Human identified Himself as God and told him in advance what's going to
happen and for what purpose, also implying, that He had been preparing
Swedenborg for this mission since early childhood. Swedenborg now, at age 57,
had acquired scientific knowledge, a rational way of thinking, and deep
reverence for God. He was ready to have his consciousness opened in the
celestial mind. He was able to see what we also experience when we lose
connection to the physical world and become spirits in the rational ether of the
spiritual world.
It took Swedenborg several months to get
completely adjusted to this new state of dual citizenship, but he then settled
down to the enormous task of writing scientific reports about what he saw and
heard with his celestial mind, of which he was conscious. He could therefore
record who he talked to in the spiritual world, what details he noticed in the
environment, what the geography was like, the language people speak when they
become spirits, whether families or spouses reunite in the "afterlife," how the
spirits interact with us, and many more details. The Writings of Swedenborg
constitute about 30 volumes in English translation.
Today no one else can be given the ability
of conscious awareness in the celestial mind without spiritual injury, for
reasons explained rationally in the Writings. Therefore we must rely on the only
source of objective data about the spiritual world. This is far better than to
speculate or to rely on what some people claim to be visions of the
spiritual world. Theistic psychology is therefore defined exclusively in terms
of the Writings of Swedenborg, the only source of objective data.
See also the section below called
The Empirical Methodology of Spiritual Self-Witnessing
2.5
Is
it possible that Swedenborg made it all up or was delusional at times?
Science is structured so that whatever
theory is being offered by someone must meet the requisite criteria for science.
First, other psychologists must be able to understand and corroborate every
explanation or conclusion based on the theory. Second, the theory must be
rational with coherent parts that fit together, and each part agreeing with what
is already known and accepted. Third, the theory must lead to accurate
and verifiable predictions about human behavior.
Swedenborg’s explanations in
his Writings about God and the spiritual world fully meet these three criteria.
First, I am an independent psychologist reading the Writings more than two
hundred years later, translated into English from Latin, and am able to
understand and corroborate every explanation or conclusion he presents. Second,
I can corroborate that it is a rational system, that all parts of it fit
together in a coherent and logical fashion, and that its conclusions agree with
everything that is already known about human nature, though it disagrees with
invalid theories, of which there are very many in materialistic psychology. Third, I have
incorporated some of the ideas into my research in psychology, and I discovered
that it offers good predictions regarding those aspects of human behavior that
constitute my research specialty. Some of this research is listed in the
Reading
List below.
Further, I expect that
as theistic psychology grows, more research on applied theistic psychology will
be generated in human areas of great need--addictive behavior, parenting,
instruction, marriage, relationships, anger management, depression, therapy, and others
(see Section xx).
This research will stem from Swedenborg's many observations of how the human
mind works. He was in a unique situation to be able to observe empirically people
before and after they had died. Ordinarily the thoughts and feelings of people can
only be inferred indirectly by various techniques that are rudimentary in
psychology and neuroscience--like personality tests and cat scans of the
brain. But none of this leads to a direct observation of a person's actual
mental world of thoughts and feelings.
But when scientists wake up in the
spiritual world shortly after the death of their physical body and brain, they are
able to directly observe and corroborate what Swedenborg observed when he was
permitted to have conscious presence simultaneously in the natural and spiritual
worlds. This special ability was given by God to Swedenborg for the purpose
of making it possible for him to deliver the scientific revelations in the Writings. These revelations show
why it is not permitted for other scientists to have the same observation platform. Direct
conscious observation of the spiritual world is an ability that every human
being is born with. This dual awareness or consciousness was available to the
earliest civilizations on this planet, according to Swedenborg's interviews with
the people in the spiritual world who lived on this earth in those early days.
But, as fully explained in the Writings, this dual awareness was
made neuro-biologically inert in subsequent generations in order to allow for
the evolution of rational spirituality (see Section xx).
If direct awareness of the spiritual world were allowed today, it would destroy
the rational evolution to which the human race is being taken.
Hence we cannot corroborate Swedenborg's
data by our own direct observations of the spiritual world while we are still in
this world. Some people argue that
because of this limitation, theistic psychology cannot be a true science. But I
do not agree with this argument, and I have brought forward many reasonable
considerations showing that this type of direct corroboration is not a
requirement for scientific proposals to be valid, as long as the other criteria
I specified are in force.
There are hundreds of other
scientists like myself who have been reading Swedenborg and have investigated
his rationality, his credentials, his honesty. There is
a near unanimous agreement by these investigators that Swedenborg was fully
rational, sane, and honest and that his Writings are among the deepest and most
important literature ever written.
2.6
What's the relation between the body, the mind, and the spiritual world?
Swedenborg's observations and experiments
are unique in the history of science because he was able to be simultaneously
aware of the natural and spiritual worlds. His data rationally demonstrate
that every event in the natural world is preceded by a corresponding event in
the spiritual world. In other words, what happens in the physical body (natural
world) corresponds one to one with what happens in the mind (spiritual world).
Recall that in the spiritual world the mind is visible just like the physical
body is visible in the natural world.
Here some facts we need to know in order
to understand the relation between "physical body" and "spiritual mind" (see the
concept of "substantive dualism" in Chapter xx).
(1) The scientific
laws of correspondence between natural events and their spiritual causes
were known in prehistoric times on this planet, but were subsequently forgotten
due to evolutionary and ecological changes described in the Writings (see the "Science of Correspondences"
in Chapter xx). Now that they are revealed
and accessible again, psychology can use it as a methodology for
body-mind investigations. For example, there is a correspondence between the
circulatory system of the body and the affective mind, and between the
respiratory system and the cognitive mind. This parallelism indicates that the
mind is a biological organ and has an anatomy that can be described. The mind
has two organs made of spiritual substances (not natural). Spiritual substances
originate from the Spiritual Sun of the spiritual world, while natural
substances originate from the natural sun near each planet. There is an exact
correspondence between how the natural sun produces the heart and the lungs, and
how the Spiritual Sun produces the affective and cognitive mind.
Future research in theistic psychology
will be able to discover the detailed relationships between body and mind. Since
the physical body is visible to our instruments and measurements, its known
physiology becomes a model for the mind's psychobiology that cannot be observed
with physical measurements.
(2) Every human being
is born simultaneously with a physical body and a spiritual body (see
"dual citizenship" in Chapter xx). The physical body is located in the natural world while the
spiritual body is located in the spiritual world. Swedenborg reports that the
spiritual body of those who are still alive on earth, is visible to the
inhabitants of the spiritual world, though no direct conscious communication is
possible until the person awakens in the spiritual body as soon as the physical
body is functionally dead (becomes a corpse). The mind with its affective and
cognitive organs is located in the spiritual body while the brain is
located in the physical body. Whatever happens to the physical body on
earth we can sensate and feel in our spiritual body
in the spiritual world. Since sensations. thoughts, and feelings are not
physical objects, they cannot be located in the material brain which is physical. Non
physical objects, that is, spiritual objects, must be located in the spiritual
body in the spiritual world. Sensations, thoughts and feelings are spiritual
objects and events.
(3) Natural objects,
like the physical body and brain, have a temporary life or existence, but
spiritual objects, like the mind or spiritual body, are permanent (immortal or
eternal). In other words, sensations, thoughts, and feelings are immortal parts
of human beings. Thus every thought and feeling we have is recorded permanently
in our interior memory, which is in the spiritual body. Swedenborg demonstrated
that people in the spiritual world are able to recall every single detail of
their lives on earth.
(4) When people awaken
in their spiritual body (shortly after death of the physical body), they begin
their new life in eternity. What kind of life is it? Swedenborg reports visiting
the lands and cities where people congregate there. Social life there depends on
the character or interior personality of the individuals. People whose character
is in altruism and mutual love, congregate together and see their environment as
some heavenly appearance that corresponds to their altruism and mutual love. They
appear young, beautiful, and ecstatically happy in their condition of eternal
conjugial life. Nothing is lacking. Everything is supplied before them, whatever
they want or fancy, which is all good.
But people who are selfish, cruel, and
dishonest in their character or interior personality habits, congregate in
different places that appear like hell cities in their atrocities, cruelties,
and hatreds for each other. In this way human lives are spent in eternity,
either in heavenly conditions or in hellish conditions, depending on people's
character, which is the quality of the mind, of the thoughts and feelings they
have and constitute their living, or very life. These cannot be taken away or
substituted for other thoughts and feelings without destroying the very self or
basis of the individual as a unique human being.
Hence it is that theistic psychology is so
important for humanity for it can give everyone the tools and motivation needed
for character change here on earth, so that we may become altruistic and live in
mutual love. Nothing can be more important to each of us than this, assuming
Swedenborg's reports to be true. If one rejects all the evidence recorded in Divine scientific
revelations as untrue or delusional, then none of this preparation for the
afterlife can make sense or be important. But if these revelations are indeed
Divine and true, then nothing can be
more important. To decide whether it is true or not, it is necessary to examine
all the evidence that Swedenborg brings forth. It should not be rejected out
of hand just because it doesn't fit the negative bias of atheistic science today.
2.7
Theoretical Implications of God's Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence
The concept of God in theistic psychology
has logical implications that must apply to all explanations and models.
God is the only concept that implies
infinity.
In the Writings of Swedenborg it is
revealed that "in God-Man infinite things are one distinctly" (DLW 22). This
means that God is the unifying concept that explains how the universe is
integrated in a coherent whole. No detail, event, or quality in the dual
universe (natural and spiritual) can exist detached from this whole.
"Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence " are logical implications that
follow from the definition of God as infinite, which means that God has no
beginning or end. Rationally, there can be only one infinite. Two infinites are
not possible--it's a logical contradiction since infinite means no limits, and
if there are two infinites, each is limited, and this is illogical. Therefore
only God can be infinite.
Infinity has several logical implications, besides
there being only one infinite. Since God is infinite He cannot remove Himself
from anywhere, since there cannot be a limit to God's infinity. Every attribute
one can assign to God must be infinite. To say that God is infinite is the same
as saying that whatever is in God is infinite. We know from God's revelations to
humankind that there are many things in God, and they can be summarized as
Divine Love and Divine Wisdom. Divine Love includes God's Goodness, Mercy,
Grace, Benevolence, and Sympathy for the human race. God loves every human being
endlessly, passionately, and maximally all the time. Divine Wisdom includes
God's Truth, Rationality, Intelligence, Omniscience, and Inventiveness. Clearly,
God is a Human since He Has all the Human traits we know of. People have these
traits--love, sympathy, intelligence, rationality, etc. But in fact these traits
are God's traits in people.
This is a logical necessity implied by the concept if
infinity. Infinity cannot be limited or be absent. Nor can infinity give
something away since it would then have less than before, which is putting a
limit on infinity, and this is illogical. Hence God cannot give away His
Humanness to people He creates. God cannot give away some of His love, some of
His life, some of His rationality, to people. However God created a method that
achieves a result that appears similar to giving His Divine infinite things
away.
This is the method of appearances.
In other words, God makes it look like He is giving away some
of His Humanness to individual human beings that He creates.
Birds fly and look for food and raise a new generation of
birds. It seems that they are each doing it from themselves. A plant grows,
becomes a tree, gives fruit we enjoy, and provides for its the survival of its
own species. Galaxies burst apart into pieces that cool down and evolve into
planets that are governed by natural laws. God is hidden from these events,
short like a Brownian motion of electrons, or long like the formation of new
galaxies. God has not removed Himself from these natural events, for this would
put a limit to His infinity, something which is illogical. God cannot be removed
from anywhere. But God is managing things from within what is visible. God is
present within every sub-atomic particle of the created universe, and from that
omniscient and omnipotent position, God activates each component of an atom,
integrates the many motions of a living cell, and brings about the galactic
developments of the expanding universe.
God has not given away anything to natural laws and therefore
natural energy and lawful action is not the action of "nature" but the action of
God who is within the inner framework of every motion and energy. To me it is
clear that one would be foolhardy and irrational to say that there is some force
or energy or power that is not God's or that God has removed Himself from it. In
other words, nothing can run by itself, but God makes it look like it does by
acting from within the visible plane of events or objects.
It's common for people to say: Well, if there is a God, why
can't you prove it to me? Or: If you can prove that there is a God I will
believe it. Until then I don't have to.
But from the discussion above we can see that "believing in
God" is not the issue! We don't have a rational choice to believe or not
to believe. We must examine the issue rationally and we choose the outcome of
the rational investigation, for this is what makes sense. Do we have a choice
about whether the earth is flat or round? It's not a question of belief, but
fact, proven in many ways. Similarly, it's not rational to limit God's infinity
by what we believe. We have to think logically, starting with the scientific
concept of infinity, as explained above. Infinity must exist. Infinity cannot be
divided. Infinity includes all human traits like love and rationality or
intelligence. Therefore these traits are in infinity, not in ourselves, which
are finite. The infinity that has these human traits must therefore be Human. A
Human infinity is called God. Hence God is referred in the Writings as the
"Divine-Human" or "God-Man."
Just as the Divine-Human makes it appear that the world runs
itself, He also makes it appear that human beings run themselves. God not only
synchronizes the action of brain cells, but He also manages the operations of
the mind--our thoughts, memories, dreams, motives, loves, and enjoyments. God
synchronizes the precise one-to-one relations between operations in the mind and
in the body. God blocks your memory at times, so you can't remember something or
forget something. At other times, God makes you recall something or notice
something. God is therefore a "hands on" manager of your mind. Clearly He
doesn't let us see His management. It appears to us as if we are managing
ourselves. This is why the Writings use the expression "as-of self" instead of
the "self." This may sound disturbing at first.
What, we don't have a self? It's only an illusion? We are
really robots caught in a Divine Matrix?
We don't have life of our own but only god's life in us. We
don't have intelligence of our own, but only God's intelligence in us. The
choice is not between "we are God or we're robots." There is another rational
alternative. We are not God, for this illogical. We are not robots, for this is
would unloving, and we cannot say that God is unloving, for then His love would
have a limit, and this is illogical. The rational alternative is to say that we
are "human as-of selves."
We are human because we are created in the "image of God" who
is the Divine-Human, the only humanness there is. To be created "an image"
refers to the "human as-of self." This is an actual creation. It is not a robot,
for a robot is not human. Humanness must come from God in the created object.
Only people have humanness because only people are created with the organic
structure for receiving human traits from God. "Receiving" refers to the
appearance of as-of self to our conscious awareness and rational thinking. It is
necessary to have conscious awareness and rational thinking in order to operate
the as-of self in every individual human being.
In the Writings of Swedenborg God has revealed the method He
uses to operate the as-of self. It consists of connecting the mind of every
human being with every other human being in a vast network across space, time,
and world. I call this our "vertical community" (see Section xx).
Simultaneously, God controls the communication or mutual influencing process, so
that different types of people influence a person at different times. In a
single episode like cutting a slice of bread, there may be several societies of
people in the world of spirits whom God brings into more direct contact with our
mind as our hands handle the knife and the bread on the counter. Our as-of self
is the conscious agent who manages the cutting. We become aware of thoughts from
one society: "Be careful. Focus." These thoughts are joined to the rational
motive of prudence and self-preservation. We also become aware of thoughts from
another spirit society: "Wasn't that fun last night." and "Oops, I'm late."
These thoughts are joined to the irrational motive to want to save time by being
careless. We, the as-of self agent controlling the hands, are not conscious of
these societies which activate some of our thoughts and motives. We are only
aware that the thoughts somehow suddenly occurs to us. We are less aware of the
motives that direct these thoughts, though we can become conscious of them
through self-witnessing (see Section xx).
If we cut our finger, are we responsible?
Yes, because it is the as-of self agent who is given power by
God to accept or reject the societal influences of the vertical community.
Accepting one amounts to rejecting the other. God makes certain that the balance
between accepting and rejecting a spiritual influence on our mind, always
remains focused between a choice for either heavenly traits vs. hellish (see
Section xx). This is the mechanism God uses to keep us developing into a mind
that can mature and live in our immortality of heaven. Because this mind can
only grow through free choice we make, God also gives us the power to choose to
follow the motives and thoughts of evil spiritual societies. In this way we are
responsible for our character, whether it is good or bad, that is, altruistic
and heavenly, or selfish and hellish.
As you can see, God is a rational concept that is not up for
believing or disbelieving.
Omnipotence refers to the fact that
no power exists in the dual universe that is not God's power. This is true at
the macro and micro levels of events, e.g., the formation of galaxies, the
motion and path of an electron, the falling of a fruit from a tree, the results
and events of a war, the random distribution of raindrops on a leaf, the weather
or cloud formations, a car crash and the particular injuries, the trigger
finger firing a gun, the sequence of words in any sentence, the answers someone
gives on a quiz or test, something remembered or forgotten, something felt or
sensed, etc. Every event or property requires power to exist and God is
therefore that power without any exception.
Omniscience refers to God's
infinite knowledge and intelligence. The Writings of Swedenborg reveal that to
God all the past, all the present, all the future is present to view
simultaneously (e.g., "for in Him the past and the future are present" (AR13).
And: "God is omniscient, that is, He perceives, sees and knows down to the
tiniest detail everything that happens according to order; and from these things
also what happens contrary to order." (TCR 49). Note also that Omnipotence and
Omniscience logically imply that God is an intelligent Person with Divine-Human
qualities that are infinite. This implies that God has motivation, intention,
and purpose in the exercise of His Omnipotence. Through scientific revelations
God has made it known to the human race what His purpose is for creating the
universe. According to the Writings of Swedenborg: "This mighty system which is
called the universe is a single unit coherently organized from beginning to end,
because God had one end in view in creating it, to create from the human race a
heaven of angels. The means to this end are all the things of which the world is
composed; for he who wills the end, wills also the means. (TCR 13).
In the Writings the uppermost regions of
human consciousness and life is called heaven and people who reach that state
are called angels. God's purpose in creating a universe is to form a basis or
environment for supporting the life and existence of human beings in that state
of heaven to eternity. This purpose is also called Divine Love.
Omnipresence refers to God's
"presence" everywhere through His Omnipotence and Omniscience. Omnipresence is
the logical consequence of Omnipotence and Omniscience. Because of being present
everywhere, God can be addressed by human beings wherever they are and talk to Him,
knowing that He is present, listens, and cares. Note that Omnipresence cannot be
a physical presence because physically the same object cannot be present in more
than one location. That would be illogical. Therefore it's not rational to
expect to see God physically or to hear His voice through sound waves. Instead,
Omnipresence refers to spiritual presence. Within every physical object
the underlying framework is spiritual. Another way of saying
this is that the spiritual world of no space is within the
natural world of space. This becomes understandable if you know that
spiritual=mental. There is no space in our mental world. Instead, there are
mental "states" in our mind. Our thoughts and feelings change, not by moving
around, but by changing state.
At first we think that the finite is within the infinite
because the finite is small and the infinite is large--so the small must be
within the large, not the other way around. But this is physical or
materialistic model. It does not apply to the mental or spiritual. Think about
having a large sum of money in a dream you have. How much money can you have in
that dream? There is no limit. You can imagine that you have an infinite amount
of money and that all the money in the world is yours. There are no limits to
quantity or space when you are in the spiritual or mental world. And yet the
mind is within the physical, though not part of the physical body. What is
limitless can be "within" what is limited because they are each in their own
non-overlapping planes of existence, one natural, the other spiritual or mental.
Another example is that of Sacred Scripture which, when
written down in a natural language, is of a specific limited length consisting
of x number of words. And yet, within this limited number of sentences, there is
an infinite number of hidden spiritual truths. This is the character of Divine
Speech because the Divine is infinite and everything in itself is infinite. When
Divine Love or Divine Truth radiate outward from the Spiritual Sun the love and
truth that enters human minds is infinite. God cannot divide Himself into parts,
with one part given to one individual, and another part to the next individual.
God is infinite, therefore indivisible. But every individual human mind is
unique in its form and structure, and therefore the infinite Divine Love and
Truth streaming in, is received differentially and uniquely by every human mind.
As the Writings of Swedenborg reveal: "God
is present in space apart from space and in time apart from time. (CAN 34).
The concept "apart from space" refers to
the spiritual or mental world in which there is neither time nor space. Any object or
event in the natural universe is an effect whose cause is in the spiritual
world. The two worlds are thus tied together as cause and effect are tied
together, one for one. Space, time, and motion are events in the natural world. Therefore
each has its cause in the spiritual world. These cause-effect relations are
called correspondences and have been revealed in the Writings. God's
Omnipresence is therefore in the source and cause that lie within each created event, object, or
quality. Since it is the cause that creates all of the effect, and controls it,
God is present in every event that occurs in space and time, but He is present
apart from space and time, in a different plane of existence. In theistic
psychology there are two planes of existence--natural and spiritual, or in other
words, physical and mental.
God is in the mental or spiritual plane of
existence, which is the underlying framework of the physical or natural plane of
existence. This is what's really different in substantive dualism, namely that
God in the spiritual world is the same thing as God in the mental world. This
sounds strange at first because we are trained to think about the mind in
materialistic terms, so that it seems to us that "mental world" is less real
than "physical world." But the opposite is actually the case since mental
world=spiritual world, and the spiritual is the cause of the natural. This makes
sense when you consider that God is an infinite Spiritual Being without
beginning. So the spiritual substances in God are eternal and were there before
God created the physical world. God's mental world is the origin of all physical
things. Another way of saying this is that God creates everything out of Divine
Truth, which is a permanent immortal rational substance with infinite power to
instantiate or create physical objects and space.
To understand this more clearly, consider
the sentences you say when you talk. The grammar of the language is omnipresent
in all your sentences. But note that this omnipresence of the grammar is
not in the physical sentence spoken or written, for if we look there we only see
or hear words, syllables, letters, sounds--but not grammar. It cannot be seen physically
though it is omnipresent. Further, the grammar is also omnipotent because it
completely determines the sequence of the words and their phonology or script.
Where then in the sentence is the omnipotent and omnipresent grammar?
The grammar is a rational or
spiritual object that is within the sentence yet apart
from the physical sentence. "Within" refers to a "discrete degree" which means
that the grammar is not present physically but rationally (or spiritually). The
grammar is the cause of the word sequence and it shapes the sentence.
The cause of any natural event is always
in the spiritual world, not the natural world. Hence the idea that God's
Omnipresence is "apart from" physical space and time, or not in space and time,
means that it is the spiritual or rational presence as the cause, and through
the cause in the effect, but not directly in the effect. God control every
physical event or space through its spiritual underlying cause or framework.
Another example might help still further.
When we dream of walking on the beach or flying an airplane, there is only the
appearance of space, but no physical space. The appearance of space that looks
and acts just like space is called the spiritual or mental world. When we arrive in the
spiritual world immediately after the death of the physical body, we awaken in
the spiritual body which appears to move in space, just like we're used to on
earth. But actually there is no physical space that separates people or objects,
only the appearance of space. This is because the spiritual world is the world
of the mind and imagination, of thoughts and feelings. These cannot exist in
physical space. Our mind lives in the spiritual world which is why we can
have thoughts and feelings in the mind. Thoughts and feelings are not possible
in the physical body or brain for they support only electro-chemical events, and
these are not thoughts or feelings. All rational things like the mind exist only in the
spiritual world and are made of spiritual substances radiating from the
Spiritual Sun, in the midst of which the Divine-Human can be seen by the
inhabitants of heaven.
Since there is no physical space or location in the mental or
spiritual world, objects and events there are distinguished by their quality or
state.
This is why the quality of your thoughts
and feelings determine your existence in eternity (life after death). If you
arrive with a hellish character, your living environment will be just like an
endless nightmare called "hell." If you arrive with a heavenly character, your
living environment will be just like an endless dream of wonder and conjugial happiness.
This would not be possible in a physical world but only in a rational or
spiritual world.
It's important to understand the full rational implications
of God's omnipotence and omnipresence. Is it possible for God to remove Himself
from what He created? For example, intelligent scientists like Newton, Darwin,
Einstein, and others, have acknowledged that God created the universe, but that
after creating Nature, God is no longer directly in charge of routine events but
the laws of nature are. And therefore we can study and understand natural laws
without any reference to God. It is surprising that these scientists, so used to
rational and logical thinking, are yet able to think illogically when it comes
to God.
It is not rational to say both of these statements:
(a) God is omnipotent and omnipresent.
(b) Natural laws are running things in the physical world.
This is a rational contradiction. If (a) is true, (b) cannot
be true. If (b) were true, God would not be omnipotent and
omnipresent.
A student using this book in a course wrote this about the
idea that all details are administered directly by God, including a little thing
like the healing of a scratch on the finger.
I don’t believe this to be so, I think the lord has created
nature to be able to take care of itself to a certain extent in matters of
simple scratches at least. The lord has a hand in much of life but I think he
created an immune system to take care of the trivial minor details, at the same
time if that scratch were to get infected and get gang green and the person dies
then god had a hand in that because it was that persons time to go. I think god
has bigger fish to fry, but if you wanted the lords help in healing your scratch
and asked for it then he may help you or, just for asking and believing in him.
I therefore believe in the healing power of god, medicine and our immunity.
The idea of this student, in company with some of the great
scientists in history, is that God created nature "to take care of itself" in
"trivial minor details." Swedenborg points out that God could not determine the
overall course of history or the universe unless He determined every single
detail, no matter how small. This is because the whole is made by the parts and
if you don't control the parts you cannot control the whole.
Therefore it's a rational necessity to say that God's
omnipotence means that He controls every detail. And also, that there is no such
thing as something that runs by itself. For instance, what controls the pattern
of a wind current? It's not a random motion but the resultant of many separate
contributing factors. Each contributing factor must be controlled by God since
nothing can run by itself from itself. What causes the electrons to flow between
two points that vary in potential? One can say that it's a natural law, or one
can say that every electron must be kept in flow by God's omnipotence and
omniscience. If God is omniscient, there cannot be a single electron flow that
is not known to Him, and if God is omnipotent, there cannot be a single electron
flow that i snot controlled by Him.
So it's a matter of rational necessity to be consistent about
the idea of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. Whatever God created has
no power to move or to have life. All things are dead and inert. God moves every
particle, energy field, or galaxy. Every neuron in the brain that we use for
thinking and sensing, and every spiritual fiber in the mind, is operated by God to
reach a specific goal-state. There are endless levels of specific goals that God
brings out through these motions, events, and states. There are universal goals like the
endless evolution of creation. There are general goals like the outcome of a war
between nations. There are particular goals like the Dow Jones average at
closing time on a Monday. At all levels of goals God must manage every event to
bring about the goal.
Every human being is born immortal. God must manage every
detail of the endless sequence that makes up the days of one person, and all
human beings to eternity. God has universal goals for an individual such as the
inherent quality of the
mental states one ends up in at the second death, which is unchangeable and
forever (see Section xx). Some goals for an individual are general like the
events in our biography. Some goals are particular, like what we remember at any
one moment, or what we enjoy.
2.8
What is God's
Role in the Evolution of the Human Race?
Theistic psychology has a vantage point to
know the laws of evolution that create our future. This is especially
significant since the Writings of Swedenborg present valid proof of the
existence of the afterlife in the spiritual world. We are therefore born
immortal individuals. Only the physical body is temporary. The spiritual body or
mind is immortal because it is constructed out of substances from the Spiritual
Sun, and these substances are not in time or space, hence they are permanent. This
knowledge greatly enhances our ability to prepare for our future.
The scientific revelations in the Writings
of Swedenborg specify the levels of evolution of the human race from beginning
(birth on a planet) to eternity (immortality in heaven or hell). These facts
about the spiritual world and the afterlife may not be harmonious with various
religions and philosophies. It then becomes a challenge to reconcile the earlier
belief with the new scientific data from the spiritual world. I believe this is possible
and
that theistic psychology is culture-free rather than sectarian. This is a
necessity since sectarian beliefs or religions tend to be divisive of the
unregenerate human race,
rather than unitary, as science is. The rational spirituality of Theistic
psychology offers this
pan-cultural approach to God. It is revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg that
the quality of a person's life after death--whether in the heavenly part of our
mind or hellish, depends not on religion or belief, but on having developed a
heavenly character or hellish. This may done whatever one's religion.
The scientific revelations now given by
God to the human race specify that the first generations of our race were
heavenly altruistic people, peaceful and gentle. Swedenborg interviewed several
of them now living in their own heavens and was able to report on the
personality and character they have in eternity. They reported to Swedenborg that at some point
in their civilization on earth, more and more of their people turned their
spiritual knowledge to selfish pursuits, until the entire generation was thus
corrupted due to inherited tendencies from earlier generations. Society
eventually broke down and they became extinct on this planet. A new race then
arose out of the changed genotypes of a few people ("remnants").
This second phase of evolution of the
human race was less spiritual, more natural and materialistic. Tribes and
nations were formed out of different enclaves of the population. Thus arose
culture, religion, commerce, science, and nation building. This phase of human
evolution was characterized by a mixed
natural-spiritual awareness so that people had knowledge of the spiritual world
even though they were no longer able to communicate with it directly, as had
been the first generations. Eventually this phase of evolution also faded until
the vast majority of people on earth became materialists (see Section xx).
In this third phase of human evolution, all
knowledge of the spiritual world was lost. They were replaced by non-rational
belief systems, mystical religions, and persuasive or blind faith . During this
phase, people became warlike, cruel, and irrational. Divine guidance and
intervention operated to prevent the total and brutal self-destruction of the
human race on this planet. The minds of the subsequent generations were prepared
for acceptance of rational spirituality through scientific revelations about the
spiritual world that was no longer accessible to direct observation. Hence
Divine scientific revelations became the only way to have knowledge about the
spiritual world.
The scientific revelations in the Writings
of Swedenborg mark the entrance of a new phase of human evolution--our last.
New knowledge has been revealed so that people can adopt a rational
spirituality for their life of preparation for eternity. This Divine knowledge
has the power to give us rational understanding of the universe and our place in
it. Now we can really choose what way we are going to spend our immortality--in
the parts of our mind called heaven or hell.
Every individual is born with a mind that
can be made functional from top to bottom. The top of our mind is called heaven
while the bottom is called hell. While we are still attached to the physical
body we have the ability to develop our mind in both directions through our
experiences, our motivations and goals in life. We can build a strong love or
attachment to thoughts and feelings that are altruistic, rational, honest, fair, and
productive. Or, we can build a strong attachment to thoughts and feelings that
are selfish, destructive, cruel, unfair, dishonest, cold, and irrational. When
we are cut off from the physical body and awaken consciously in our spiritual
body, we undergo a process of psycho-biological change. We feel compelled to
choose either the heavenly or the hellish part of our mind, since both have been
active. We cannot keep both sets of traits, as on earth. We don't want to. We
have complete freedom to do what we want. So we reject the good, if we prefer
the bad, and we reject the bad, if we prefer the good. No one can talk us out of
doing what we want, once we are resuscitated in the spiritual world. No rule or
fear of punishment can hold us back any more.
This process of forced change involves
shutting down either the upper part or the lower part of our mind. Some people
are able to shut down all the selfish and harmful feelings, desires, and
motives, and remain happy only in the heavenly thoughts and feelings. They are
called angels and live happily in the heavenly regions of the spiritual world.
Others are unable to live happily in such regions because they are really much
more attached to the selfish and irrational thoughts and feelings. They then are
compelled to shut down their heavenly regions and continue life in the hellish
regions of the spiritual world. Remember that the spiritual world and the mind
overlap, so that "region" in the spiritual world is the same thing as "state" of
mind in our thoughts and feelings.
This is the great benefit of theistic
psychology for it allows us to work on developing a good character for our
future in eternity and to avoid the horrific life of insanity and cruelty which
we are also capable of.
2.9 What is
Divine Truth in relation to scientific revelations in theistic psychology?
Theistic psychology is based on the
Writings of Swedenborg. With this premise in mind consider what is said there.
The universe has no life in itself. Therefore every object must be moved from
within by God who is the infinite Divine-Human Person and the creator of all that
exists in the universe. The logical implication of this premise is that all
events and all human behavior are powered by God, and this includes thinking and
feeling moment by moment. An erroneous conclusion from these facts would be that
we are biological robots animated from within by God the Creator. To prevent
such a wrong idea the Writings introduce the concept of "as-of-self," perhaps
the most crucial concept in theistic psychology (mentioned above; see also
Chapter xx).
When we think and act moment by moment in
daily life we have the distinct and strong sense that we are acting in freedom
from ourselves. As soon as we lose this feeling of freedom to think and feel, we
are no longer human. We are a zombie, controlled or possessed by an outside
agent against our own will. No one can be happy or human with a lack of sense of
inner freedom. One may be controlled from an outside agent by force, threat, or
reward. One can be imprisoned or tied down, but in all these conditions we
remain internally free to think and feel as we choose. So this sense of inner
freedom is essential to being human. One cannot be happy in heaven in
immortality
without this freedom. Therefore without this inner freedom to think and feel as
we choose, God's purpose for creating the universe would be defeated.
This is why God is maintaining in us the
sense of as-of-self agency and freedom of action. It's called "as-of-self" to distinguish
it from "self." The idea of the self as having its own independent
life and power is therefore an irrational and unscientific view, given the
premise of theistic psychology. The as-of-self concept allows us to understand
reality in a rational way. As the Writings put it:
As far as anyone takes cognizance of and
knows what sins are, so far he can see them in himself, confess them before the
Divine-Human, and repent of them. This follows from all that has now been said.
Therefore in order that a man may see what sins are, the first of the Word was
the Decalogue; and therefore also the Decalogue is a complex of the whole Word,
for which reason it is called the "ten Words," and by "ten words" are signified
all truths in the complex. For a like reason there are similar precepts among
all nations in the world which have religion. And the man who knows that they
are Divine laws, and that therefore he who acts contrary to them acts contrary
to God, or commits sin, can receive Divine influx, and at the same time also the
will and effort as of himself to abstain from sins and repent of them.
Confession of one's sins before the
Divine-Human effects conjunction with Him, and reception of influx from Him. And then
the Divine-Human accomplishes the work, and yet gives man to act as if of
himself. Otherwise man could not act. The Divine-Human at that time operates in
him, through inmost things even to the outermost, and removes lusts, which are
the roots of evil. This a man could not do of himself. Of himself man operates
only in the outermost things; and yet the inmost things produce these. If
therefore man removed evils of himself, he would still remain in them. (Charity
206)
In other words, the Ten Commandments are
given to all humankind as a life strategy for personality development. God says that if we want
to develop to our full human potential we must modify our behavior to fit the
Divine Commandments. Clearly, Divine Commandments in general are psychological
self-modification techniques for creating a heavenly character within our mind.
All Divine Commandments must therefore be considered as a scientific revelation
since they tell us about real facts regarding psychology and human behavior.
Following the Commandments creates one kind of general mental state called
conjugial heaven in eternity, while not following the Commandments creates an
inverted or opposite general mental state called hell.
The passage quoted above uses the concept of "sin"
to refer to our inherited negative habits that interfere with the development of
a heavenly character--which is altruistic, peaceful, community oriented, compassionate,
rational, and so on. These positive human traits are called "heaven in our
mind." We also possesses negative traits such as selfishness, egocentrism, envy,
proneness to anger and violence, and many injurious habits and life styles such
as dishonesty, pessimism, cynicism, compulsions, obsessions, cruelties, and
irrationalities. Self-modification motivated by self-improvement, is the only
possible method by which we can transform our character from hellish to
heavenly. If we fail to transform our character "as-of-self," by our own
psychological effort, we arrive in the afterlife in a spiritually defective
state of mind which is permanent and cannot be altered to eternity. Hence, if
theistic psychology is correct, it becomes most important and totally
vital that we learn the scientific revelations about how to modify ourselves.
In addition, if the premise of theistic
psychology is correct, then we must depend on scientific revelations about the
universe, reality, and how God rationally manages the universe moment by moment.
These too have been revealed to the human race by God. Divine scientific
revelation is necessary since the human race has no other way of knowing the
facts that cannot be observed by natural science, especially when it is
atheistic in outlook.
Scientific revelations are called Divine
Truth because their origin is God and not human beings. To know and understand
Divine Truth gives an individual the power to arrange the mind's thinking and
feeling in accordance with true reality. This power allows us to fix the
problems that plague the human race that have not been solved by atheistic
science, such as habitual criminal behavior, the practice of injustice and
discrimination, and the preference for egotistical feelings over altruistic,
thus hurting community and relationships. The result of these negative habits is
that the majority of people live a life below their potential. The consequences
to every individual are enormous and eternal. Nothing can therefore be more
important than to be right about God. Everything else in our happiness and
future depends on it.
It is worthwhile therefore to make this
inquiry in this course of study. You are not told to believe anything or to accept
anything by authority or persuasion. Instead, we are making an open and
unprejudiced analysis of the rationality of theistic psychology. Some people
might agree and some might disagree. This is not what you are being graded for
as students in the course. Rather, you are being graded for your efforts and
success in making your position clear in writing--whatever it turns out to be,
and to move from a general and vague notion of God to a more specific and
scientific one, so that you may decide the issue on rational considerations
only. See below the instructions for
reports. I recommend that everyone studying this book also do these reports.
2.10 How is the
mind or consciousness related to the spiritual world?
In theistic psychology events in the
natural world are effects whose causes are in events that occur in the spiritual
world. This one-to-one cause-effect relationship is called the Law of
Correspondences and its details were known to the ancients but later forgotten.
Now they have been revealed once more in the modern age to an18th century
scientist who recorded them in the Writings of Swedenborg (1688-1772). These
scientific revelations describe the inner or underlying structure of the natural world. Since
we cannot observe the spiritual world directly, this new knowledge would not be
available to modern science unless it had been revealed by God to an
individual who could then report it to others.
Now we know that the infra-structure of
natural objects is not constructed of material particles and space. This is
logical since no matter how many sub-layers of physical structures we can
discover, the last layer of material objects or energy would not be able to rest
in nothing. For these smallest or finest of physical layers and locations to
exist they must be built on an underlying inner framework that is itself not material, physical, or
natural. This new underlying framework is of a different "degree" of existence
so that you cannot go, or "slide into," from one to the other, no
matter how much one develops. Yet there is
a lawful connection, functionally, between the material external framework and
the non-material internal framework. This non-material framework is called
spiritual or mental. Thus, existence of events is always taking place on two
correspondential planes of simultaneous existence, one physical, the other
spiritual or mental.
In the history of psychology this
distinction has long been recognized as the mind-body issue. The degree of the
physical body and physical world has been distinguished from the degree of the
mind and mental world. In theistic psychology the "mental world of the mind" is
equated with the "spiritual world." Ask yourself this: What is the mental world
made of?
A good answer might be that it is made of
feelings and thoughts. But then the next question: What are feelings and
thoughts made of? One bad answer might be that they are not made of anything.
This is not rational or logical since every thing that exists must be made of
something. Another bad answer might be that feelings and thoughts are made of
the electro-chemical activity of the brain. This is not rational either since
electrical and chemical mechanisms are physical not mental events. To equate the
mental with the physical is materialism in the negative bias of science.
A good answer would be that feelings and
thoughts are not physical objects but spiritual objects. This answer requires
the prior assumption of "substantive dualism," that is, that God created two
interlocked worlds, one natural in space and time, and the other spiritual,
which has no material (physical, natural) objects or states like space or time.
But the spiritual world has the "appearance" of space, time, and matter. What
are these spiritual appearances made of? They are made of spiritual substances
derived from the Spiritual Sun, which Swedenborg saw, just like everyone who is
a spirit after death living in a spiritual body in the spiritual world.
Swedenborg was able to see the spiritual body of people who were still alive in
their physical body on earth, just as everyone there can.
However, under normal circumstances there
is no direct communication taking place between someone in the spiritual world
and someone on earth. No conversation was possible for Swedenborg in the
spiritual world with someone still alive on earth in the physical body because
this kind of communication would have harmed the persons involved. The only
communication he was allowed was with those who are already living as "spirits"
in the afterlife. At the death of the physical body the person awakens in the
spiritual body that had been there all along in the spiritual world. At that
moment direct communication with those there becomes possible while
communication with those on earth is rendered unfeasible.
Now you can answer the question of what
feelings and thoughts are made of. They are actual real appearances in the
spiritual world constructed out of real substances in the rational ether
that makes up the expanse of the spiritual world.
When we dream about walking on a beach and
holding hands with our loved one, what is the beach made of? There is no actual
physical space involved, nor actual physical touch of the hands, yet we
experience the event as real, and even more realistically and powerfully than
real. Swedenborg was able to go to sleep when he seemed to himself
"traveling" in the spiritual world. When he awoke from dreaming he saw
other people ("spirits") around him and by having an exchange with them he
discovered that it was they who created the dream for him by using his memories
and producing visual and sensory appearances that felt entirely real. If a
spiritual video camera had been present, or when other spirits were present and
watching, the dream was clearly visible to all, proving that dreams are real
scenes produced in the spiritual world. Therefore when we dream we are observing
scenes in the spiritual world, scenes that are produced by others who are in
indirect communication with the sleeping person.
Exactly the same effects were produced by
Swedenborg through his knowledge of correspondences. He observed that when he
was reading the Bible here on earth and thought about the meaning of a verse,
there were present with him different "spirits" in the spiritual world. He was
able to codify the relationship between the natural meaning of a verse with its
spiritual events. The natural meaning came first and within it came the
spiritual meaning and events. The spiritual meaning produced the scenes around him in the
spiritual world. These experimental observations repeated thousands of times led
to the scientific conclusion that natural events are produced by means of
spiritual events and that spiritual events are the same as mental events. In
other words the underlying framework of a natural object or event is a spiritual
event or object. The spiritual event is the same as the mental event.
How is this possible?
It can be understood rationally when you
consider that the spiritual world is produced by the substances streaming out of
the Spiritual Sun, where God can be seen as a Divine-Human appearing in the
midst of that Sun. In God, infinite things are one. What is streaming out
of God through the Spiritual Sun produces and creates spiritual events, which in turn produce natural
events. God produces natural events through the intermediary of the Spiritual
Sun. Therefore everything in the mind is also produced by means of the
substances streaming out of the Spiritual Sun. In other words, all mental events
are produced in the spiritual body by the Spiritual Sun. Feelings and thoughts
are nothing but states of organic objects made of these substances from the Spiritual Sun.
There are two major substances streaming
from the Spiritual Sun: spiritual light and spiritual heat. Spiritual
light is called Divine Truth and spiritual heat is called Divine Love. In other
words feelings and thoughts are made of spiritual heat and light streaming into
the organ of the mind in the spiritual body. The affective organ is a receptor
for the spiritual heat, while the cognitive organ is a receptor for the
spiritual light. The infrastructure of natural objects is therefore the same
substance that is the infrastructure of mental objects or events. Divine Truth
received in our conscious understanding produces consciousness.
Consciousness is the cognitive
understanding of meaning. Meaning is the mechanism or vehicle by which
consciousness is activated as spiritual light. Consciousness is spiritual light
in our spiritual body, light received from the streaming Spiritual Sun. The
level or power or spiritual quality of our consciousness at any moment is
determined by the quality of the meaning we understand and interiorize as our
own thinking. If we think with low level meanings, our consciousness is
low. We can raise our consciousness to the highest level possible by climbing
the ladder of meaning, as long as it is genuine meaning rather falsified
meaning. Genuine meaning is the understanding of Divine Truth which is the
reception of spiritual light in the mind.
You can see from these procedures God uses that
scientific revelations are necessary in order to raise the consciousness of
human beings from the world of effects to the world of causes. Scientific
revelations are arrangements of Divine Truth in particular order so that the
understanding of it would raise our consciousness to the highest level called
"heavenly perception" and "heaven." Anyone can raise their consciousness to any
level by studying and understanding Divine Truth given in scientific
revelations.
You can see that human minds are
amazingly powerful, having the ability to produce the events of the natural
world by conscious understanding of the spiritual world. Consciousness is the
rational understanding of Divine Truth and Divine Truth is contained or
transmitted or communicated through the meanings that we consciously
understand. Divine Truth produces the world through meaning in human minds. What
an amazing fact! You can now see from this that rational spirituality is
necessary for the consciousness that can produce heavenly life for the
individual. This heavenly life is amazingly powerful and good, as well as
eternal, forever increasing endlessly.
Theistic psychology helps people realize
what's at stake in this life. If we do not develop a genuine consciousness from
scientific revelations we fall into distorted meanings which produce not a
heaven, but a hellish life. People need to be educated and taught the ability to
understand scientific revelations in a rational way. Then their mind becomes a
heaven and they live out eternity in a heaven. Heaven in eternity is produced by
Divine Truth in our rational mind. Without this genuine meaning, understood rationally,
there is no heaven, but hell instead. Hell resides in distorted meanings of
reality. If you arrive in the other life with distorted meanings, you discover
that these distorted meanings are powered from within by disorderly feelings and
motives called "evils." Those who are unwilling to give up their distorted
thinking are stuck with the evil feelings attached to them.
Swedenborg observed that no one is willing
to give up their distorted thinking because they feel intense enjoyment from the
evil feelings that are joined to the distorted thinking--feelings such as hatred, revenge,
greed, love of promiscuity, and dishonesty. Therefore it becomes
crucial for people to give up these evil enjoyments while conscious in the physical body. In fact
this is the purpose of our few decades on earth, namely, to clean out our
distorted thinking with their supportive evils, and to adopt instead genuine
truths from Divine scientific revelations. Distorted thinking with their
supportive evils are inherited and transmitted across the generations in a
cumulative line. As an example of culturally transmitted distortions and evils,
think about how materialistic science today maintains that there is no heaven
and hell. Or, think of
the many people who don't care that they are selfish, unfair, or dishonest and
subscribe to false philosophies that lead society to breakdown, crime,
depression, violence, abuse, fear.
The laws of the spiritual world are the
same as the laws of the mind since they are both constructed of the same
substances from the Spiritual Sun. You can see this overlap when you consider
the appearances we see when we dream. Where are the scenes we dream of -- a
beach, a city, a game, a horse? You can say that these things are nowhere since
they don't really exist, being just visions of the imagination. But this is not
a rational way of thinking about it. Think of the characters in a novel. They
are fictitious, not real, but the novel is real, the book or the movie. So the
book or the movie is the venue where the characters exist and interact.
Similarly, dreams must have a mental or spiritual venue to exist in our mind. In
other words, speaking more scientifically we can say that dreams are real
operations of the mind involving real organic fibers that carry the dream
sequences we are aware of.
Now we can ask what are things in the
dream made of -- the flowers or the food we are smelling? We now know that these
dream events are real, that they are real operations in the spiritual fibers of
the mind. Since dreams are real operations in the mind and since the mind and
spiritual world overlap, we can predict (or expect) that dreams will be visible
in the spiritual world. As we dream in our beds on earth those who observe our
spiritual body in the spiritual world should be able to see the dreams we are
having. Swedenborg confirms this prediction by dozens of observations where he
was able to talk to "spirits" who were near him when he awakened from a dream.
They were able to describe his dream precisely and in detail.
Further, Swedenborg observed that spirits
(what we are called when we awaken in the spiritual world) can produce visions
or dreams by means of knowledge of correspondences. In the spiritual world
we have the ability to produce dreams and visions around us by what we think.
For instance if you put yourself in a bad mood the environment reflects this by
getting darker and wild and dangerous animals make their appearances. When we
believe something rational and true, the environment around us becomes a garden
with good smelling flowers and luscious fruits (that can be eaten, by the way).
When we think of attacking someone we hate, the environment around us turns into
stormy weather and caverns filled with snakes, scorpions, and foul smelling
marshes. In other words dreams, thoughts, imaginative visions, etc., are real
appearances produced in the spiritual world while we have those thoughts. Our
thoughts can be seen by others in the spiritual world since thoughts are real
visible phenomena.
Now when you consider the laws of the mind
or thoughts and dreams, you can have a good idea of what it will be like to live
in the spiritual world. For instance: instantaneous travel anywhere. This is
because you can travel in thought any distance and it takes no time. Also: when
you want to talk to a friend who lives in the spiritual world somewhere, all you
need to do is become conscious of your desire, and you are instantly in each
other's presence. If you're talking to someone unpleasant, they vanish from your
sight. If you want to eat something luscious, or change clothes, you only need
to imagine what you want, and there it is. In other words, wishes become real
appearances in the mind, and therefore, in the spiritual world. Every one of
these phenomena was carefully observed by Swedenborg many times in his 27 years
of daily dual consciousness, that is, being conscious in both worlds
simultaneously.
2.11 What do surveys
show about beliefs in God, heaven, hell, miracles, afterlife?
Here is a summary article from the
Washington Post that reviews a number of different surveys:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/wat/archive/wat042400.htm
Washington Post Polling Director
Monday, April 24, 2000
Do Americans believe in miracles? Is
Heaven a real place? What about Hell? Is God a He or a She?
The answers: Yes, Yes, Maybe and None of
the Above, according to a fascinating compilation of recent national surveys on
God, religion, religious beliefs. It appears in the forthcoming issue of Public
Perspective magazine, which is published by the Roper Center for Public Opinion
Research at the University of Connecticut.
The special section titled "Beliefs"
touches on issues both weighty—one article by Michael Shermer is titled "Why
People Believe in God"—and findings that are, well, merely interesting. For
example, more than eight in 10 Americans agree that "even today, miracles are
performed by the power of God," according to a survey conducted last October by
the Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Pew Research Center. Slightly
more than one in three adults—36 percent—say they personally "experienced or
witnessed" what they considered a miracle, according to a CBS News poll last
year.
Heaven isn't just in your mind: It's a
real place, say 88 percent of a national sample of adults interviewed in 1997 by
Opinion Dynamics for Fox News. A more telling commentary on our beliefs is the
finding that far fewer Americans—71 percent—believe in hell.
Americans are even less certain about
God's sex. An ABC News survey in 1997 found that fewer than half of those
interviewed—44 percent—believed that God was a man, while just as many—43
percent—said God didn't have a gender. Only 1 percent thought God was a woman,
while the remainder weren't sure.
Overall, the center's survey of surveys
confirms that America truly is one nation, under God—or at least Americans say
it is. In survey after survey, overwhelming majorities say they believe in God.
More than nine in 10 Americans—95 percent—told ABC News polltakers that they
believe in God. A Gallup Organization survey for CNN and USA Today last December
found much the same thing: Nearly nine in 10—86 percent—said they believed in
God, while another 8 percent said they believe in some form of "Universal spirit
or higher power."
What's more, nearly eight in 10
adults—78 percent—say they've always been believers, and another 6 percent say
they hadn't believed but now do.
Most Americans firmly believe in God.
Throughout the 1990s, the National Opinion Research Center's authoritative
General Social Survey asked people about their belief in God. They found that
nearly two in three—64 percent—said they "know that God really exists and I have
no doubt about it." Another 17 percent acknowledged they were believers, but
expressed some doubts, while 4 percent were deeply ambivalent, finding
themselves "believing in God some of the time, but not at others."
Women are far more likely to be True
Believers than men. An analysis of five separate GSS surveys between 1988 and
1998 found that believers were far more likely to be women (58 percent) than men
(42 percent), while nonbelievers were more likely to be men (63 percent) than
women (37 percent).
What's more, belief in God may be
getting stronger. In 1987, a Gallup poll found that 60 percent of those
interviewed "completely agreed" with the statement, "I never doubt the existence
of God." Last October, the proportion expressing a similarly strong belief in
God had grown to 69 percent, according to a poll conducted by Princeton Survey
Research. (While nearly everyone believes in God, only 63 percent of all
Americans believe there is a devil, according to the Opinion Dynamics survey.)
The Public Perspective retrospective is
just one of several recent poll-driven analyses of Americans' religious
attitudes. The latest issue of The American Sociological Review contains
compelling evidence that belief in life after death is increasing—even among
Americans who don't identify with any organized religion, writes the Rev. Andrew
M. Greeley, a University of Chicago sociologist, best-selling novelist and a
Catholic priest, and his research partner, Michael Hout of the University of
California at Berkeley.
The big surprise is that Jews are
leading the trend. (That's surprising, because the concept of an "afterlife is
rarely discussed in Jewish life, be it among Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox
Jews," writes the Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in his popular reference book "Jewish
Literacy.")
But belief in life after death is
growing among Jews, according to data collected in the General Social Survey
conducted annually by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research
Center. In the 1970s, 19 percent of Jews said they believed in life after death.
Twenty years later, 56 percent said they
believed in an afterlife. The percentage of Catholics who said there was life
after death rose from 74 percent to 83 percent during the same time period.
Even Americans who say they have no
religious preference are expressing greater belief in the hereafter—63 percent
today, compared with 44 percent three decades ago. Overall, the proportion of
Americans who believe in life after death rose from 77 percent in 1973 to 82
percent in 1998, reported Greeley and Hout. (There has been only a slight
increase among Protestants in recent decades—but only because the overwhelming
majority have always believed in heaven, hell and eternal life.)
Richard Morin is director of polling for
The Washington Post. "What Americans Think" appears Mondays in The Washington
Post National Weekly Edition. Morin can be reached at
morinr@clark.net .
© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post
Company
Summary Table based on the above
article:
|
Percent of Americans who believe in the existence of: |
|
God |
95 |
|
Heaven |
88 |
|
Hell |
71 |
|
Miracles (general) |
80 |
|
Miracles (personal) |
36 |
|
God as a Man |
44 |
|
God as having no gender |
43 |
Considering these percentages it is
obvious that the atheistic psychology of today is totally out of step with what
people believe to be reality. B.F. Skinner stated that people's beliefs in God
and the power of prayer is nothing but "superstitious behavior." There is no
scientific justification for making such a statement and to most people it
merely reflects Skinner's bias against dualism and the reality of God. Theistic
psychology is more in line with the reality people accept. I'm still looking for
statistics for scientists, but for now, I predict that the majority of
scientists fall in the general pattern shown above, which is based on a general
population sample, and therefore includes
scientists.
Please email
me if you find statistics for the religious views of scientists (
leon@hawaii.edu ) I found an article by an atheist
organization that reports similar survey findings, though the tone is less
neutral--see here:
Religion Profiled By Global Millennium Survey "God" Important, Not Primary For
Many. Web Posted: December 17, 1999
www.atheists.org/flash.line/church16.htm
The question remains: is it possible for
psychology to become "theistic" and still remain a science? If the answer is
yes, then such a new psychology will be more in line with the reality people
recognize. To teach atheistic psychology to millions of high school and college
students may not be to their benefit since it contradicts their view of reality.
Theistic psychology shows that reality is based on God and therefore a belief in
God is realistic. It may be harmful to flatly contradict reality because of a
negative bias in science.
Until now it has been the general view,
for both scientists and religious people, that to bring God into science will
hurt both religion and science, and therefore they should be kept separate.
But this view of thinking may no longer be correct. In this book we are exploring the theistic psychology
found in
the Writings of Swedenborg (1688-1772) and examining the claim that this
approach is rational, scientific, universal, objective, empirical, and applied.
If indeed this is a correct assessment, then theistic psychology can be fully as
scientific as atheistic psychology has been, and more so in fact since it
includes a larger view of reality, of the human mind, and the methods by which
God governs the universe.
2.12 What About
Creationism and Evolution?
It is important to recognize that
"Creationism" is based on a literal reading of the Bible story in
Genesis of how God
created the world. This passage in Genesis is not a scientific revelation about
how God created the universe. Instead, as Swedenborg demonstrates, it is written
allegorically in a style similar to the other visions and prophecies in the
Bible (see Section xx). The Creation story in Genesis was decoded by Swedenborg
using the method of correspondences. This is fully documented and proven so that
anyone assessing his proof can understand it rationally. Once understood, we can
use this method to read anywhere in Sacred Scripture and extract its universal
meaning (see Section xx). It turns out that the actual content of the Creation
story is the regeneration of the human mind. Swedenborg discovered that Moses
had copied the first eleven Chapters of Genesis from an ancient version of
Sacred Scripture that was still known by some people, like the people of Midian
with whom Moses lived for twenty years.
The Ancient Word, as it was called, was written by means of
spiritual correspondences still known to the people at that time. When they were
writing about the human mind and its anatomy and function, they used natural
correspondences to express the spiritual meanings. They were dualists and they
knew that the causes of events on earth were spiritual events in the spiritual
world. When these spiritual meanings are thought of by people in the afterlife,
there appears around them natural visions or scenes and actual appearances of
things that are found on earth. When you awaken in the world of spirits a few
hours after death, you discover that your thoughts produce these natural
appearances around you. Others who are present can also see them. Two people
talking about theistic psychology in the world of spirits produce appearances
around them that shows to the bystanders what the two are talking about. Topics
become natural things. As soon as the topic changes these things disappear. But,
amazingly, while they are around you can touch them, feel them, hear them, smell
them, play with them, or eat them! So the appearances are real, but they come
and go instantaneously by correspondence to the topics mentioned or thought of.
In the Creation story, the ancients are discussing theistic
psychology. For instance, the a "day" of creation refers to the creation of a
new state of mind. There are seven "days" or phases of spiritual development as
our mind is being regenerated, which means that our spiritual mind is being
created. These steps are universal so they apply to every human being as well as
to the evolution of the human race. The reason animals are mentioned is because
each animal species corresponds to a specific mental state. Similarly, gardens,
lands, oceans, and stars are mentioned because they each correspond to specific
mental state or phase of development as we regenerate.
This is what the Creation story is actually about. To take it
literally, and to claim that it is a scientific account, is a misconception due
to not knowing the special style in which all Sacred Scripture is written (see
Section xx). This was not known by anyone until the Writings of Swedenborg were
published in the 18th century. Nor is it known by many people today because the
Writings of Swedenborg have been kept away from knowledge by the negative bias
in science and education.
But the theory of how the
universe came into existence, which is given by atheistic science taught in
schools, cannot be considered scientific either. Neither creationism nor
evolution theory nor the Big Bang theory can be considered rational and
scientific. They are hypothetical guesses based on many false premises. But if
we examine the scientific revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg with a
positive bias, as in this book, then the superiority of theistic science
becomes evident.
Quoting from Swedenborg regarding the
language in which Sacred Scripture is written (the numbers in parentheses refer
to numbered paragraphs in the same book):
For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth and the sea. That this
signifies the regeneration and vivification of those things which are in the
internal and in the external man, is evident from the signification of "six
days," as being states of combat (of which just above, n. 8888), and when
predicated of Jehovah, that is, the Divine-Human, they signify His labor with man
before he is regenerated (n. 8510); and from the signification of "heaven and
earth," as being the church or kingdom of the Divine-Human in man, "heaven" in the
internal man, and "earth" in the external man (n. 82, 1411, 1733, 1850, 2117,
2118, 3355, 4535), thus the regenerate man, that is, one who has found the new
life and has thus been made alive; and from the signification of "the sea," as
being the sensuous of man adhering to the corporeal (n. 8872).
[2] In this verse the subject treated of is the hallowing of the seventh
day, or the institution of the Sabbath, and it is described by the words, "In
six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and
rested in the seventh day; wherefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day, and
hallowed it." They who do not think beyond the sense of the letter cannot
believe otherwise than that the creation which is described in the first and
second chapters of Genesis, is the creation of the universe, and that there
were six days within which were created the heaven, the earth, the sea and all
things which are therein, and finally man in the likeness of God.
But who that takes into consideration the particulars of the description
cannot see that the creation of the universe is not there meant; for such
things are there described as may be known from common sense not to have been
so; as that there were days before the sun and the moon, as well as light and
darkness, and that herbage and trees sprang up; and yet that the light was
furnished by these luminaries, and a distinction was made between the light
and the darkness, and thus days were made.
[3] In what follows in the history there are also like things, which are
hardly acknowledged to be possible by anyone who thinks interiorly, as that
the woman was built from the rib of the man; also that two trees were set in
paradise, of the fruit of one of which it was forbidden to eat; and that a
serpent from one of them spoke with the wife of the man who had been the
wisest of mortal creatures, and by his speech, which was from the mouth of the
serpent, deceived them both; and that the whole human race, composed of so
many millions, was in consequence condemned to hell.
The moment that these and other such things in that history are thought of,
they must needs appear paradoxical to those who entertain any doubt concerning
the holiness of the Word, and must afterward lead them to deny the Divine
therein. Nevertheless be it known that each and all things in that history,
down to the smallest iota, are Divine, and contain within them arcana which
before the angels in the heavens are plain as in clear day.
The reason of this is that the angels do not see the sense of the Word
according to the letter, but according to what is within, namely, what is
spiritual and celestial, and within these, things Divine. When the first
chapter of Genesis is read, the angels do not perceive any other creation than
the new creation of man, which is called regeneration. This regeneration is
described in that history; by paradise the wisdom of the man who has been
created anew; by the two trees in the midst thereof, the two faculties of that
man, namely, the will of good by the tree of life, and the understanding of
truth by the tree of knowledge. And that it was forbidden to eat of this
latter tree, was because the man who is regenerated, or created anew, must no
longer be led by the understanding of truth, but by the will of good, and if
otherwise, the new life within him perishes (...)
[4] From all this it is evident that the historic narrative of the creation
and the first man, and of paradise, is a history so framed as to contain
within it heavenly and Divine things, and this according to the received
method in the Ancient Churches. This method of writing extended thence also to
many who were outside of that Church, who in like manner devised histories and
wrapped up arcana within them, as is plain from the writers of the most
ancient times. For in the Ancient Churches it was known what such things as
are in the world signified in heaven, nor to those people were events of so
much importance as to be described; but the things which were of heaven. These
latter things occupied their minds, for the reason that they thought more
interiorly than men at this day, and thus had communication with angels, and
therefore it was delightful to them to connect such things together. But they
were led by the Divine-Human to those things which should be held sacred in the
churches, consequently such things were composed as were in full
correspondence.
[5] From all this it can be seen what is meant by "heaven and earth" in the
first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, namely, the church internal and
external. That these are signified by "heaven and earth" is evident also from
passages in the prophets, where mention is made of "a new heaven and a new
earth," by which a new church is meant (...)
From all this it is now plain that by, "In six days Jehovah made heaven and
earth and the sea," is signified the regeneration and vivification of those
things which are in the internal and in the external man. (AC 8891)
What is called here "regeneration and
vivification of those things which are in the internal and in the external man"
refers to the psychological principles of character reformation. The "external
man" refers to the lower levels of the natural mind (corporeal and sensuous
levels), while the "internal man" refers to the upper level of the natural
mind which is called the natural-rational mind (see Section xx). The creation story in the Book
of Genesis has two separate meanings, one literal, the other correspondential.
The literal meaning serves for religion while the correspondential meaning
serves for science. For instance, the religious meaning is that God created the
universe and that it was a good creation until human beings disobeyed God's
commandments, the results of which was to introduce evil and suffering into
life. This level of meaning serves the purposes and needs of religion, as long
as one takes it to be a general statement about God, and not a scientific
description of how the physical world came into existence. But the
correspondential meaning is about the scientific facts regarding the human mind
and how it can be "regenerated" or "created anew" given that it has lost its
original state of spiritual well being.
The six days of creation discuss the six
phases of mental development by which we can heal our inherited character
through character reformation efforts. In other words, the correspondential
meaning of Sacred Scripture constitutes scientific revelations that allow
us to reverse the inherited process of character degeneration.
The cruelty and suffering of people in the
world indicates that character regeneration is indeed needed. Without these
revelations no one would know how to be regenerated or even that we need to be
regenerated. When we arrive in the world of spirits at death without having been
regenerated, we sink down into the lowest form of human life which is called
hell. But with regeneration we are able to be raised to the highest form of
human life called heaven. Hence you can see how important it was for God to give
these revelations. But they could not be presented literally as science because
no one would have been able to understand it, hence accept it as the Word of
God. It was necessary therefore that Divine revelation be given at two
levels simultaneously, one religious, which could be understood by everyone, and
the other correspondential or scientific, which could only be understood much
later, when the age of modern science makes it possible for people to understand
the scientific level. Throughout all the intervening centuries the "heavenly
secrets" lay hidden in Sacred Scripture. Now they have been revealed so that the
modern mind can accept them rationally.
A new evolutionary phase of human
rationality now begins in theistic psychology. It is called the "celestial
consciousness." Not every individual will ascend to this level, but every
individual has the potential to do so. The more theistic psychology becomes
public knowledge and education, the more people will have the opportunity to
make a free choice as to whether they want to make this celestial consciousness
their own through regeneration.
Sacred Scripture is therefore not merely
revelations
for religion but also for science, though not in its literal sense, but in its
decoded "correspondential" sense (see Section xx). If the literal sense of the Bible is used for science, as in
Creationism, then one obtains no scientific theory or facts about the physical
world since it is only an allegory written in the symbolism of correspondences. Swedenborg demonstrates that
all parts of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are written in this
correspondential
style, unbeknownst to the authors themselves who wrote the histories and visions.
Scientific revelations are given in this secret way and they are unveiled when
the human mind is prepared to understand it rationally. Until the coded
scientific revelations are unveiled the literal sense serves for religion. The
literal sense is therefore written for religion while the hidden underlying
universal sense is
written for science. This was not known until Swedenborg's Writings (1688-1772)
were published by him in Latin and later translated into many languages.
Now more scientists like myself are beginning to look at them seriously as works
of science (see Readings and References below).
For more discussion on this topic see the answer to
Question 1 above and Section 3.8 Divine Speech or Sacred Scripture as the Source
of Scientific Revelations in Chapter 3.
2.13
What is
"substantive dualism" in theistic psychology?
In history of psychology textbooks, dualism
is always discussed in relation to the "body-mind issue," which has been debated
by every generation of philosophers and psychologists since Aristotle and Plato.
Ordinarily it is Descartes who is identified with the body-mind dualism,
since he argued that mental phenomena are not physical and belonging to the brain,
but spiritual belonging to the soul which was immortal, unlike the body which
was temporary. This outlook was traditional for European philosophers who were
almost always of Christian upbringing and schooling (including Newton, Darwin,
Locke, Hume, Wundt, Emerson, William James, Herbert Mead, Jung, Carl Rogers,
etc.). Although they were all dualists by culture and education, in their
scientific writings they were very careful not to admit dualism, but to keep it
away from their science.
This is why an atheistic science and an atheistic psychology literature has
developed. Since we teach from this literature there has been a strong and unified
tradition in every generation to exclude dualism from courses, journals, books,
and grant proposals. The effort has been very intense to eradicate the
concepts of God and the afterlife from science.
What I'm doing in this book is therefore
pertinent as an entry in the history of psychology records since I am a normal
scientist teaching at a public state university in a psychology department that
is behaviorally oriented. Of course I'm not claiming that my colleagues would
agree with me, but I think this is because they are not in a position to examine
all the evidence, namely the 30 volumes called the Writings of Swedenborg. But
even if they examined just one volume in full, I would predict that it would be
sufficient to realize that theistic psychology is a serious scientific proposal.
On the surface it sounds outlandish in the science of psychology to speak about
God, heaven, hell, the spiritual world, the science of correspondences in the
Bible, Divine scientific revelations, and so on. But this surface impression is
only because psychology has become thoroughly atheistic and materialistic. There is no proof for
atheism, or for materialism, hence this dedication to atheism and monism is a traditional prejudice
that resists the future growth of psychology into the highly beneficial
knowledge of regeneration and rational spirituality.
Theism in psychology is an approach that
has valid rational proof in the Writings of Swedenborg. My purpose in this book
is to examine some of this evidence with a view to showing their validity and
breadth of understanding. It would be extremely beneficial for public schools to
teach theistic psychology throughout the school grades in all countries of the
educated world where science is understood. One of the applied theistic
psychology research projects I look forward to is to create theistic science
concepts for children all grade levels. For instance, the concept of "God" has
to be introduced differently at each grade level so that students can think of
the next step in their rational consciousness of God. The more children grow in
rationality the better they can understand the infinitely complex idea of God.
The more we understand the idea of God the more we can love Him and the more we
can receive from Him--the ability to change character, immortality, unlimited
conjugial happiness, all the virtues, unlimited intelligence and knowledge.
Any scientist or educated person can read
the Writings of Swedenborg and look at this evidence since it is presented
rationally by a superb scientist. To reject this offhand, without examining it, is
a negative bias that is transmitted by atheistic science taught in schools and normalized
in a secular press. Hence many college students react to the idea of bringing
God into science, as being a bad idea or an impossible one. The majority of students believe in the
actual real existence of God running people's lives and the world. But they have
been exposed to atheistic science since kindergarten where teachers are
reluctant to mention God given the legal issue of separation of Church and
State. It is not uncommon for teachers to interpret this official separation to
mean that they are not allowed to mention God in class. And of course the
textbooks they use do not mention God either. But this is a profound misunderstanding that teachers carry from their
own education and upbringing. The fact is that theistic science is not Church or
religion. God is neither religion nor church. To connect them is only from this
misunderstanding propagated by atheistic science.
I've had students tell me that importing God into science is
a bad idea because they have been abused by a priest as children. Others have
said that they refuse to believe in God since religion is so corrupt. Others
have said that you are not allowed to bring God into education. All these types
of objections are based on the common misunderstanding that religion and God are
the same. This idea has been promoted by atheistic science. But in
theistic psychology it is clearly seen that God and religion are different
concepts that must be distinguished. Religion cannot be scientific, but God is.
Sacred Scripture in the literal historical sense is religion, but the underlying
correspondential sense is universal science (see answer to prior Question).
Theistic psychology gives people the freedom and knowledge to separate their
problematic religious experiences from the scientific concept of God.
Theistic psychology is science--universal,
empirical, rational, objective, applied. Religion and Church on the other hand,
are historical-cultural-institutional entities, and therefore political. But
theistic psychology is not political but rational and panhuman. By rational
definition there can be only one God, since God is infinite, and to talk of two
infinites is illogical. Hence there can be only one infinite God. God's
relationship and interaction is with each individual, not with a cultural form
of this or that religion. Further, God's relationship and interaction with
atheists is not less than the interaction with people of religion and faith.
Hence the way God manages and influences each person's thoughts and feelings is
universal, not religious or cultural. This is what makes science theistic. To
deny God in science is a disservice to humankind and a belittling of the
usefulness of science. To deny religion in science is an appropriate thing to
do, just as we deny politics in science (e.g. facts by Democrats vs. facts by
Republicans--there is only one kind of fact recognized in science).
Perhaps there ought to be a relaxing of
the veto power against the use of God in psychology. Instead of being dead set
against it, why not see where it leads? Especially since the proposal is made by
a regular professional scientist like myself, along with dozens of others like
myself who are active scientists (see Reading List
below).
The concept of "substantive dualism" is
far more advanced than the dualism of Descartes which was hardly different from
St. Augustine's theology centuries earlier, who had based his idea on the
scientific revelations contained in the New Testament. The scientific
revelations on dualism contained in the Writings of Swedenborg are completely
objective and empirical. Swedenborg was given the special and unique ability of
"dual citizenship," which means he was able to be conscious in both the physical
body and the spiritual body. For 27 years on a daily basis he kept notes of his
extraordinary observations in the spiritual world. No one in the history of
science has had such a direct access to the spiritual world and its inhabitants.
Swedenborg kept track of his interviews
with thousands of people who arrived into the spiritual world within 30 hours
after the death of the physical body (see "resuscitation" section in Chapter 1).
He carried out many experiments with the help of those there who had the power
and knowledge to assist him. And much other evidence besides this on hundreds of
topics and areas of human behavior--the anatomy of the mind, ethnic differences,
psychotherapy, education, marriage, child development, religion, resuscitation
of the dead, physics, chemistry, physiology, anatomy, synergy, love, truth,
conscience, consciousness, meaning, language, and much more.
You can see from these considerations that
Swedenborg's substantive dualism is far more advanced than that of Descartes or anyone
else before or since. It makes sense since no scientist of reputation has had
direct observational access to the spiritual world and the process of the
resuscitation of the dead. Descartes and others may have had the idea that God
exists, that God created the soul, and the soul is immortal. But since they had
no access to the spiritual world they wrongly assumed that our immortal life
will take place in this world after its destruction and re-creation by God. Upon
that re-creation, all the souls that have been deprived of a body will then be
re-embodied into new physical bodies that will last forever. But all this is a
fantasy. They had no empirical evidence no observation platform. But with
Swedenborg's special introduction into dual citizenship it became immediately
evident by observation that everyone whose physical body dies is immediately
resuscitated and reappears in a spiritual body in the spiritual world.
So the essence and basis of substantive
dualism is the direct evidence from Swedenborg that there is a spiritual world
and that our mind or spiritual body is born there and stays there. The physical
body and the spiritual body, or mind, develop together and mature together. But
whereas the physical body gets old and deteriorates to death, the spiritual body
remains as a young adult, and forever so. When the physical body is dead,
the conscious mind switches during resuscitation into the spiritual body and
from then on our sensory input is solely from the events in our spiritual (or
mental) environment. This life then continues to eternity outside time and
place.
You can see therefore that theistic
science, theistic psychology, and substantive dualism are all connected and
based in the Writings of Swedenborg. Remove these scientific revelations and we
fall back into Cartesian dualism or some of its modern versions in neuroscience.
This is purely speculative since the brain contains no clues about the mind, but
only about its own electrical and chemical firings, which belong to the brain, not the
mind. The mind is a spiritual organ containing parts and sub-parts, just like
the brain and body. In the Writings of Swedenborg we find a complete anatomy and
spiritual physiology of this organ.
Further definitions and descriptions of
substantive dualism are given in the Reading List, including theistic science,
spiritual geography, spiritual psychobiology, spiritual psychology, spiritual
psycholinguistics, and others.
2.14 What is Applied
Theistic Psychology?
The goal in applied theistic psychology is
to enhance the life of individuals and society by teaching people how to think
rationally about themselves and their projects. To think rationally is defined
in accordance with the content of theistic psychology. In other words, reality is constructed by God on a rational
basis. When thinking rationally people modify their thoughts and feelings as
they proceed with daily activities and involvements. This systematic
self-modification process is called the "regeneration of character."
A rational or spiritual character is of
great benefit to every individual. Remember that "rational" is not what the
individual defines it is, or some philosophy or belief system that someone
invented or read about. In theistic psychology rational is defined on the basis of
scientific revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg. These revelations are
unique and cannot occur again for reasons of evolution explained in the
Writings. This can be explored by searching the Writings at:
www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
Therefore, theistic psychology must obtain all its data and knowledge from these
scientific revelations. This makes sense if these are unique revelations and if
they are scientific, as argued in this book.
Assuming for now that this new knowledge
is valid, you
can see that every individual would greatly benefit by rearranging their belief
system about God, the afterlife and eternity, to be in accordance with the
scientific revelations. This is obvious and logical as long as the premises of
theistic psychology are valid. In this book we are examining the issue of
validity by adopting a positive bias. This means that we are allowing for the
possibility that the premises of theistic psychology might be valid. The
negative bias would be that we are denying the possibility that the premises of
theistic psychology could be valid. If we adopt the negative bias we are quite
limited in the kind of assessment we can make of the evidence. For example, we
can read the Writings in order to find passages with which we disagree. After
examining all the passages with which we disagree, we can come to the conclusion
that the premises of theistic psychology are not valid.
But this is a bogus assessment, not an
objective one, not a rational one, not a fair one. And that's because right from
the start and before the evidence was examined, the conclusion was already reached. In a
court of law this would be rejected and prohibited. In science this assessment
of validity would be rejected also because the data was not properly evaluated.
If you look at the history of psychology you will find examples where one school
of thought (e.g., behaviorism) examines the data published by those who are of
another school of thought (e.g., Gestalt psychology). The psychologists in the
opposing "schools of thought" were unable to agree on the validity of
the data, nor on the proofs in the experiments. The behaviorists
rejected the data gathered by the Gestaltists and vice versa. This and other
historical cases shows that the negative bias disallows data from the other
side.
But if we allow the possibility of
theistic psychology as a valid scientific field, then the data brought forth in
the Writings of Swedenborg can be fairly and rationally assessed.
Applied theistic psychology depends
therefore on theistic psychology being valid. The process of "regeneration of
character" is a primary goal of applied theistic psychology. The evidence
brought forth in the Writings indicates that the psychological traits that
constitute human character are inherited. In other words selfishness, cruelty,
resentment, rebellion against moral imperatives, insensitivity, laziness,
carelessness, and other negative character traits, are inherited tendencies that
do not need to be learned. In the absence of learning these habits, they still
develop from internal compulsion or motivation. It is a biological mechanism
that is part of the property of human minds. It is well known that physical
traits are inherited such as color of skin, eyes, and hair, as well as body
build and biochemical characteristics like sensitivities or allergies. The mechanisms of how these physical
traits are transmitted to offspring is fairly well known in modern science.
However, less than nothing is known about the transmission of affective traits
and tendencies, and these are the traits of character.
The reason less than little is known
about the transmission of character traits is that little is known about the
mind that is valid. This is because modern psychology has opposed dualism so
that the mind is defined as an operation of the brain. In other words, according
to this materialistic or monistic view, sensations are the electrical and
chemical firings of nerve cells; cognitions or thoughts are the pattern of these
electro-chemical operations; and feelings are the location and pattern of the
firings. But none of this has been proven and it is utterly hypothetical and
fantastic. Therefore nothing of valid substance is known about the mind in
modern atheistic psychology or medicine.
In the scientific revelations of the
Writings it becomes clear what is the substance and what is the anatomy of the
mind. The mind is a spiritual organ constructed out of the substances of the
Spiritual Sun just as the brain is an organ constructed out of the materials of
earth's natural sun. These "earthly" materials and constructions are temporary
-- in time and space. but the spiritual substances of the mind are from the
spiritual world and in the spiritual world. They are permanent and immortal
constructions. The mind is an immortal, indestructible organ because its
physiological fibers and nerve cells are made of immortal spiritual substances.
You can see therefore, assuming this is
correct, that your memories, thoughts, feelings, emotional reactions -- are
actually spiritual fibers coiled in certain ways, like the cells of the brain
and its neuronal networks. In fact, the brain acquires its form and structure
from the form and structure of the mind. The two are tied together functionally
by the laws of correspondences and they must reflect each other in
form and structure. When a child is conceived from the father's sperm cells
there is transmission not only of the physical mechanisms but spiritual as well
because the two cannot be separated, one dependent on the other for life and
growth. In fact when we are born we have two bodies, one physical in the natural
world, and one spiritual in the spiritual world. The two are functionally and
uniquely tied to each other. As the spiritual body grows, so does the physical,
the two growing together. When the brain in the physical body fires in reaction
to sensory input, the mind in the spiritual body reacts by correspondence,
producing sensations that are specific to the sensory input into the brain. The
process is automatic and irreversible so that it appears to us psychologically
that the sensations we are experiencing is in the physical body. But we know
that this is impossible because sensations are operations of the spiritual body
(or mind) and cannot exist as electrical activity. The same is true about
thoughts and feelings.
Given this physiology we can see that the
semen contains both physical matter and spiritual substance that is within it at
the spiritual degree. This is the case
with every physical object, for unless an object has a spiritual substance
within it, or tied to it correspondentially, it cannot come into existence nor
continue in existence or subsist. The brain therefore has a spiritual substance
within it and it is this spiritual substance that produces sensations, thoughts,
and feelings.
The affective traits of the father are contained in the semen like a spiritual
DNA package and they become active as the infant grows into adulthood. It
should be observed that both bad and good spiritual tendencies are inherited in
this way. Hence it is that teaching the principles of theistic psychology can
help individuals in separating from their inherited character those affective
traits that are injurious to self and society.
Regeneration is the most important area of
concern for every individual given that every human being born today inherits
many negative affective traits. As stated earlier, affective traits are
spiritual, and therefore permanent. When the physical body "dies" and is
separated from the mind (or spiritual body), conscious awareness is then
originating with the spiritual body. The spiritual body is surrounded by a
spiritual environment and every individual continues life in that state forever.
Growth of the mind never stops to eternity, a characteristic that insures
never-ending improvement and the contentment and happiness that are thereby
engendered. This is called the "heavenly" state of mind. Heavenly life is
fundamentally or inherently opposed to the opposite state of mind called
"hellish." These two destroy each other like matter and anti-matter. Therefore
there must develop a new state in which the bad and good traits in our affective
character are separated. They both cannot survive together in one person in the spiritual world because
that world is segregated into heavenly and hellish states of mind or life.
While our conscious awareness is tied to
the physical body there is tolerance for both good and bad affective habits. For
example, we can feel anger and resentment in one moment, and a little later we
can feel compassion and peace, and still later we may be depressed, and later
happy again, and so on. The same person can be nice at the office then get in
the car and drive like an abusive maniac. A policeman who enforces the law may
yet be himself a thief. A person can be fair in one business transaction but
cheat in another. An honest official can break down and take a bribe, then turn
around and be honest again. Sometimes we work diligently and do our best while
at other times we make mistakes or loaf on the job. In other words we are mixed
good and bad. But once we lose our physical body our mind loses the ability to
contain active elements that are affective opposites.
This uni-valenced aspect of the spiritual
world and the spiritual body (or mind), makes it crucially important to build up
good affective traits because we will no longer be able to depend on our
ambi-valenced comfort that we have while still attached to the physical body.
Having lost the ability to be ambi-valent -- good and bad, we are then propelled
either into our heavenly state of mind or into our hellish state of mind. If we
are propelled into the heavenly state of mind we will grow in those good traits
we have, and this endlessly to eternity. But if we are propelled into the
hellish state of mind we will grow in those evil traits, endlessly to eternity.
Swedenborg observed and described the life of both these human states under the
title "heaven" and "hell."
Applied theistic psychology can therefore
be of great usefulness to every individual in preparing for that crucial
separation of our heavenly and hellish states of mind. Each contains affective
traits that we have inherited -- cruelty and compassion, laziness and
industriousness, selfishness and altruism, deceptiveness and honesty, treachery
and patriotism, rebellion and obedience, etc. These are pan-human character
traits sometimes classified as "vices" and "virtues." Everyone is familiar
with them. What they don't know is why they should work hard to eliminate the
"vices" and increase the "virtues." This is not known because atheistic
psychology is compelled to take an "amoral" position that excludes the idea of
"evil traits" or "bad traits" and attempts to justify healthy personality traits
by natural goals such as better performance or better adaptation to situations.
But this is a relatively weak motivator compared to the reality of heaven and
hell in eternity.
Every person who is taught theistic
psychology and understands it in a rational way, will be super-motivated to
undergo the process of character regeneration, insuring for themselves a
heavenly eternity. The self-modification process involves the threefold self --
affective traits, cognitive reasonings, and sensorimotor operations. Many of the
current ills that plague society would thus be eliminated for the most part --
criminal activity, violence, abuse, fraud, deception, and conflict. Health
behavior will improve since the affective compulsions that lead to being
overweight will be less dominant and resistant to control. The cognitive level
of operation will rise in society with more people thinking at the rational
level because heavenly motives produce rational ideas and principles while
hellish motives produce irrational ideas and principles.
Parenting will improve as the balance of
distribution of traits shifts from hellish to heavenly. Children inherit these
positive tendencies acquired by the parents as a result of their character
regeneration efforts. In this way there is a gradual shift towards heavenly
human traits in the population. Marriage will improve as couples shift from the
dominant and equity models of marriage to the unity model (see Section xx).
2.15 Theistic
Psychology vs. Mysticism, Spiritism, and Psychic Phenomena
It is important to distinguish the science
of theistic psychology from other endeavors that fall outside of rational
science. An effective way of distinguishing rational spirituality from mysticism
and spiritism is to determine whether the spiritual information being provided
is based on direct sensory input from the spiritual world or God. If yes, then it
cannot be scientific. This is because, theistic psychology is based exclusively
on the Writings of Swedenborg which is the only original source of scientific information
on the spiritual world. Swedenborg's ability to engage in direct communication
with the inhabitants of the spiritual world was a unique doorway specially
opened for the one individual who is to be the participant-observer of
scientific revelations about the spiritual world. The Writings give a coherent and complete account of
human development and when this is understood rationally it is clear that no
direct communication is possible across the two worlds simply because such
communication would be harmful to the individual in a modern world. Scientific
revelations were given through one person for the benefit of everyone else.
Consider what would happen if one rejected the idea that the
Writings of Swedenborg are the only source of scientific information about the
spiritual world. Complete chaos ensues and theistic psychology becomes null and
void as a science. All coherence and integration would be lost. Theistic
psychology would become a hodge podge of different theories and claims, one more
weird than another, about what people claim they saw or felt about the spiritual
world, spirits, demons, God, etc. Direct sensuous consciousness of the spiritual
world is not possible for anyone today because it would go in the opposite
direction of our evolution. The human race has been given scientific revelations
in Sacred Scripture for thousands of years in order to allow the gradual
elevation of the human mind to rational consciousness.
Sensuous consciousness, or direct communication with spirits
and God, was the original state of mind of the earliest generations on earth
(see Section xx). By the time the New Testament was given two thousand years
ago, all sensuous consciousness of spirits and God ceased. The Incarnate
Divine-Human was the last step in this evolutionary progression. A new evolutionary era
was begun which took the human race into the phase of rational spirituality. The
Writings say that the heavens were reconstructed and new heavens came into
existence out of the old. In other words, the upper regions of the human mind
were changed into rational heavens. Henceforth anyone who is to be elevated to
the heaven in their mind must do so by means of the elevator of rationality,
that is, by means of the understanding of rational truths about God and the
spiritual world.
The human race has been set on a rational course to reach the
rational heavens. Clearly then, people claiming to talk to spirits, or have
visions of the spiritual world as in the olden days of the prophets, are
claiming something that is contrary to the evolutionary course in which we are
set. There may be all sorts of reasons why people claim to have a sensuous
consciousness of God or the spiritual world. But the point is that it doesn't
matter what their reasons are, even if they themselves sincerely believe their
own claims. Neither is it a valid argument to say that if Swedenborg talked to
spirits than others can also. Swedenborg was commissioned by God to be the
revelator of the Final Testament of the Threefold Word. This is a unique event
just as the giving of the Old and New Testaments were unique events, each
marking a new evolutionary phase for the human race.
Note also that Swedenborg's ability given to him for this
mission was not at all like what others are claiming when they say they have
psychic powers or can talk to the dead. Swedenborg could not foretell future
events, for God gives no one that ability (see Section xx). Swedenborg did not
go into a trance to be taken over by spirits, like a medium or shaman.
Swedenborg was fully awake and conscious in both worlds simultaneously for 27
years non-stop. Swedenborg's basis of all that he reports is Sacred Scripture.
He is not bringing us snippets of this or that, but a comprehensive integrated
scientific account.
Spiritism is harmful because it inhibits
the development of rational spirituality in an individual. Swedenborg observed
that individuals who first awaken in the spiritual world ("novitiate spirits")
are unable to continue believing anything they do not understand.
Their own science and religion are rejected except that which has been understood
by them while still on earth. This is because the spiritual world is a rational world, being the
world of the mind, the world of understanding and feeling, the world of goodness
and truth, as well as their opposites. The light that proceeds from the Spiritual Sun is rationality
itself (called Divine Truth), and the heat within it, is Divine Love. In substantive dualism, rationality is a
substance, while in atheistic materialism rationality is nothing except some way
of thinking about topics, and thinking is nothing but the result of brain
activity of a certain kind. But in theistic psychology thinking is an operation
of the spiritual organ called the mind (or "spirit") which is permanently
constructed out of spiritual heat and light and formed into a shape and
structure that can enter human states of feeling and thinking.
From these and similar considerations
explained in the Writings, one can understand why direct communication with the
spiritual world is made impossible today when rational scientific revelations
have been given as the source of information about the spiritual world -- the
only source. The impossibility of spiritism, psychic phenomena, mysticism,
magic, faith healing, mediumship, shamanism, etc., rests on this rational explanation given
in the scientific revelations presented in the Writings of Swedenborg. This
impossibility is not a negative bias because of the rational explanation of why
it is not possible. It is different with the negative bias against Swedenborg's
Writings because those who adopt this bias are not able to prove rationally
that Swedenborg's reports are invalid. That's because they are valid and you
cannot prove that something valid is not rational.
Direct communication with the spiritual
world would be possible if our consciousness was able to be elevated into
the interior mind which is called the spiritual or celestial mind. The celestial mind is in the spiritual
world and therefore can communicate with the inhabitants there, those who have
"died" and now live in their spiritual body. But we do not have consciousness of
the operations of the interior mind while we are still tied to the physical
body. This is what makes "communication with the dead" impossible. It is the
same with psychic powers that depend on sensing directly the spiritual world or
phenomena. It is the same with mystical experiences of God or "oneness with All"
which depend on direct sensory input from the spiritual world, that is, from the
interior mind, of which we are unconscious and cannot sense anything. No one
would have known this without the revelations in the Writings. Thanks to them,
we can be free of these false and distracting ideas and theories. That's another
great benefit of knowing theistic psychology.
The only source of scientific information
about the spiritual world today lies in the Divine scientific revelations of the
Writings of Swedenborg. Those who reject these revelations are cutting
themselves off from the only source of valid information about the spiritual
world. They are then exposed to all sorts false ideas and made up information
that has no validity in reality, hence they are misleading. This is quite
dangerous since all our future in eternity depends on our character regeneration
by means of rational truths that can prepare our mind for immortal life in the
rational heavens of eternity.
2.16
Spiritual
Psychology
Starting in 1737 Swedenborg worked on
several writing projects on the human mind, one of them titled Rational Psychology.
This was several years prior to his ability to be conscious in both the
spiritual and natural worlds simultaneously. Swedenborg's psychology antedates
Wundt by more than a century. Later, when Swedenborg began his life as a dual citizen, he
was able to expand and deepen his psychology. In his 12-volume work called
Arcana Coelestia (or "Heavenly Secrets"), published between
1745-1749, his direct
observations of the spiritual world provide a new basis for understanding how
the human mind works.
Recall that the spiritual world is the
same as the world of the mind, which is the mental world of feelings, thoughts,
and sensations, organized into a unique personality. It would be similar in the
field of dream analysis if you can imagine that they find a technique for
putting you into someone's dreams. I saw a movie once with that imaginative
theme. Once inside the dream of this dangerous madman, the woman investigator
was able to see the mind of the patient, the things he was afraid of, the things
he imagined himself to be, and so on. She was able to discover these things
about his mind because she had gotten inside his his daydreams and fantasies.
Although that was a fantasy, what happened
to Swedenborg was reality. His consciousness was opened all the way into the
interior mind called the celestial mind. We all have this portion of the mind
but we cannot be conscious of it until death. If we gained consciousness of it, we would be
able like Swedenborg to see and interact with all those who had been born on
this earth and have passed into the spiritual world.
Swedenborg discovered that the most ancient people on this planet had their
consciousness opened all the way to the celestial mind, and thus were able to
communicate with their parents and ancestors in the spiritual world. But in
later generations this ability was closed off by evolutionary changes that
affected the brain and the mind. These historical events are revealed in the
hidden correspondential meaning of the Old Testament, which can be extracted through the
method of correspondences described in the Writings. Swedenborg goes through a verse by verse and word by
word analysis of the Books of Genesis and Exodus in the Old Testament. This is
done in the 12-volume Arcana Coelestia.
Modern psychology traces its short
scientific history to the German psychologists who first built a laboratory of
psychology, especially Wilhelm Wundt (1879). Scientific psychology has progressed
in the area of external behavior but not so much in the area of internal
behavior called the mind, the behavior of feeing this or that, or the behavior
of thinking this or that. The restricted development is due to the
unavailability of direct observational access to the feelings and thoughts. The
closest modern psychology has come to feelings and thoughts has been the GSR and
the cat scan. In other words nothing but chemical and electrical physiology of
the physical body. Nothing at all abut the mental body or the mind. At worst,
psychology has tried to fudge the line between the mind and the brain. Many
psychologists have written and taught that thoughts and feelings are nothing
else than these chemical and electrical operations inside the brain and body. As
a result, nothing is known today in psychology about the anatomy, structure, and
function of the real mind which is a spiritual organ constructed out of
spiritual substances from the Spiritual Sun.
But now theistic psychology has access to
the direct observations, reports, and experiments to be found in the Writings of
Swedenborg. The essential issue is whether a psychologist wishes to remain in
the negative bias, or to adopt the positive bias in order to make the relevant
data available for inspection and rational analysis (see Chapter 1).
Spiritual psychology is an area within
theistic psychology. It may also be called rational psychology. Swedenborg is
able to describe the anatomy of the mind because it is the same as the geography
of the spiritual world. For example, by "traveling" throughout the spiritual
world Swedenborg discovered that there are three "heavens" that were connected
to each other in a sequence relative to the Spiritual Sun. The closest heaven is
called the Third Heaven and refers to cities in which lived people whose mind
was opened to the celestial degree. In other words when the consciousness of an
individual rises to the uppermost regions of the mind, the experience of life is
that of a heavenly conjugial paradise where only good and truth exist in endless abundance.
Everyone who is in this state of consciousness experiences themselves to live
with others like themselves in an eternal conjugial heaven. Clearly, what makes the Third
Heaven that Swedenborg visited is nothing else than the celestial mind. The two
completely overlap in existence.
Those who had their mind opened to the
second level, called the spiritual degree, appeared to themselves to live in
cities with others similar to themselves, but the content of their thoughts and
feelings was entirely different from the thoughts and feelings of those in the
Third Heaven. Those in the First Heaven were still further
away from the Spiritual Sun and the inhabitants had thoughts and feelings at the
natural level of rational consciousness. The three heavens are actual mental
planes that exist in every human being's mind. At the spiritual level all human
minds are in the same location called the spiritual world. The only reason we
can't see this is because we are tied to the physical body and our spiritual
mind is not in a conscious state. But as soon as the physical body dies and the
mind is resuscitated, we become conscious of all the people who are also there
in their mind called the world of spirits.
There are people who are conscious in their natural mind--us
here on earth. We see all those who are also conscious at this level of the mind
(natural mind). Those who are conscious in the spiritual mind (after
resuscitation) see everyone who is also in that state of mind. If you elevate
your mind to the celestial degree, you become conscious of all the people who
have elevated their consciousness to that level and abide there to eternity.
The human mind is therefore a spiritual
organ having three major portions or sub-organs -- natural, spiritual, and
celestial. The operations inside each sub-organ are radically different so that
they have nothing in common. Nevertheless the three parts are integrated into
one functioning unit by means of the laws of correspondences. First, influx
streams into the celestial mind at the top producing the syntax and basis of
rationality and intelligence. This influx is conscious for those in the Third
Heaven but not for those below or more distant from the Spiritual Sun. This
influx is processed by the celestial mind trhough "celestial-raitonal
correspondences" of Sacred Scripture (see Section xx). There is a correspondential or
functional reaction in the spiritual mind which thinks by means of spiritual-raitonal
correspondences of Sacred Scripture. Swedenborg observed how some
particular ideas thought about in the Third Heaven were received in the Second
Heaven and he was able to confirm what the differences were. Celestial thoughts
and feelings are about the origin of all things from love and affection.
Spiritual thoughts and feelings are about the causes of things by means of
truth. Natural thoughts and feelings are about the effects played out in natural
things of spiritual causes and celestial sources or origins.
Spiritual psychology is the study of how
our mind develops and grows. We begin conscious life at birth when physical
sensorimotor input and activity gets organized by the spiritual or rational
mind. Unless the rational mind ordered the sensory input into a rational
arrangement or meaning, there would not be a development of human consciousness.
We would remain at the level of consciousness of animals, which lacks
rationality and is based on instinct or built in mental reactions to particular
physical stimuli. But because human beings have an interior rational or
spiritual mind, we are able to arrange the natural sensory input into a rational
order that makes sense and corresponds to actual reality.
It is the same with learning to talk. The
child is exposed to the language of the parents but this would be as useless as
for the cats and horses we interact with and talk to. Children can learn to talk
like the parents only because their rational mind organizes the streams of
sounds they hear and associate with what's happening around them. This built in
cognitive syntax has been called by modern linguists the innate language
acquisition device (LAD), and it has been shown to be rational in current
research by linguists (see especially the work of Noam Chomsky).
We are capable of learning knowledge and
culture only because we have a spiritual mind that is completely rational and
organizes the events we experience in the natural world around us. The
outside natural world comes into our senses and is organized by the rational
mind. In this way we grow up to be intelligent adults able to think rationally, to
plan our goals, and to modify our character to be more and more civilized,
human, and angelic.
Swedenborg observed that our thoughts and
feelings are influenced by those who are in communication with our spiritual
body that houses our thoughts and feelings. The character of the influence was
determined by the character of the individuals or "spirits" who were in
communication with our spiritual body (see "vertical community" Chapter xx). Swedenborg also realized that there is a
purpose and mechanism involved in these spiritual interactions. The purpose had
to do with regeneration or character reformation. Every individual is put into
the position of undergoing regeneration since this is necessary for ascending to
the celestial regions of life. Our level of thinking and feeling is at first
natural. Then, as we undergo regeneration of character, our thinking and feeling
becomes spiritual. Thus our consciousness is raised form natural to spiritual.
As we continue character regeneration we are raised in our consciousness to the
celestial level, along with the thoughts and feelings proper to that state of
life.
This process of character regeneration
involves the necessity of making free choices out of love for what we choose. At
first we love evil things which are animalistic rather than human, such as
selfishness, cruelty, savagery, violence, deception, vanity, resentment, anger,
and so on. These types of thoughts and feelings or motives need to be freely
rejected, which is not easy because we experience positive reinforcement and
pleasure out of them. We love to be egotistical and dominate others for our
benefit, convenience, or pleasure. It's hard to give them up freely. Therefore
we are given special opportunities to give them up. These are called
temptations. During a temptation our spiritual body is interacting with both
evil and good "spirits." Our thoughts and feelings reflect this ambivalent
influence, one moment wanting to resist, another moment wanting to give in, then fighting
again, and so on. We have many different temptations as we grow more rational
and celestial and they are each made available to us by the specific individual
spirits who are permitted to interact with our spiritual body.
You can explore these spiritual mechanisms
further through the Reading List.
The basic tenet of theistic psychology
can be seen when you consider this definitional and methodological formula:
mental = rational = spiritual =
immortal and eternal
I start with "mental" because this is
something we are very familiar with. Mental refers to the operation of the mind.
In familiar psychological terms we can say that mental, or mind, refers to the
affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor behavior of every individual. In other
words, our feelings or motives, our thoughts or understandings, and our
sensations and motor impulses. Another way is to say that "mental" is our self or
ego. We can also talk about the "mental world," referring to the content of our
mind -- our thoughts and feelings and sensations and perceptions. The mental
world is very familiar to each of us and we can also call it our conscious
awareness, the "I" in what we speak (e.g., "I want one of those.").
The first part of the spiritual psychology
formula says that the mental world is the same as the rational world. In other
words our thoughts and feelings do not operate or exist in a vacuum or in
nothing, which would be impossible. Feelings, thoughts, and sensations operate
in a rational atmosphere or "ether" which is called spiritual ether or
atmosphere -- the third part of the basic formula. In other words, if we put the
three parts together, we can say that the mental world with which we are so
familiar, is actually a spiritual world in which we operate as individuals, and
in which other individuals operate through their rational atmosphere or ether.
By seeing the identity between the mental
world and the spiritual world we enter the age of dualism, or substantive
dualism. In other words, we begin to recognize and understand that we are dual
citizens, members of two worlds, the natural world and the mental world, which
is not natural, but spiritual. The word "super-natural" has also been used by
some people to refer to the spiritual world. But the people who use the word
"supernatural" may not realize that it means mental or rational.
It may be surprising to hear that first,
that there is a spiritual world, and second, that we are so familiar with it
since it is nothing else than the mental world. We might even have a tendency to
think that this is not a big revelation since it doesn't seem so real. We have
been educated in a monist intellectual climate so that "mental" sounds less real
than "physical" or "concrete." In psychology especially we have been trained to
think of mental as "behavioral" and behavioral as "overt" and "concrete." There
is therefore a negative bias against the idea that "mental" = "spiritual" =
immortal and eternal. In our every day life we have the experience that thoughts and
feelings come and go and that when we are thinking of a million we don't have,
it is not the same thing as having the million in the bank. We say, that's just
a fantasy, just empty thoughts. So we can acquire the bias that the physical
world is more real than the mental world. But the opposite is the actuality or
reality.
The rational ether in which the mental
world exists is actually an atmosphere, a substance, in the same way that
physical space fields make up the framework for the stars, planets, and atoms or cells. The
first amazing idea that hits us is that there is only one mental world since
there is only one spiritual world and only one rational world. It follows,
amazingly, that your mental world is the same as my mental world, and the same as the
mental world of every human being that has ever existed. And amazingly, it also
follows, that the mental world is immortal and eternal, since the spiritual
world is eternal and the two overlap or are an identity having the same laws and the
same substance.
In other words all of the human race is
together in one mental world called the spiritual world. Since thoughts and
feelings are spiritual, they are immortal and eternal. Unlike rocks, and wood,
and the physical body and brain, the mind is immortal, the individual conscious
self is immortal because it is constructed of an immortal substance called
rationality ether.
Although these definitions have not yet been
proven to be true in what I have presented above, it is clear that they are
rational, which is an essential requirement for them to be part of science. If
you do not reject the data Swedenborg has collected through his observations of
the spiritual world, then they constitute scientific proof for these definitions
that are also rational. I have analyzed and studied Swedenborg's data for a
number of years now and I experience no conflict as a scientist and psychologist
in accepting it as valid. Further, it enriches the knowledge and application of
psychology to such an extent that it ushers in a new bright phase for science,
society, and humankind.
Swedenborg's ability to be conscious in
both worlds simultaneously is not so far fetched when you consider the basic
formula of spiritual psychology presented above. When we are conscious of our
thoughts, or when we daydream or imagine something, we are actually "traveling"
like Swedenborg throughout the spiritual world. What we see in our thoughts or
imaginations are actual scenes being observed by the spiritual mind. Similarly,
when we dream we are actually observing scenes in the spiritual world and others
who are present with us can also see these scenes all around them--something
that Swedenborg has verified and observed many times. This confirms that dreams
are not mere nonexistent figments of nothing but actual appearances in the
spiritual world--as long as you're not going to reject Swedenborg's reports out
of hand as something impossible or unbelievable, which is the negative bias (see
Chapter 1).
With Swedenborg there was conscious
presence in the spiritual world so that he could not only see the appearances
and events, but have conversations with the people there. This we cannot do
while we are attached to the physical body because it is harmful to our spirit,
throwing us back into sensuous consciousness and removing all higher forms of
rationality. Swedenborg was protected from injury on account of his special
Divinely commissioned assignment of authoring the Writings and its scientific
revelations. Once we get to the world of spirits after resuscitation, we are
able to fully confirm ourselves all that Swedenborg has reported.
But to make sure the proposal is rational, let's
look at the basic formula again:
mental = rational = spiritual =
immortal and eternal
In what way are our thoughts and feelings
immortal or eternal? Recall that the Spiritual Sun is the source of all substances in the
mind just as the physical sun is the source of all matter on this planet and in
our brain.
Physical objects constructed out of this matter are temporary and sooner or
later disintegrate back into the elements. Even the planet has a limited
lifespan of a few billion years. Why are things in the natural world temporary
in existence? It's because the materials or elements out of which they are
constructed are temporary in existence. Think of what happens when a flower is
constructed out of substances from the Spiritual Sun. This flower is timeless
and has an endless existence--as long as the human emotion or thought that
created that flower retains its connection of love or use with that flower. It
is the love or use of the flower that creates it and maintains it in existence.
This fact Swedenborg has witnessed numerous time, and so shall we, when we get
there.
It is different here on earth where flowers are made of
matter. Try to wish a flower into existence and you will fail. This is because
matter is inert and does not respond directly to human wishes and purposes. All
matter ultimately exists because it is useful to humans in some way since
everything God has created was for the sole purpose that it serve some human
use. This is true of the entire universe as a whole and of every detail or part
that makes up the universe. Clearly, the universe is a human universe, serving
human purposes, the chief of which is that people be born on one of the numerous
earths, develop a heavenly character, then pass on to heaven where they are to
live in conjugial bliss to eternity. This is the purpose God had in creating the
universe, as revealed in the Writings.
Once we move on to the spiritual world we are truly in our
human element. Not so much on earth, because this is merely a controlled
training ground for our spirit or mind. Here, our awesome power to create by
emotion and thought, is limited to indirect effects on inert matter. We can
build machines and houses, bridges and satellites. We force our human will upon
the inert matter, turning it into our purposes or uses. Look how much effort it
takes to chop some wood for the fire, or to learn how to run the four-minute
mile. But once we are in our rational ether in the spiritual world our awesome
human powers are instantly visible, and we create the surrounding environment by
our wishes and needs--palaces, art, food, clothes, animals, fountains--anything
you want, instantly created for you by the Divine-Human. This is heaven. This is
the purpose for which the Divine-Human created the world. It is an act of
Infinite Love and Wisdom.
You might think that this sounds more like a wonderful fairy
tale than science. The purpose of theistic psychology is to give you the
opportunity to examine this apparent fairy tale and to see that it is the
actuality. And you can only see this rationally, by your own understanding. If
your understanding cannot clearly see it after examining the evidence, it will
remain a fairy tale in your memory. When you get to the world of spirits, you
will remember the fairy tale and will be surprised, very surprised, to see that
it is the reality. Either way you will see this reality, whether later when you
are resuscitated, or now, when you study theistic psychology. As you will see
from future chapters, there are powerful reasons why we are far far better off
seeing this now than later.
2.17
How Can You Do
Research on God in Psychology?
Even when we adopt the positive bias in
science regarding dualism and God, there still remains some doubt about the
feasibility of such an approach. How can theistic psychology be scientific if
you cannot do research on the spiritual world or on God? Many students are
initially bothered by the fact that they have to believe all this solely on the
word or experience of one man. But actually you don't have to believe anything.
It would be useless to find the Writings of Swedenborg in the library one day,
as I have, and to believe this author because he says so. An old acquaintance to
whom I was telling about Swedenborg, kept replying to every detail, "But why do
you believe this strange man from another century?" From his point of view it
was "believing" but from my point of view it was "understanding" and "seeing."
This is what's really wonderful about the Writings of Swedenborg, that there is
nothing to believe but only to understand.
It's important therefore
to go further with the details of the dualist approach to see how God and the
spiritual world can be incorporated in valid research.
Actually the task is not as difficult as
one might at first think as soon as we consider that the spiritual world
overlaps completely with the mental world, and that God reveals many facts about
the spiritual world and about how the world is managed through the universal laws of
rational correspondences. Theistic psychology cannot be seen as a reasonable and
valid approach if one does not allow the dualist concept of "scientific
revelations" by God. The scientific revelations God has given in the Writings of
Swedenborg give us the details about how God intervenes in phenomena and manages
them according to strict laws of rational order.
The idea of "scientific revelations" at
first strikes us as preposterous. This is because we begin with the negative bias,
with the unproven assumption that the physical world runs itself through natural
laws. Also, we hold on to the unproven assumption that science is a human enterprise involving human intelligence
struggling to understand a complex universe. These two ideas are unproven. The
physical world does not run by itself -- that's the positive bias, which is also
unproven to begin with. The enterprise of science is not run by human
intelligence acting on its own from self, but God intervenes in its course--this
too is the positive bias and unproven as yet.
There is no other choice: One must be willing to let go of the negative
bias and to adopt the positive bias in order to investigate rationally the
concept of "scientific revelations."
The negative bias says: No need to investigate this, no need
to adopt the positive bias, just remain in the negative bias.
The positive bias says: There is a need to investigate this,
one must let go of the negative bias to do it.
There is no other choice! You must choose between one or the
other.
(See also the section on
the positive bias above.)
The concept of scientific revelations
makes rational sense in the positive bias mode of thinking. Most people,
scientists including, already believe in God. What is it they believe about God?
The dictionary defines God as "the supreme or ultimate reality; the Being
perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of
the universe." There are three main elements in the definition of God:
(1) God is the ultimate reality;
(2) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and
perfectly good;
(3) God is worshiped as the ruler of the
universe.
God is worshiped by the majority of
scientists as the omnipotent ruler of the universe and the ultimate reality.
Does it make sense then to deny God in science? No. Remember that as scientists
we are trained to follow an intellectual tradition, which is the negative bias
in science. Some scientists voice the belief that this is justified because you
can't do research on God, or because you don't need to do research on God since
God leaves nature to run itself by means of the natural laws that God created at
the beginning of creation.
This assumption is shattered when you read
the Writings of Swedenborg. Here for the first time, a scientist of renown has
been given the ability to be conscious in a part of the mind that we are
ordinarily not conscious of until we become "spirits" in the afterlife.
Swedenborg was able to observe thousands of individuals undergoing the 30-hour
process of resuscitation when the heart stops and the brain is dead. Upon
completion of the process we seem to ourselves to be awakened and we now
continue as immortal "spirits" a life in the spiritual world, also called
"eternity" because there is no sense of time or aging.
Further, what Swedenborg saw and heard,
every individual sees and hears when our conscious awareness switches venue from
the natural mind to the spiritual mind. The natural mind contains the
experiences built up through our physical body interacting with the natural
world. The natural mind and the brain are closely tied functionally by the laws
and mechanisms of correspondences. But the spiritual mind receives input from
the spiritual world. though we are unconscious of its operation. The spiritual
mind has a strong influence on the rational mind, which is intermediate between
the natural mind and the spiritual mind. The rational mind is capable of
assimilating information from both the natural mind (and world) and the
spiritual mind (and world). When fully developed, the rational mind has two
components, outer and inner. The outer component is called the natural-rational
mind while the inner component is called the spiritual-rational mind.
Because the rational mind can operate with
both physical and spiritual information, it becomes the basis for theistic
psychology. Swedenborg wrote a book titled Rational Psychology in 1742
but starting in 1743 he found himself suddenly capable of being conscious of his
spiritual mind as well as his natural mind. While this took some getting used
to, he quickly adapted to his new dual citizenship and for the next 27 years he
recorded his daily observations and experiments in the spiritual world. He wrote
enough to fill nearly 30 volumes in English translation. This amazing record is totally
unique in the history of science. No other scientist has been given this special
ability while still tied to the physical body. No other source of scientific
information is available about God and the spiritual world. Swedenborg also
gives an integrated rational scientific theory or explanation of all of his
reports. Nothing is left out of this comprehensive account.
In the past 200 years many people known in
literature have referred to Swedenborg (see list below). There are three
types of reactions that I noticed in the literature -- religious, psychiatric,
and scientific. The religion based on the Writings is called the "New Church" or
the "New Christian Church" and is well established today with several
branches worldwide, though quite small and little known. The psychiatric
reaction varies from "he was totally delusional" to "he was a mystic genius."
The scientific reaction is only now being felt through a few forerunners in
science like myself. I have coined the phrase "scientific revelations" to
designate the content of the Writings of Swedenborg when looked at from a
scientist point of view in the positive bias.
My point is simple and logical: Since God
is the ultimate reality and ruler of the universe (see definition above) it's
not logical for science to ban the concept of God from the study and description
of reality.
Other attempts to link "religion and
science" -- like Creationism or Christian Science -- are not serviceable to
science because they are based on a subjective interpretation and perspective,
or are contrary to the basic methods of science. Similarly, what is known as the
literature on "the psychology of religion" does not study God and the spiritual
world but people's religious practices and beliefs (see Volume 4). Swedenborg's
Writings is the only empirical source of information about God and the spiritual
world, and they contain the only explanatory accounts that are rational and
universally serviceable to science. This is not an assertion you have to
believe, since this would be useless in science. It is an assertion you can
confirm rationally by evaluating the evidence.
Consider that we are more familiar with
the spiritual world and God than with the neighborhood we live in or even our
own kitchen or car. What is the most familiar thing you know, the most common
and repeated experience in your life? It is not eating or walking or talking. It
is feeling, thinking, and sensing. These are the things we do constantly even as
we do other things like eating, walking, or talking. The constant in our daily living is the mental
world we experience, see, and know from within.
In other words we are more familiar with
the spiritual world (or mental world) than we are with the physical or natural
world.
Now consider how familiar you are with
God. Human beings in all cultures know that God is infinite, which means
omnipotent (all power is God's power), omniscience (knows and is aware of
everything), omnipresent (is present everywhere). Although this is known about
God by most people, it doesn't mean they understand it rationally. For instance,
consider omnipotence. People might have the idea that the power they have to
move, eat, or think has been given to them by God, but now that they are living
creatures, they have this power themselves, even if it originates from God. But
this way of thinking is not fully rational. If God gives away some power to
living creatures then God is no longer omnipotent since something else than God
has power after God gives the power away.
So it's not possible for God to give some
power away as long as God is omnipotent. This is a rational conclusion as part
of the definition of omnipotence.
The implications are staggering. It means
an individual human being has no actual power to eat, walk, talk, think,
remember, or choose a preference. That would mean that we are actually
biological and spiritual robots activated by the one power there is. But this
would not be a perfect world, would it? You would not want to be a spiritual
robot or a natural one, for we would then lose our humanity and no longer be
human beings. Therefore God had to create a method or mechanism by which human
beings could actually be human even though they have no power of their own.
2.17.1
The As-of Self Revealed to Humankind
In the Writings of Swedenborg God reveals
this method. It is called the "as-of self." In other words we do not actually
have a self that has its own power, but we do have an as-of self, which is the
real feeling that we act freely, from our own will, and not from God.
To understand this more clearly, think of
an analogy where a similar situation arises. When you are taking care of a
toddler at home, or the beach, or in a park, your way of interacting is an
analogy with the way God interacts with us. The toddler doesn't like to be
constricted and wants to roam at will, exploring, moving around, looking,
sticking the fingers here or there, laughing, and so on. The toddler is most
happy when having the feeling of being completely free. It doesn't like you to
stand in front of the fire place to prevent it from touching the fire. It
doesn't like you to prevent it from sticking its finger in the electric plug.
But you are around, sometimes blocking the way, sometimes hiding something from
view, sometimes pushing slightly to change the child's direction of motion, or
redirecting the child's focus by sticking something before its face. And so on.
In other words you exercise all power to keep the child from getting hurt. The
child can accept this as long as it feels like it retains control and freedom.
Meanwhile you also provide shelter and food and clothes and insurance and a
college fund for that child, arranging the child's life in particular ways. None
of this care and arrangement and control comes to the awareness of the child.
In a similar way God provides and
intervenes at all levels of action and environment. No detail whatsoever is
possible without God's immediate control. This is true of the motion of an
electron, the flight of a bird, the rolling of a stone, or what an individual
remembers or forgets moment by moment. To remember something takes power and to
hold something in memory takes power. To plan your next hour takes power, and to
perform your plan takes power. You can see from this that since God is the only
power, and since God cannot give away power, therefore God is the most intimate
partner we can ever have, far more intimate than any friend or family member.
This amazing intimate relationship with
God does not change or diminish whether the individual acknowledges God's
partnership or not. An atheist claims not to believe in God's existence or in
scientific revelations from God and laughs at those who know of God's existence
and role. Viewed from the perspective of dualism, an atheist has the illusion of
possessing power from self or from nature, but all along, God must be present
participating in the atheist's thought processes and attitudes, because it takes
power to have an attitude and to live according to it, and all power is God's
power.
This raises an enormous puzzle that
authors have discussed for millennia. It is the question of why, if God is
omnipotent, does God provide power to the atheist to deny God? Or, why does God
provide power and intelligence and skill to the terrorist who kills innocent
people? Why does God create a natural disaster that kills many people? Why does
God permit wars, crime, rape, abuse, children as sex slaves, deception, lies,
depression, sickness? Why does the omnipotent God allow these evil injurious
events to take place? -- especially since God is defined as pure Love and pure
Truth.
Many people have used the presence of evil,
the suffering of the innocent, and the success of dishonest people, as a rationale for disbelieving God or dethroning
God in their mind. People have attempted various solutions to this basic puzzle
but real progress could not be made until God provided scientific revelations to
explain how the world is managed and run. The "as-of self" is absolutely essential
for our happiness as human beings and for eternal life in heaven. Through the "as-of self"
we can take responsibility for what happens because God cooperates in
maintaining that sense of as-of self freedom.
Rationally and logically we know that God
is pulling the strings of events and sequences, but experientially we feel
completely free, moving and thinking from our desire or motivation.
Consider how a minute amount of power from
your finger can move ten mighty men aside. The athletes are pulling on a rope,
two teams against each other, and they are perfectly matched. You know they are
perfectly matched because the rope is not moving in any direction, stuck in the
balance of power. Now you come along and you pull the rope with two fingers.
What happens? The ten strong athletes come tumbling down, losing the perfect
balance of power with which the two teams matched each other.
You can see from this kind of idea how we
can make decisions without any power of our own, and yet be responsible for
those choices. The scientific revelations describe our thinking process as a
mental operation in which other people participate, in a similar way that the
two teams of athletes were pulling the rope in opposite direction. God retains
power over what happens by influencing the steps of our thinking, moment by
moment, all day long. This influencing process is not direct and immediate, like
pulling a rope, but indirect or mediately through others with whom we are
brought into communication by God (see "vertical community" in Chapter xx).
Our train of thought is influenced by the
spirits, or people in the spiritual world, who are allowed to communicate with
our spiritual body in the spiritual world. It's almost like a debating society
with a winner and a loser. One team of spirits have disposition or desire X
while another team of spirits are brought near who have disposition and desire
Y. Whatever thoughts come into our awareness are through the influence of the
character of the spirits then in communication with us.
We are aware of the effect of their
approach but not the actual influx or influence. We are aware for instance of a
particular thought or memory that we recognize as part of our past experience,
and we are aware of a sequence of thoughts that come to us about an issue or
plan, but we are not conscious of where these thoughts come from or why these
thoughts now enter our mind instead of some other thoughts. Yet the sequence of
thoughts is governed by God by means of a continuous switching around of what
spirits are in communication with our mind moment by moment.
If we were aware of the spirits and their
influence on our thinking we would not be pleased. We would not feel free, ever,
and no longer be actually human, since the foundation of being human is to act
rationally to carry out desired goals. To act from freedom according to reason
is the hallmark of the human being. This is one of the reasons why God does not
allow a mystical or sensory awareness of other spirits or of God until we are no
longer tied to the physical body and live our life in a rational universe called
the spiritual world.
But then are we free or not?
Yes we are. God maintains the perfect
balance of power in every feeling, thinking, sensing and moving. We do these
things without our own power and yet because of the balance of power we can act
without power as long as God cooperates and participates in every detail at
every moment from conception to eternity. As a result of this we can continue to
develop our as-of self character and always feel that it is us in freedom that
creates it. At the same time God warns us in scientific revelations that we must
not attribute this freedom and power to ourselves but only to God. In this way
God can develop our mind and character to its full human potential. But when we
deny that God is the participant-operator of all our life and experience, we
fall into unreal and injurious states of mind called "hell" and our character
becomes enamored of illusions and delusions that eventually lead us to a hellish
life from which we are unwilling to escape to eternity. So much is at stake
whether we accept reality as it is revealed by God, or whether we reject
rational revelation
and construct our own world of unreality, illusion, and suffering.
Because God and the spiritual world are so
intimate, close, and familiar to us in daily living, it is possible to research
God and the spiritual world using the methods of theistic psychology. I should
note that some people have formulated some type of research about God that
cannot work, so that the inevitable conclusion will always be, "there is no
valid proof." For instance suppose you set up a research study in which you
randomly assign subjects to two conditions, the "prayer group" and the "no
prayer group." The prayer group is instructed to pray every day morning and
evening for what they need or want at that moment, while the no-prayer group is
instructed to read a novel at that time. The researchers keep track of the
individuals for one year and add up the successes of each group. Will they find
a significant difference? No, they will not.
But this is not a valid experiment about
prayer and God. It is only a test of people's idea of prayer. People do believe
that praying for X often brings X to them, and they thank God for it. There is
no harm in proceeding in this way for it validates the reality that we are
dependent on God moment by moment to continue life. But from the scientific
research point of view this kind of experiment cannot be used to study God's
ways, but only people's belief systems. Hence it belongs to the atheistic
psychology of religion, not to theistic psychology.
The only method by which God can be studied
scientifically and rationally is through the scientific revelations God has
given to humanity. Through the Writings of Swedenborg God reveals that events are
not produced by human intervention because that would mean that God is not
omnipotent and fully in charge. If praying could influence events directly, what
would happen in a football game where each team prays for victory? Or in a war,
or in a lottery, or when someone is sick. God obviously cannot give over any power
to someone praying. It is still God who has to make the decision as to what is
going to happen, regardless of the prayer. This is shown by the fact that many
successful and happy people never pray, and many people who pray keep praying
and not getting what they pray for. Prayer is good because it is speech with
God. But prayers cannot direct God's decisions (see Section xx). Hence any
research on the "effectiveness" of praying does not belong to theistic
psychology.
God encourages human beings to pray, but
not because their input is needed in the management of events. It is God who
gives an individual the power to pray in the first place, as well as what to say and think, and so praying
cannot have an effect of God similar to what happens when you beg someone to do
this or that for you. The begging may change their mind and agree to do it, but
the praying to God cannot change God's mind for this is impossible. And yet when
you read the Old and New Testaments in the literal sense you are told to pray
and ask God for what we need, and that if we do this, God will grant it to us.
Hence it is a religious Divine Commandment that we should pray, as taught in the
plain words of Sacred Scripture.
In theistic psychology we do not
contradict this Commandment. But we go deeper into it. In the Writings it is
explained why God gives us the Commandment to pray--not in order to influence
Him, but in order to arouse our love for Him and our conscious awareness of His
presence with us as a co-Participant in every detail of thought or deed. Through
this love of God we enter a mental state in which we can receive a higher
understanding of the truths in Sacred Scripture. Through this higher
understanding of Divine reality we are able to face deeper temptations and to
effect the regeneration of our feelings and thoughts all the way to the
celestial level of mental operations. In this way God works to insure our
ability to acquire a heavenly mind. This is why He has commanded us to pray. You
can see that this rational explanation is far more detailed and scientific than
the religious view that prayer influences God.
Therefore other methods will need to be
developed in theistic psychology in order to study God and how the mind and the
world is managed by Him (see Section xx).
2.18 Swedenborg's
Rational Psychology
Swedenborg's book Rational Psychology
(1742) marks the historical beginning of theistic psychology. It was followed by the 12
volume series called Arcana Coelestia (or Heavenly Secrets) which was the
first time in the history of science that a scientist reported his empirical
observations and experiments in the spiritual world. There followed two dozen
books until 1772 when Swedenborg ended his life in the physical body. The
collection of some 30 books are known today as the Writings of Swedenborg (see
Reading List below). Swedenborg is well known as a
literary figure of influence (see list below), but
totally unknown in science and psychology. Not even the history of psychology
textbooks mention him even though they mention other major figures as well as
many very minor names no one has ever heard of. Why this omission?
As discussed in other places, the negative bias in science and psychology is so powerful an
orientation, so persuasive and compelling, so politically strong and
historically established, that the name of Swedenborg cannot gain entry into
established circles in education and research (see Chapter 1). Mine is the first modern attempt
by a professional scientist in a public institution of higher learning to make a
concerted effort to spell out in detail the case for the positive bias regarding
the Writings of Swedenborg (see Web site at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html ).
In Rational Psychology Swedenborg
had attained the ultimate scientific level of thinking possible for him using
only the scientific data available in his time in anatomy, physiology,
neurology, philosophy, and psychology. It is only after he completed writing
Rational Psychology that he suddenly developed the ability to be conscious
in his spiritual mind. It is therefore interesting to see how far psychology can
go without using the data on the mind and the spiritual world that Swedenborg
records in the Writings. One of the outlines found
in his notes shows the following table of contents:
1. The Body in General
2. The Soul in General
3. The Animal Spirit ("animal" is used in
the sense of "physiological")
2. The Blood
5. Sensation and Motion [Action]
6. Imagination and Memory
7. The Rational Mind
8. The Soul
9. Concordance of Systems
10. Death and Immortality
11. The Soul After Death
12. Heaven
13. Divine Providence, Predestination,
[etc.]
12. Appendix. Passions of the Animus
(based on Alfred Acton, Preface to
Rational Psychology (1742) Swedenborg Scientific Association,
Philadelphia, PA 1950)
Note that Swedenborg had already discovered on his own that
the soul lives after death, that the spiritual mind is rational, that our
immortality starts right after death, that there is a heaven, that God
intervenes in all details, that the body reacts to the mind or soul. Elsewhere
he deduces the existence of the Spiritual Sun from the Bible and his own
rational premises about God. When Swedenborg suddenly developed his dual
consciousness at age 57, he was able to confirm by direct observation what he
had rationally deduced earlier. In addition, he was now able to add many details
he had no way of figuring out ahead of time.
Swedenborg had several volumes in mind
under the series title of Psychological Transactions. A listing of
Swedenborg's works with dates are given here:
www.glencairnmuseum.org/jkwh.html Access to the Writings online is available
here:
www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
The Table of Contents of Rational
Psychology (1742) covers many of the topics in contemporary psychology
textbooks:
I. Sensation or the Passion of the Body
II. Touch
III. Taste
IV. Smell
V. Hearing
VI. Sight
VII. Perception, Imagination, Memory, and
their Ideas
VIII. The Pure Intellect
IX. The Human Intellect: Intellection,
Thought, Reasoning, and Judgment
X. The Commerce [Interaction] of Soul and
Body
XI. Harmonies and the Affections Arising
Therefrom. Desires in General
XII. The Animus and Its Affections
XIII. The Animus and the Rational Mind
XIV. The Formation and Affections of the
Rational Mind
XV. The Loves and Affections of the Mind
XVI. Conclusion as to What the Animus Is,
What the Spiritual Mind and What the Rational Mind
XVII. Free Decision, or the Choice of
Moral Good and Evil
XVIII. The Will and Its Liberty, and What
the Intellect is in Relation Thereto
XIX. Discourse
XX. Human Prudence
XXI. Simulation and Dissimulation
XXII. Cunning and Malice
XXIII. Sincerity
XXIV. Justice and Equity
XXV. Science, Intelligence, Wisdom
XXVI. The Causes Which Change the State of
the Intellect and Rational Mind, that is, Prevent or Perfect It
XXVII. Loves of the Soul or Spiritual
Loves
XXVIII. The Derivation of Corporeal Loves
from Spiritual, and their Concentration in the Rational Mind
XXIX. Pure or Divine Love Regarded in
Itself
XXX. The Influx of Animus and Its
Affections into the body, and of the Body Into the Animus
XXXI. The Influx of the Rational Mind Into
the Animus, and by the Animus Into the Body; And the Influx of the Animus Into
the Rational Mind
XXXII. The Influx of the Spiritual Mind or
Soul, and the Animus Into the Spiritual Mind
XXXIII. The Influx of the Spiritual Loves
of the Soul Into the Rational Mind, and the Reverse
XXXIV. Inherited Characteristics
XXXV. Death
XXXVI. The Immortality of the Soul
XXXVII. The State of the Soul After the
Death of the Body
XXXVIII. Heaven or the Society of Happy
Souls
XXXIX. Hell, or the Society of Unhappy
Souls
XL. Divine Providence
XLI. Fate, Fortune, Predestination, Human
Prudence
XLII. A Universal Mathesis
Appendix
It is quite amazing to see Swedenborg's
grasp of psychology long before Wundt, Freud, , the Gestaltists, Hebb, and
Skinner. His focus covers what today is divided in several sub-fields of
psychology-- physiological psychology, social psychology, educational psychology,
general psychology, psycholinguistics, Gestalt psychology, dynamic psychology,
and clinical psychology. It is a good definition of what will become modern
theistic psychology. It is truly remarkable that he achieved this foundation
solely by means of the data available in science at this time (middle of the
18th century in Western Europe), plus the Bible. Swedenborg included God and
Divine revelation in all his major scientific works. The Bible is written
in an ancient style yet it reveals many facts about God, the human mind, death,
and the spiritual world. Swedenborg was able to understand and to extract these
facts from the Bible through his amazing rational intellect. Shortly after he
wrote Rational Psychology he found himself suddenly conscious of his
spiritual mind, giving him unprecedented access to the spiritual world.
The Bible records the spiritual visions of
dozens of prophets and apostles, yet not one of these visions was equivalent to
what Swedenborg experienced, namely, full fledged conscious awareness in the
spiritual world, uninterruptedly for 27 years.
Let's examine what Swedenborg said about
death before he was able to be conscious in the spiritual world. He therefore
used the same data as any scientist had access to then (1742) or today (2004).
In Rational Psychology Swedenborg uses the term "soul" to refer to what
later he calls the "spirit." He identifies both terms with "the mind" which is a term
still active today. I call Swedenborg's approach "substantive dualism" because
he specifies that the body and the mind (spirit, soul) are of different
substances belonging to different worlds. The body is made of chemicals on the
planet from the sun. The mind is made of a "spiritual form" by which he meant
structure or anatomy.
Swedenborg formulated the rational principle that I can
summarize as: No function without structure. By this I mean that if you
define the mind as capable of some operation (e.g., thinking, remembering,
analyzing) then the mind must have a structure or organic anatomy that can
perform these operations.
The dualists that are mentioned in history
of psychology textbooks, like Descartes, have not proposed what the substance
might be that forms the mind or spirit. Swedenborg began an entirely new idea
about dualism by making it substantive. This is what makes theistic psychology
possible in modern science. Swedenborg always specified the mechanisms by which
God operates the world from top down through intermediary substances and forms,
atmospheres and correspondences. Swedenborg specified several anatomical and
functional levels of the operations of the mind. These were rationally derived
from research published by others on the human body in physiology and anatomy. A
couple of years later, when he suddenly acquired the ability of being conscious
in the spiritual mind, he was able to empirically confirm by direct observation
of the mind's anatomy, which is visible in the spiritual world in which he
suddenly became conscious on a permanent basis.
Swedenborg was able to conclude that the
mind is immortal on the basis of his rational understanding of the functions of
the mind and the anatomical discoveries of the 17th and 18th centuries. Later he
was able to confirm his conclusions directly by observation, watching thousands
of people enter the spiritual world at the death of their body. What he did not
know ahead of time is that the people would appear in their normal physical
appearance -- same body, same clothes, same memory and identify.
Still later he figured out that these were
only appearances, similar to the bodies that appear in a dream. In other words,
the mind or spirit, upon arrival in the world of spirits, projects its feelings
and memories upon the environment. The laws of the spiritual world dictate that
minds that are different do not meet or are not aware of one another, while
minds that are similar in memory and motivation automatically find themselves
congregating together. This means that the memories and motivations projected by
minds that are together are able to socialize within their common mental
projections. This is similar to people appearing in your dream. The difference
is that the dream ends and the characters are fictitious and forgotten. But in
the spiritual world the projections do not end but are maintained in place as
long as the motivations and memories are constant. The result is that many new
arrivals called "novitiate spirits" are able to continue city life as they know
it, in company with those who share the same memories and lifestyles from earth.
At first this may sound disappointing in
that our eternity in the afterlife is just a dream. But this is a wrong
interpretation. As we know, dreams can be and often are more powerful than
waking experiences. We can experience pleasure or terror far more intense than
in waking life. The intensity of sensation is determined not by the physical
body but by the mind. The mind experiences pleasure or fear when the body is
stimulated in particular ways. The sensations are not in the brain because the
neural activity is electrical and chemical, not sensory. All sensations are
located in the mind, not the body. This is why we can experience intense
pleasure or pain while dreaming, even though the body is inert. When the mind
(or spirit) is cut off from the physical body upon death, the mind is freed from
bondage or constriction, and now appears in the spiritual world ready to interact
and take up a new life and a new lifestyle.
We cannot be born in the spiritual world
but only in the natural world on a planet. This is because an empty mind cannot
live and the mind is filled by experiences of the body. Once the mind is ready,
the body can be separated, and the conscious mind is now in the spiritual world.
The body that we have in the spiritual world is called the spiritual body. This
is the same spiritual body we had right from birth, and it grew along with the
physical body since the mind must have a body to exist, even in dreams.
But we do not have conscious awareness of this spiritual body until we drop the
physical body, and from consciousness in the natural mind, we now gain
consciousness in the spiritual mind. The spiritual body is immortal and stays
with the mind forever.
Swedenborg figured out many of these
details which he was able to confirm later by 27 years of direct observation in
the spiritual world.
As regards the pure intellectory to which
belongs the pure natural mind, this indeed seems also to die or be dissolved,
but only after delaying for a long time; for it is a celestial form, and there
are no forms at hand which can destroy it; but as to the length of the delay,
this is not for us to determine. Thus the mind or animus survives long after
death, but is not able to operate, in that its common or external form is
dissolved, and it cannot as yet acquire for itself a new form. But let us
dismiss these matters as among things wholly unknown; to wit, whether the human
animus is to survive the life of its body until the Last Judgment...But into
these arcana, let us not penetrate. (Rational Psychology 495)
Only three years later Swedenborg
published the first Volume of the Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets). He
had suddenly found himself capable of staring into the afterlife. For the next
27 years he kept daily records and explanations publishing the results in nearly
30
volumes that have become influential in American and European thinking in
theology, art, and literature. Now the time has come to extend this amazing
treasure into the science of psychology.
Consider how Swedenborg was able to reason
in a direction that landed him on the truth, as empirically confirmed a little
later. The central feature that impresses me as a modern psychologist is that he
was completely loyal to the principle, stated above: No function without
structure. By consistently following this rational scientific principle, he was
led to fill in the details on the basis of only a little data. To paraphrase
his reasoning: No function without structure. The mind has well known functions
and operations such as thinking, reasoning, perceiving, sensing, imagining.
Also, feeling, needing, willing, loving, intending. The mind must therefore have
an organic structure, which means it is an organ, like the brain. But the operations of the
mind like sensations and thoughts cannot possibly be in the physical world
because thoughts and feelings are immaterial. He was very familiar with the
Bible and the scientific revelations in the Old Testament and the New Testament
provided him with data on the spiritual world and life after death, about heaven
and hell, and the resuscitation of the mind or spirit, immediately after death.
Putting these scientific revelations
together with his up to date knowledge of the human sciences, Swedenborg was
able to predict that the organ of the mind consists of spiritual fibers coiled
in a harmonious direction which he inferred would be vortical, spiral, round,
angular, counter-clockwise networks of fibers -- somewhat like what we know
today the brain looks like underneath its surface. He called this harmonious
network of fibers "the heavenly form." He further inferred that there must also
be a "hellish form" which has fibers that run in the opposite direction. When we
pass on at death the mind arrives such as it had been built up over the
individual's biography. A mind that has a well developed hellish "bent" feels
tortured when entering the heavenly sphere, and vice versa. Therefore every
individual must undergo a second death sometime after arriving in the world of
spirits at the "first" death. Swedenborg did not find a way of predicting how long
this would last. When he was introduced into the spiritual world by suddenly
becoming conscious of his spiritual mind, he was able to observe that this
intervening period ranged from hours to months, with an average of about two
months. Then the "second" death occurred.
It is the general opinion that after the
death of the body, the soul [mind or spirit] is at once separated and, flying
away, abandons its carcass. But when we consider that the universal form of the
body is from [spiritual] substance alone, being the soul [mind or spirit], that
is, from the soul; there being nothing which is not from the simple fiber, and
the simple fiber being from the simple cortex, and so on; and consider that the
soul, being a real essence and substance, from which comes the universal organic
form of the body, is the all in every part thereof; and also that it resides
inmostly therein and in the centers, as it were all parts thereof, and in the
blood itself, whose principal essence is the soul which is within it; it follows
that the whole soul does not fly from the body at the moment the life of the
body is extinct, but that remains for some time until the several parts wherein
it is, are dissolved. (Rational Psychology 512)
Here you can see how Swedenborg reasons
regarding what he later called the "resuscitation" process, which he
was able to observe in detail (see Section xx). He was able to
observe that it lasts approximately 30 hours and described the particular
sequence of steps in which an individual is awakened for consciousness in the
spiritual body.
In Rational Psychology Swedenborg's
theory of personality is presented in detail. Where did he get his data at that
time? Very little was known, if anything, about emotions and personality beyond
what Aristotle wrote centuries earlier. Swedenborg had not yet entered his dual
consciousness status so the only source available to him was his own
self-witnessing of himself (see Section xx). His ability to discover principles of personality from
self-observation was remarkable, and then to extend the observations to others,
finally to formulate a rational account that consistently explains the whole
data. Here he is discussing "avarice" as a personality disorder:
How great a sickness, insanity, and
irrationality of mind, avarice is, and how utterly sordid, can be sufficiently
apparent from its effects; for the more deeply enrooted it is, the more are all
other loves dulled and extinguished. When perpetually occupied by this idea, the
mind is suffocated, as it were, and is immersed, not in the body, but in the
earth; thus it is not possible that it can be elevated toward things superior,
or that the spiritual can flow into so gross a natural. (...) All love of
society is wholly rejected from the mind of a miser, and so likewise friendship,
and also the love of those who are his own, which yet is an utterly natural
love. (...) thus what rules him is the supreme love of self. (...) (Rational
Psychology 235)
Later when he got to his spiritual
observation post Swedenborg was able to confirm that an individual comes into
the spiritual world with a mind that is ordered according to its "affections" or
"loves," what we would call today "motives" and "intentions." Selfish motives
oppose altruistic motives and fight against them until they are paralyzed and
tucked away in the mind, rendered non-operational. then only pure selfish loves
rule the mind and its behavior. Therefore it is necessary to battle against
selfish motives before they take over the mind and become dominant. People can
show altruistic behavior for selfish reasons, in which case they only appear
altruistic, and as soon as the personal gain is removed from the altruistic
behavior, it ceases, leaving only the selfish behavior to show.
Survival of society depends on altruism
overcoming selfishness. For example patriotism and sacrifice in war is not
possible if selfishness rules our mind. Decency, compassion, and honesty are
ways of behaving that a selfish person can only simulate when convenient or of
benefit to self. A selfish person hates being honest, decent, or fair and tries
to avoid behaving in this way whenever possible or safe. Friendship and love
between couples are not present when one or both partners are selfish.
Selfishness is the motive to love oneself above others in all situations.
Altruism is the motive to love others above self in all situations. We remain
with mixed motives until we grow in the spiritual aspects of our personality,
but we gradually incline more towards one or the other, so that we end up being
thoroughly selfish in most situations or completely committed to becoming wholly
altruistic.
Character self-modification is achieved by
a higher motive compelling or restricting the field of action of a lower motive.
If we are strongly committed to becoming altruistic we constantly look for
opportunities to change our normal reaction from selfish first, to altruistic
first. A decent person is one who always puts the other's rights ahead of one's
own desire to violate it. A loving husband is one who always puts his wife's
desires and requests ahead of his own preference or habit. Honest employees
never cheat or loaf, and if they do, they feel guilty about it and try not to do
it as a habit. But a selfish person will try to get away with as much loafing as
is safe, not caring for either the employer's rights or society's interests.
Our ability to reason is located in the
portion of the mind called "pure intellect" which is the understanding -- "pure"
in the sense of rational rather than sensory. In modern terms we would call this
the cognitive domain of behavior. Swedenborg reasoned that there is a mechanical
connection between the individual brain cell and the "pure intellect" so that
what the mind thinks and what the brain does correspond to each other perfectly.
One cannot go on without the other without producing breakdown. Each cell in the
cortex of the brain operates like a mini-brain so that the human brain is
actually billions of brains acting together -- an image similar to what we would
call today "distributed computing" where thousands of computers are
interconnected to increase their capacity for a very large operation.
Swedenborg formulated this universal
principle: The smaller an organ or object gets, the more perfect must be its
internal structure and function. Hence the mini-brains inside each cortical cell
is more perfect than the brain itself, and on to smaller units which at last are
spiritual rather than natural. Spiritual substances are far superior to natural
matter in the sense that they are the source of natural properties and
qualities, which in themselves are only effects produced by the spiritual
substances in their interior structure.
Later Swedenborg was able to specify
three non-overlapping degrees of existence: The natural, the spiritual, and the
celestial. The human rational mind is capable of operating at each of these
three levels and the properties of the operation become more perfect as one goes
from natural, to spiritual, to celestial. The highest type of operation in the
human mind is called heavenly (altruism and its consequences), while the lowest
is called hellish (selfishness and its consequences). We determine by our
character or personality habits whether we spend immortality in happy
rational states of mind, or the opposite, since the mixed state is no longer possible once
the mind enters the afterlife as a "spirit."
In Rational Psychology Swedenborg
refers to Plato's self-witnessing as reported in Aristotle:
Often when my soul, leaving the body,
has been in contemplation, I seemed to enjoy the highest good, and this with
incredible pleasure. Therefore, I was in a manner struck with astonishment,
perceiving that I was a part of a superior world, and feeling myself to be
endowed with immortality under the highs degree of light. (Plato in
Aristotle).
Later when Swedenborg enjoyed dual
consciousness, he was able to stay in the spiritual world for as long or as
often as he focused on it. Unlike Plato and more modern mystics who discuss
meditation as a way of higher perception, Swedenborg's perception into the
spiritual world did not depend on mediation but on direct experience of all his
senses, so that he could see, hear, touch, discuss, and move around in the
spiritual world, whereas those who reach for mystical experiences are unable to
do this. The reason is that entering spiritual consciousness in this life cannot
be done by direct sensing, as in meditation or forms of ecstasy, but only through rational thinking
and understanding of Sacred Scripture and its scientific revelations. Swedenborg's rational
psychology and theistic science always strove to keep all explanations
harmonious with scientific revelations in the Old and New Testaments.
But keep in mind what has been stated in
previous sections about Creationism and about
mysticism (see Section xx). Swedenborg did not rely on merely the literal
stories of the Bible. When he began his conscious observations of the spiritual
world he had to learn the laws of that world so that he could move around and
interpret correctly what he saw and heard around him. In this way he came to
know in detail the laws of correspondences between the natural and the
spiritual. He was able to study them empirically since what the mind feels and
thinks is observable in the spiritual world with one's senses. It's as if you
were able to enter in my dreams so that I could see you and you could see what
I'm dreaming about. You would be able to see my thoughts and feelings projected
into the dream scenes and their emotional quality. For instance when the mind is
despondent, the surrounding area in the spiritual world turns dark with dark
menacing looking clouds appearing. When someone burns with hate against you
there is a fiery flame visible in the midst of their head or other part of the
spiritual body. When two people discuss something about truth, horses appear.
When a man and a woman look at each other with love, suddenly gardens appear
around them with fragrant odors that anyone present can see and smell.
And many such examples that Swedenborg
describes. Once he learned the laws by which natural appearances are produced by
the mind's activity, he was able to read the Old and New Testaments in a new
way, by going from the literal meaning of some historical event or behavior, to the spiritual correspondence in terms of the mind.
2.19 In what Style did
Swedenborg Write the Writings?
You can read and search the English text
of the Writings online at this Web address:
www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
When I first found the Writings in
Hamilton Library in 1981 I started reading Warren's extra thick Compendium Volume, which gave large
chunks of text from each of the "theological" Writings of Emanuel
Swedenborg (1688-1772). It's been
traditional to divide Swedenborg's overall literary work into two collections or
periods of his life-- his "Pre-Theological Scientific Works" (about 20 volumes)
and his "Theological Works" which are called "the Writings of Swedenborg" (about
30 volumes). However, in theistic psychology the "Theological Works" are called
"Scientific Revelations."
Since the Writings are given to humankind
as a rational revelation from the Divine, their content is universal. I appear
to be the first Swedenborg scholar to see the Writings as scientific
revelations, and the first scientific psychologist to attempt to present the
Writings as part of the science of modern psychology. However, scientists from
other fields have occasionally referred to Swedenborg's Writings as containing
information of interest to science, see especially the articles on the Web site
of physicist Dr. Ian Thompson at:
TheisticScience.org
When I completed reading the Compendium,
I was so amazed and delighted that I continued to read the entire text of each
volume, 27 in all. When I had finished, I started reading several of the volumes
again and again. I was making plenty of notes in the margins of the books each
time I read from them. This helped me keep track and formulate contact points
between psychology and the Writings as these amazing scientific revelations came to my awareness
for the first time. This was in 1981.
In subsequent years I was able to continue
my studies and my attempts to come up with formulations that were possible for
the modern field of psychology, given its sensitivity, even defensiveness,
about being "scientific." I have worked, performed, and thrived in this
intellectual environment since 1962, thus 42 years today (2004). I am well qualified to
attempt this integration between psychology and the Writings of Swedenborg.
This book represents my first attempt to make a global and explicit formulation.
It comes after 22 years of serious study and research on the Writings ( see my intervening articles in the Reading List).
You will see various quotes from Swedenborg throughout this
presentation. I provide several quotes in which Swedenborg affirms that what he
is writing is a collection of books which "have been commanded by God" and that
he only wrote down what the Divine-Human intended for him to write down. On some
occasions he stops in the middle of a subject and writes that he "is not
allowed" to go further with that subject. Sometimes he writes in the margin:
This was dictated by the Divine-Human whom he often called "the Lord."
Swedenborg was raised as a Christian and he had a lifelong love for the Bible.
At age 57 Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him he had been prepared for a
Divine mission, and now it was ready to start. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE -- his task as
a scientist was to write a collection of books, and to publish them, regarding
what he sees and hears in the spiritual world or the world of the afterlife, and
furthermore, to write them as a scientific work that will reveal to humankind
all the secrets hitherto unknown about God, the afterlife, and our necessary
preparation for it.
Actually, it only appears as a mission impossible, but in
reality, Swedenborg could not fail because this was a Divine Mission which had
been foretold precisely in the Book of Revelation, the last work that
makes up the New Testament. It is known among Christian scholars that the
subject matter of these visions is the Second Coming of Christ. It was written
by John, the author also of the Fourth Gospel in the New Testament. He was
Jesus' closest disciple. Jesus had announced that He must "come again." For more
than two thousand years every generation of Christians have been waiting for the
Second Coming, since this marked in their expectations, the beginning of
paradise on earth--the final destination of all the faithful.
Imagine how impossible a task Swedenborg was given. His
consciousness in the spiritual mind was suddenly opened so that he became a
double person. In his natural mind, he was in his physical body carrying out his
complex duties and responsibilities every day. In his spiritual mind, he was
exploring the spiritual world accompanied by many other people from there with
whom he carried out a constant stream of conversation. He interviewed them, he
visited their cities, houses, or caves, and he was given the power to create
experimental conditions for investigating the thinking process of those who were
there. Meanwhile he was also taking care of business on earth. He was a
government engineer with administrative responsibilities for the development of
the Swedish mining industry. He was a publisher of scientific journals and wrote
many of them himself--articles that were acclaimed by other scientists as
original, inventive, and brilliant.
But now at age 57, as he had to divide his attention in two,
he thought it best to resign his official duties and lived on his pension. He
was traveling frequently to Amsterdam and London to publish each book as he
finished them--27 in all from age 57 to 82. He was active all the way to the
end, publishing his last book in 1771. A few months later, having accomplished
his mission impossible, his physical body was removed, and his dual
consciousness ceased. Now he is lost somewhere in the ocean of people in the
heavens. He wrote that people after their "second death," which is when we enter
either heaven or hell, lay aside their external memories of earth and are no
longer conscious of their earthly life. I suppose that today he is reading the
Writings that he wrote, not knowing that he wrote them!
This is especially the case because he wrote the Writings in
a natural language, which was Neo-Latin--the common language in which European
authors published their scientific works in the 17th and 18th centuries. The
language and script in heaven are entirely different, as described in the
Writings, and so are the sentences and words, though their meanings correspond
to each other (see Section xx).
The Writings explain that scientific revelations are given by
God to humankind by means of Divine Speech which is given in correspondences so
that human beings could understand it. Divine Speech enters the highest portion
of the human mind called "heaven." When we are at that level of consciousness we
think by means of celestial-rational correspondences. So Divine Speech
enters the human mind by means of celestial-correspondences. These cannot be
understood by those who are at a lower level of thinking and rational
consciousness. They understand Divine Speech by thinking with spiritual-rational
correspondences. But hose who are in a still lower level of thinking, understand
Divine Speech by means of spiritual-natural correspondences. Finally,
when we still think in terms of materialistic concepts from nature we think in
sensuous or natural-rational correspondences. This is the level of
thinking in which the literal sentences of Sacred Scripture were dictated or
inspired to the prophets and revelators.
Divine Speech is from the Divine Rational Mind of the
Divine-Human, which is infinite (see Section xx). Therefore it cannot be understood in
itself by finite human beings. But the Divine-Human provides a mechanism of
transformation for Divine Speech by which it is translated into rational
correspondences that the human mind can understand. The human mind operates at
four major levels of rational consciousness. Therefore God had to create four
levels of correspondences for Divine Speech so that its message could be
understood by those who are at each of these levels. In this way Divine Speech
enters the full range of the human mind and can be understood by every human
being.
Note however that what people understand when they read
Sacred Scripture varies with the level of their thinking and rationality. The
literal meaning is written in terms of sensuous and natural-rational
correspondences of the Divine Speech. When it is brought down to this level of
thinking, what God says seems to be addressed to a particular ethnic group at a
specific historical time. From this level of correspondences, religion is
formed, and therefore religions are tied to local, ethnic, historical groups who
then sometimes try to spread their religion to wider regions. But as soon as you
go one level of thinking higher, into spiritual-natural correspondences,
everything ethnic, historical, and sensuous disappears from view, and instead
only spiritual topics are understood. Instead "Abraham" Divine Speech actually
says the Divine-Human, and instead of "Jerusalem" Divine Speech actually says
"doctrine" or "principle of behavior" (see Section xx). The higher the level of
correspondences in which we think, the higher is our understanding of Divine
Speech. The Writings show that we are able to think with progressively higher
correspondences as we regenerate our character from hellish to heavenly (see
Section xx).
Theistic psychology is based on the scientific revelations of
Divine Speech, and therefore one's understanding of theistic psychology is
proportional to the level of thinking one performs when studying it.
Divine Speech is available to us in the written form in which
the prophet took the dictation or described a vision. This written form is
called Sacred Scripture. The Writings say that Sacred Scripture was provided for
every civilization since the beginning of writing, and even before that, in an
oral form that every generation passed on to the next. The Writings also say
that the content of Sacred Scripture has changed with every subsequent
civilization or era. This is because the human mind is being evolved by God to
higher rational consciousness or "heaven in eternity." Every time a new Sacred
Scripture was given to some ethnic group or limited region, new and higher
rational ideas were provided at the lowest literal level. As a result, the level
of thinking of that civilization was raised a notch on the ladder of rational
consciousness.
Theistic psychology is based on three sets of Sacred
Scripture given at three different historical epochs in Western
tradition--Europe and Middle East. The first is called the Old Testament. The
second is called the New Testament. And the third is called the Writings of
Swedenborg.
The Writings were not dictated like the
sayings and visions of the prophets in the Old Testament. Mental and spiritual
dictation from the Divine was acceptable to people's understanding in those
days. But today in the age of modern science, a dictation from God would have no
effect except a negative one such as casting doubt on the validity of the
"dictation.". Strange as it may seem, even if God appeared at an international
conference in New York and was videotaped and shown on the news around the
world, even then science today would not be much influenced. The Writings are a
Divine revelation for the modern scientific age. This statement makes no serious
sense in the negative bias of scientific reasoning. But in the positive bias it
arouses immediate intense interest. In theistic psychology we get to know God as
a scientific subject of study. This will feel like a sense of relief to many
people who are bothered by the fact that their science and education is
God-less.
In order for Swedenborg to accomplish his mission impossible,
he had to be given the external freedom to write like a scientist, author, and
publisher. His intellect had been developed at the level of genius and he had
been prepared for 57 years in a science profession as mining engineer, inventor,
writer, and publisher. Swedenborg had to write in a way that other scientists
wrote, but about a vastly different subject and from a dualist perspective.
Every sentence of the Writings was carefully crafted by Swedenborg, mindful that
he was writing Sacred Scripture in which Divine Speech was hidden at four
different layers of correspondences. He wrote nothing without Divine permission
and God arranged for him to have the right kind of spiritual experience or
observation at just the right time, so he could write about it in just the right
way, word for word.
The Divine-Human is present with every person, guiding
thoughts, and arranging experiences (see Section xx). So there was nothing
extraordinary or special about what happened to Swedenborg. But what was special
and unique, was Swedenborg's spiritual experiences--his ability to be conscious
in both worlds simultaneously. This too is special only because he was still
alive in this world, but not special in the sense that all of us will be able to
verify his reports when we are resuscitated shortly after the death of our
physical body.
Swedenborg wrote the sentence "Nunc Licet"
(Latin for "now it is permitted") in his last work published in 1771. This
phrase has been taken up as a slogan by the community in Bryn Athyn, PA that has
formed a religion and school system around the Writings (if interested in
details, type "New Church" in any search engine). But Nunc Licet is also a phrase
appropriate for theistic psychology in the positive bias. In other words, now
that these Divine scientific revelations have been given to humankind in the
modern science format, every interested individual can inquire into the former
mysteries of religion, theology, philosophy, psychology, and literature. This
scientific inquiry into the former mysteries of religion is now allowed, that
is, it has now been made possible by the scientific revelations in the Writings
of Swedenborg.
These revelations could not have been made
prior to the 18th century when scientific knowledge was entering its modern
phase. In order for Swedenborg to comprehend what he observed in the spiritual
world for 27 years he had to have a rational understanding of science and a
knowledge of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, metallurgy, astronomy,
physiology, psychology, theology, philosophy -- along with the new scientific
instruments and measurement techniques. Much of this had been unavailable to
prior generations. Swedenborg's scientific inventiveness is recognized by all
his biographers and there is some current interest in his neuroanatomical
theories and in his theories of astronomy. However, remember that Swedenborg's
considerable scientific knowledge of the age was completely powerless by itself
to give him a single solid piece of information about the spiritual world and
how it is related to the human mind and the natural world. He only had theories
he deduced from the Bible, but no proof or solid data and experiment.
He strove to make up formal hypotheses and
universal principles about the unknown and invisible spiritual world and how it
determines the events of the natural world. Much of this information he obtained
not from science, but from the Bible, such as, there is God, God creates and
manages the universe, there is a spiritual world for souls and natural world for
bodies, God intervenes in history and individual lives, the Bible is written in
a historical style that contains spiritual principles or universal laws. He then
wove together this information about the spiritual world with what he learned
from science about the natural world. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) was
therefore the first theistic scientist, substantive dualist, and theistic
psychologist.
He admitted in several of his earlier scientific books
(written prior to age 57), that his argument or scientific account was
theoretical and inductive, not observational and experimental. Hence only the most general statements
could be made scientifically about God and the spiritual world. But when he
started being able to be conscious in both worlds, this all changed. Now he had
the observation post and the laboratory to confirm these general principles
empirically, and to fill in the details which could not be accessed before.
The style of the Writings reflects
Swedenborg's rational mind trained and steeped in Western philosophy, theology, history,
literature, and science. He was a well respected individual in Sweden and abroad
where he frequently traveled. His contemporaries admired him for his tremendous
ability to take data and observations made by others, like experts and
scientists, and to weave them together into a new and inventive way that was
impeccably rational, complete, polished, and comprehensible. He had the amazing
ability of explaining in a simple way, highly abstract and complex ideas about
the Infinite Divine and the spiritual laws by which God governs all natural and
mental phenomena.
In the Writings Swedenborg used no
diagrams and charts, or technical explanations that required more than a high
school education level of thinking. He numbered paragraphs consecutively within
each book so that he could refer back to topics he had already discussed. Most
topics are discussed several times in different places within a book and across
the books. When a topic is introduced he cites the prior Numbers that discuss
that topic, briefly summarizes the main points already made, then adds the new
material to that topic. In this way readers can keep track of topic development
within and across books. When he summarizes a topic discussed earlier there is a
feeling of recognition and familiarity, yet there is also something new in the
summary that highlights and deepens particular features of a topic. There is an
amazing consistency throughout the Writings in how a topic is handled and how
the topics interrelate with each other to present a complete whole. When one
learns this complete whole, one is able to apply, justify, and teach these
topics, as I am doing here in this book
Remarkably, every time I reread Numbers
over the years, or compare Numbers for research, I see something new in the old
familiar paragraphs. Clearly there is a functional relationship between the
mental process of the reader and the content of the topics. Swedenborg was able
to confirm that when someone on earth is reading scientific revelations, and
acknowledge them as Divine, there is a connection established between the
natural mind of the reader and the spiritual mind of the inhabitants of heaven.
This connection is different when one reads something that is not Divine
scientific revelation. A special relationship is established between "heaven"
and "earth" when someone reads Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech.
Swedenborg was able to show this
connection experimentally by reading the Old Testament in his house in Sweden, verse by verse,
and simultaneously observing who was around and connecting with his spiritual
mind in the spiritual world. Amazingly, he discovered that every sentence of the
Old and New Testaments connected with a different celestial "society" of
inhabitants that came around him when he read a verse. The overall heaven is vast
expanse in the shape of the human body, and contains large populations of people
in every region or "organ." These celestial populations live in cities and
conglomerations of cities called "heavenly societies." Each society is connected
to a different verse in the Old and New Testaments. By learning which society
connected with which verse Swedenborg was able to communicate with them by
visual presence and verbal interaction in the universal language that is innate
in all "spirits" or inhabitants of the immortal afterlife.
Swedenborg observed that each religion has its own heaven
because many people in the afterlife bring their religious ideas with them and
are unwilling to give them up. People have therefore a choice between entering
heaven at the religious level of thinking, or entering heaven at the level of
theistic psychology. At this level they give up their religious views in favor
of theistic psychology which is more universal and includes all religions. The
heavens of those who are still in religious ideas are segregated from each other
since religions tend to disagree with each other.
In the 12-volume Arcana Coelestia
("Heavenly Secrets"),
Swedenborg goes through the first two books of the Old Testament -- Genesis and
Exodus, verse by verse, phrase by phrase, and word by word. It may sound like
this is boring or difficult reading, but the opposite is the case on every page.
Throughout his presentation he proves his points by quoting many other verses
throughout the books of the Bible to show the consistency of the code of
correspondences in which all Sacred Scripture is written as Divine Speech. The Divinely inspired
authors of these visions, prophecies, and histories were completely
unaware that what they were seeing and hearing, and writing down, had two
meanings, one visible, the other, hidden. The visible meaning, called "the
literal sense," was such that anyone could understand and paraphrase, though it
didn't necessarily make sense. In many places the Old and New Testament verses
appear figurative, poetic, or just strange images heaped upon one another and
making no sense.
All this strangeness is due to the fact that it is written in a
secret "heavenly" code and the inner invisible meaning of the sentence dictates what the outer literal
expressions are going to be. Half of the time the outer literal meaning makes
sense and is useful for religious teachings and worship. The Writings reveal
that the literal meaning of the historical parts of the Bible is accurate in
every possible detail. . But the other half of
the time the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture appears meaningless, impossible to decipher, and easy to speculate
almost anything about its message. Readers who acknowledge the Bible as Divine
revelation don't know what to make of the parts that are strange and
incomprehensible. Some people are unimpressed by the Bible because they see
these meaningless passages, sometimes contradicting each other. They wonder how
a Divine book could contain so much meaninglessness, so many contradictions, so
much blood and gore, so much prejudice and racism, in addition to the positive,
universal, and reassuring parts which it also contains. It is this mixture
that is responsible for many people doubting that the Sacred Scripture is Divine
Speech.
Because Sacred Scripture is written in this
style, a number of religions and denominations have derived dogmas based on the
parts that were not clearly comprehensible and logical. As a result different
and contradictory dogmas arose, all of them based on Sacred Scripture. These
differences led to conflict among religions and splinter-groups, and even cruelty, war, and savagery, as
they tried to destroy one another. All of this was done not in the name of true
religion but in the context of irrational dogmas derived from the passages that
could not clearly be understood at the time. These contradictory dogmas would
not have resulted in conflict were it not for the fact that the people were evil
and were using Sacred Scripture to pursue their evil even further. Hence the
failure of religion has prompted some people to give up God altogether.
Now the Writings have put a final
end to religious dogmas since they present, for the first time, a rational
account of all the mysterious passages in other Sacred Scripture that could not be
understood before. Now it is permitted ("Nunc Licet") that everyone read these new
scientific revelations and understand those
obscure passages in Sacred Scripture that made them doubt or be puzzled. But in addition to this, Swedenborg recorded
numerous facts he gathered from the spiritual world and its connection to the
mind, and to prior Divine revelations such as the Old and New Testaments, and
the Sacred Scriptures of earlier civilizations called the Most Ancient Church
and the Ancient Church.
It is legitimate to view Swedenborg's
Writings as theology and a new religion. It is also legitimate to view the
Writings as scientific revelations. The two are not opposed to each other but
complement each other.
When we view the Writings as science, then
science becomes theistic. It can never be atheistic again. Theistic psychology
is universal and describes all cultures and all human minds. In the literal
historical sense, Sacred Scripture is marked by time, culture, and religion.
This is also true of the Writings. Its focus on Judaeo-Christian revelations in
the Bible and the historical figure of "Jesus Christ as the One God of Heaven
and Earth," may at first be puzzling to people with non-Western cultural and
religious background such as Hinduism and Buddhism. How can this form a
universal science that all can work within?
The resolution to this apparent difficulty
is however not difficult. As shown in the Writings, all Divine revelation is
given to people on earth and to people in the celestial heavens. This presents
the necessity to write Divine revelation in a spiritual code. People on earth
understand and relate to the historical and scientific details in the text of
Sacred Scripture, while people in the heavens understand and relate to the
spiritual and celestial details visible when higher-order correspondences are known
(as discussed above).
This code of correspondences is called
"heavenly secrets" because it is the normal innate way we think when we are in
heaven. For instance when we read about the culture-bound details of a Jewish
person called Jacob in Genesis, those in heaven think, not of "Jacob" but
of "the natural mind." And when we read about "Isaac" they see, not Isaac, but
details about "the rational mind." Or, as another example, when we read that the
Jewish people wandered aimlessly in the desert for 40 years, the celestial
inhabitants see the details of "temptations" which we encounter when we are
regenerating our character as a way of preparing for heavenly life. These
temptations come to us in a definite developmental series, first natural, then
spiritual, then celestial, and those passages in Genesis are describing
this mental development (see Section xx).
Similarly with the cultural historical
figure of Jesus Christ, who in the Writings is called the "Divine-Human."
Swedenborg studied what happens to people from different religions who arrive
into the world of spirits at the death of their body. He observed that people
from the same religion congregate together on account of the compatibility of
their ideas an their life style preferences. Everyone is thus further instructed
in thinking about their religion in such a way that the universal
ideas of theistic psychology can illuminate them within their own religion.
The Writings declare that God does not
pressure or require anyone to change their religion in the other life.
But in fact religion becomes less and less
a focus as the mind grows to its heavenly potential. In the highest heavenly
regions of the human mind there is no longer a religion but a direct and
individual rational consciousness of God through God's Divine Truth. Even
science is of no significance in that state of mind because we receive instant
enlightenment from God on any subject we wonder about. This enlightenment is
from within, while knowledge from science is from without. Think of the
wonderful state we can look forward to--instant knowledge about anything we
wonder about and want to know or understand rationally!
Swedenborg rediscovered the universal code of
correspondences in which Divine Speech is given to humankind. This Divine code was known to the earliest civilization on earth. They knew
of it because they had direct perception into the spiritual world, as Swedenborg
had. Subsequently this capacity died out and with it, the knowledge of the code
of correspondences. This code specified how spiritual causes determine natural
events. By applying the code of correspondences to verses of Sacred Scripture one can extract the inner senses
by reconstructing the levels of correspondences contained within it (as
discussed above).
What does the inner secret sense of Sacred
Scripture talk about?
Not so surprisingly--theistic psychology.
The Bible has been familiar to generations
for thousands of years. Bible exegesis or interpretation is one of the largest
topics one can find in libraries. And yet not one author or commentator in all
these centuries suspected the existence of the code of correspondences in which
it is written.
The literal sentences of Sacred Scripture
are limited to a number of paragraphs, chapters, or books. The Writings of
Swedenborg are also limited in size, less than 30 volumes. If Sacred Scripture
were the only source for theistic psychology from now until the everlasting
future, there would remain little new information after a few generations of
research. But since the inner sense of Sacred Scripture is Divine Speech, which
is infinite, there is no limit to the number of topics and facts that can be
extracted to the endless future. Sacred Scripture is therefore the method God
provides to the modern age for discovering the scientific knowledge it needs to
progress and evolve towards the celestial mind. There is no limit to the amount
of knowledge that can be extracted from Sacred Scripture if one uses the methods
of extraction prescribed in Sacred Scripture.
Theistic psychology would be destroyed if it admitted any
concept or principle from some other source than Sacred Scripture.
You can see why this is true, if you are in the positive bias
towards Sacred Scripture. If you maintain this law of
exclusivity you avoid introducing merely human ideas from human experience. This
is what lead psychology to its current composition of several contradictory
theories and approaches. Everyone was allowed, and encouraged, to make up any
contradictory theory they wished, as long as they followed the prescribed rules
of methodology. In fact, psychologists often state that the science progresses
by contradictory theories shooting each other down and being replaced by still
others, endlessly. This is seen as the legitimate mechanism for scientific
progress.
In theistic psychology we do not have this kind of
self-promulgated intelligence wars between researchers. All theory and
explanation in theistic psychology is deductive, that is, extractive from Divine
Speech using extraction methods that are Divinely prescribed in Sacred
Scripture. This makes perfect sense since it would be chaos if everyone were
allowed to invent their own methodology for interpreting Divine Speech. God
insures that theistic psychology remains pure and valid by prescribing (a) the
text from which it is to be extracted (Divine Speech), and (b) the method by
which the extraction process must be made (revealed correspondences).
It is important to understand that
Swedenborg did not invent the code of correspondences just as no one invented
the
DNA code in genetics. It was discovered by analyzing data on cells. The DNA code
is a natural law. Similarly, the code of correspondences is a spiritual law that
specifies which spiritual events cause a particular natural event. Swedenborg
discovered this code, or spiritual law, by observation of the appearances in the
spiritual world that were correlated with or coincidental with, spiritual or
mental events. By repeated observation and experiment Swedenborg put together a
rational description of the code of correspondences and applied it to decoding
Sacred Scripture.
It is not surprising that Divine
scientific revelations, or Sacred Scripture, are written in the same code as
that which
governs the interrelation between natural events and their spiritual causes or
source. Recall that spiritual=mental, and therefore physical events in the body
are caused by spiritual events in the mind.
For instance every animal species and
every characteristic of each individual animal are natural expressions of human
emotions. Wild, dangerous, ferocious, or poisonous species correspond to savage
emotions in humans like rage, hatred, deception, abuse, etc. Every harmful or
"animalistic" emotion that exists in the human race, creates a species of
animals whose characteristics and behavior pattern represent this emotion. The
same is true of chemicals that are harmful to life, as well as natural disasters
like earthquake, hurricanes, forest fires, famines, disease, etc. The opposite
relationship holds in the case of beautiful pleasing things like flowers and
butterflies, or like juicy fruit and chocolate beans -- each corresponds to a
human emotion that is "heavenly" or good -- altruism, self-sacrifice,
industriousness, decency, obedience, love of truth, love of children, love of
innocence, love of marriage, love of God, etc.
In other words everything that can be
found in the natural world has been created by God to represent or correspond to emotions
in the human race. This is true theistic humanism!
During the earliest generations on earth,
natural disasters, dangerous animals, and noxious chemicals did not exist
because there were no negative and hellish emotions in those generations. But as
they began to decline in spirituality and rationality, they increased in
materialism and atheism, in selfism and machiavellism, which are "evil"
spiritual human emotions that correspond to the hellish things on earth.
Swedenborg reports that in the world of spirits this connection is immediate
rather than delayed since animals and weather are produced there instantaneously
by the emotions of the people present. It doesn't take long evolutionary eras,
as on earth, to produce a new species. By the same token these rational ether
body animals in the world of spirits disappear instantly as soon as the mood or
topic changes. Their existence does not continue as on earth.
2.20 Christian
Psychology vs. Theistic Psychology
From a student report:
During my investigation on the web, I came across a number of attempts at
the integration of science/religion, or God and psychology. One interesting
web site I found was at
www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/psych.htm . In this site
there is a discussion of whether psychology can be considered a science or a
religion. It first discusses the idea of psychology as a science. This site,
organized by a Christian group, considers psychology to be a mess, which is
far from science. However, when the site discusses psychology it is mostly
just discussing psychotherapy. Its objections to psychotherapy are not valid
to other fields of psychology such as cognitive, behavioral neuroscience, etc.
The field of psychotherapy is considered a pseudoscience. It is filled with
contradictory theories and techniques, all of which communicate confusion
rather than anything approximating scientific order. To the creators of this
site, psychology, most specifically psychotherapy, is not a science.
In this site psychology is seen as dealing with the exact same issues as
religion. It is focused on behavior, attitudes, moral issues, character
development, basically, how to live life. According to Christianity, or
followers of the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures are what we need to refer to for
these problems. Psychology and science, however, look toward scientific
substantiation.
According to the developers of this site, psychology has slowly been
replacing the role of religion. The site states, the cure of souls, which once
was a vital ministry of the Church, has now in this century been displaced by
a cure of minds called psychotherapy. True Biblical counseling has waned until
presently it is almost nonexistent. Psychology, in its essence, is just a
religion gone astray. It is the investigation for how to live and develop one's
life, both behaviorally and mentally. The problem with psychology [they say] is that it
regards anything that involves God and religion as mythical and irrational.
When in fact, revelations are the most helpful source for how to live life.
Throughout the rest of the site there is a discussion of how the Bible
tells us to live our life. The site stresses that the Bible should be used as
our true psychology, because psychology is merely a pseudoscience without any
real validity.
I feel that this site is quite interesting and informative. I believe that
the creators of the site are correct that psychology has gone astray. Most of
its theories are not very valid. They are just theories that have given the
false name of science. Psychology, in its essence, attempts to perform the
same use as religion. The problem is that it tries to remain entirely natural,
and at the same time it is dealing with something spiritual.
This site does a great job describing how psychology, specifically
psychotherapy, is in great need for religious incorporation. However, the
site's main flaw is not in its theory, it is in its content. Its discussion of
how the Bible tells us to live is not synchronous at all with what psychology
tells us. In order to adapt the Christian psychology discussed, there needs to
be a complete abandonment of psychology [they say].
Theistic psychology is under a similar motive as that discussed in this web
site. It is an attempt to incorporate God and spirituality into science and
psychology. Whereas the Christian Psychology site does not deal with
incorporation of religion into science. It is the abandonment of science for
religion [that they propose]. Theistic science is different. It gives us specific means for
understanding the spiritual (God and religion) and natural (psychology and
science) relationship through tools such as the science of correspondences.
The Christian Psychology discussed on that site does not give us an idea of
how observations of body and brain are related to spiritual matters. Theistic
science tells us how the two are related through correspondence. This is true
incorporation. This does not jeopardize science the way the Christian
Psychology does on that site.
(From a student report:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/459s2004/cooper/home.htm )
I agree with this student's comments and evaluation.
Christian Psychology is often based on the idea that the literal meaning of the
Bible gives us enough science of psychology to replace the current practice of
psychotherapy in atheistic psychology. But this is impossible because the
authors of the Books of the Bible lived in a prior era and civilization. Since
then modern science has happened to the human race. It has completely altered
the rational basis of how human beings think on this planet. We cannot go back
to an earlier form of science and thinking. It is the same with Christian
Creationism, which is based on the idea that we are given Divine Science in the
Creation Story in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis in the Bible.
But as fully shown and proven by Swedenborg, these eleven Chapters were copied
by Moses from the Ancient Word which was written in an earlier civilization
whose style of writing was by correspondences of natural appearances to
spiritual realities (see Section xx).
No modern science can be based on the literal meaning of
Sacred Scripture. But we can find modern science in Sacred Scripture--in its
scientific meaning. The Writings of Swedenborg are written in a modern
scientific context but I don't think this context will remain unchanged. How
will people read the Writings of Swedenborg several centuries or millennia from
now? I cannot predict in detail, but in general I would expect that they will
rely more on the correspondential meaning of the sentences than on the literal.
Today it is still highly relevant to rely on the literal of the Writings. Doing
so makes us more rational and intelligent. So there is less pressure or
motivation today to dig into the underlying meanings within the sentences of the
Writings, but this may change in the near future as more researchers become
involved in theistic psychology. To review what research has been done so far on
this front, consult volume 2 of my book A Man of the Filed, available on
the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume2-nonduality.html
Swedenborg demonstrates how we can extract many scientific
revelations from the hidden inner sense of the Old Testament. In fact, all
Divine Speech is given through natural correspondences when it reaches the
script of a natural language on earth. The Writings of
Swedenborg are Sacred Scripture ushering in the new age of the Second Coming, as
discussed above (see also Chapter xx). As Swedenborg
shows, the Second Coming could not occur in the natural world because it refers
to a new evolutionary phase for the human race, an evolution of the human
rational mind. This is where the Second Coming must take place, not in the
physical world, as it took place in the First Coming or Incarnation (see Section
xx).
The Second Coming is the completion of the creation of the
human mind. This is achieved by the Divine Truths that are revealed in the form
of scientific revelations of endless proportions for the new age of theistic
science, that is, science turned theistic. This book is an early example of it
for the field of psychology.
2.20.1
The Inner Scientific
Sense of Divine Speech
Many scientific secrets are revealed in the Old Testament
about God's methodology for creating new mental pathways for the regeneration of
the human race. Regeneration refers to the formation of a new heaven within our
rational mind. This is the heaven that contains our eternal life. Anyone
entering this heaven in their mind becomes an immortal angel living in conjugial
bliss to eternity. This rational revolution did not exist prior to their
creation by the Divine Incarnation.
Christians realize that this new creation of the Divine-Human
constitutes the salvation of the human race, but they do not yet know the
scientific explanation of how it constitutes salvation. This has been revealed
by God in the Divine Speech that He created through the minds of selected
prophets and revelators. But not in the natural historical meaning that constitutes the
content of Sacred Scripture. This natural history serves for religion, which is
a cultural phenomenon that God uses to teach about Himself, worship,
commandments of living, heaven, and hell. The scientific part had to remain
hidden until the human race was ready to understand it and accept it in a
rational way, based on one's understanding and perception. This hidden science
of the mind has now been revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg, which
constitute the rational revolution. Now anyone can develop ordinary rational
skills through cultural and scientific literacy. This was not possible before.
With this modern scientific rational mind we can comprehend the Rational Mind of
the Divine-Human that was created through the Incarnation.
Seventeen centuries passed before the Second Coming could be
created as a rational revolution in the mind of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)
who was the first human to enjoy dual consciousness since the Fall of the race
(see discussions above). The Writings now give us a knowledge of the long lost
Science of Correspondences, which contains the functional interconnections
between the actual spiritual cause of an event in the natural world. The natural and spiritual worlds are tied by
complete determination, event by event, one on one. Divine Speech is expressed
in a Divine Rational language, which descends by the laws of correspondence, to
the human mind, first in the celestial regions, then in the spiritual regions,
and finally in the natural regions, where we are conscious of it as natural
language and Sacred Scripture.
2.21
Where can I read Swedenborg’s
Writings and collateral works?
All of the Writings of Swedenborg
(1688-1772) are accessible online and hundreds of articles and books about them.
The links are found on the instructor’s Swedenborg Web site:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html
Swedenborg Online is available here with a
search engine for topic lookup:
www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
As well, consult the reading list below.
Chapter 3
Developmental Levels
of Thinking About Theistic Psychology
3.0 It helps to understand theistic psychology if we consider
three steps of understanding to be made, or three levels of thinking to be
achieved as one progresses in rational understanding of its content.
3.1
The First
Level--Paraphrasing and Summarizing
The three levels of thinking about theistic psychology
reflect the anatomy and operation of the mind which has three organic
functioning parts arranged in a vertical order of rationality. The first or
lowest level of thinking rationally is the comprehension of the literal meaning
of the sentences in theistic psychology, as for instance, what you are reading
in this book. The first phase of rational understanding is to succeed
in deciphering the literal meaning of each sentence. This requires a minimum of
reading and writing literacy such as the skills of high school graduates or
college students. A certain background in science is necessary as well as having
skills in critical thinking and literary analysis. With such standard literacy skills and with
the motivation to put up the effort, we are able to comprehend the literal
meaning of the sentences in theistic psychology. We are able to paraphrase or
summarize, answer quiz questions, and translate
the sentences into another language.
Obviously performing these tasks requires a certain degree of
understanding but only on the surface level. We may not be able to answer
questions about the original if the answer requires putting different parts
together. We may also not fully understand what the sentence is really talking
about except in a vague or doubtful manner. And we would not be able to
critically analyze the original text to show that it is valid or not. This is
then the first level of rational thinking about theistic psychology.
3.2
The Second
Level--Critical Analysis
The second level of thinking goes beyond the surface meaning
of the sentences. For example, consider this sentence: "Applied theistic
psychology can therefore be of great usefulness to every individual in preparing
for that crucial separation of our heavenly and hellish states of mind." We can
paraphrase it without understanding it, for we can say: "Applied theistic
psychology helps us to prepare for the inevitable separation of our heavenly and
hellish nature." Yet, we may not be able to explain
what is the "inevitable separation of our heavenly and hellish nature" or even,
what is our "heavenly and hellish nature." In order to explain this we need to
step up to the second level of thinking rationally.
The second level requires critical and abstract thinking
about the original sentence or meaning. In this example we need to explain (i) what
is our heavenly and hellish nature, (ii) how we acquired them, and (iii) why
they need to be separated.
This level of explanation requires putting various parts of
theistic psychology together and identifying the new implications which are
visible in this new arrangement. This level of explanation is more abstract and
universal and is called "theory" in science, and "doctrine" in philosophy and
theology. Theory and doctrine are rational models capable of explaining or
integrating many different parts of what is already known or available to be
known. In this example, we are to explain what is our heavenly and hellish
natures. To do this we can distinguish between being still tied to the physical
body vs. being conscious in our spiritual body without the physical body around
any more. In this "afterlife" state we are living in the spiritual world where
it is impossible to have heavenly and hellish traits together in one person's
mind on a permanent basis. Every individual in that state of life automatically
undergoes character changes that require us to choose between letting go of the
hellish traits, or letting go of the heavenly traits. This is why it is referred
to above as "the inevitable separation." This separation is also called the
"second death" in other places. And finally, we need to explain how the heavenly
and hellish traits are in us, and for this, we need to explain how traits are
inherited from parents but can be modified by character reformation.
Swedenborg observed that every individual in the spiritual
world whose consciousness operates at the celestial level of the mind has only
good qualities and no bad qualities. In the heavenly state of our mind we are
altruistic, rational, wise, decent, caring, conjugial, fair minded, loving
cleanliness and being useful to others. Swedenborg also observed that every
individual in the spiritual world whose consciousness operates at the lowest or
hellish level of human life, has evil qualities only, with no good qualities --
irrationality, foolishness, hatred, selfishness, egotism, stupidity, rebellious,
hating order and loving cruelty, mayhem, savagery, darkness, and the like.
Compared to the first level of thinking,
this second level of thinking about
the "inevitable separation of our heavenly and hellish nature" is higher or more
abstract and universal, and also more coherent and consistent.
3.3 The Third
Level--Spiritual Enlightenment
But the mind has a third level of rational operation which
goes far beyond the second level. The third level of thinking takes what is
abstract and universal (level 2) and makes it particular by applying it to
oneself, one's state and condition in the universe, in reality.
This third level of thinking requires a different motivation
than what we needed for acquiring level 2 thinking. We can be mature thinkers in
our field, understanding theory or doctrine in a rational and universal
manner, yet we might be unable to show how these theoretical and doctrinal
explanations apply specifically to our life, our every day behavior, our
relationships, our politics, our strengths and weaknesses, etc. This third level
cannot be reached merely by improving ourselves in the second level and keeping
on thinking more and more abstractly and universally. This method will not take
us to the third level of thinking called "enlightenment." It will only make us
better and better thinkers and level 2.
Historically the concept of enlightenment has been used in many areas in
philosophy, theology, and religion, but not in science -- until now.
Enlightenment refers to the rational perception that operates at the third or
highest level of thinking called the interior mind. Enlightenment is the product
of spiritual light flowing into the celestial mind. It is the celestial mind
that is enlightened. But we are not conscious of this while we are still tied to
our physical body. And yet, when we are motivated to acquire heavenly traits in
our natural personality, the motivational effort creates a new and enlightened
consciousness. We become aware of our enlightened consciousness when we suddenly
"see" how some universal principle from level 2 thinking applies to
ourselves--our thinking and feeling, or our understanding and perception.
This
conscious awareness of understanding how the universal applies to the self, is
called spiritual enlightenment. It brings peace of mind, full confidence, and
wisdom or the ability to see whether something is true or a distortion of truth.
From this you can see that spiritual enlightenment depends on the rational
understanding of truths and how they apply to self.
Enlightenment is not a sensation or a mystical experience,
but a rational consciousness of truth.
Under the "influx" or influence of the Spiritual Sun (see
below), our interior mind acts as a receptor of this streaming light from the
Spiritual Sun. As witnessed by Swedenborg, the spiritual world has only one sun
called the Spiritual Sun. It appears everywhere in the spiritual world just like
the light of the physical sun appears everywhere on earth. The light of the
physical sun streams into the cells of plants and animals, and within the light,
there is heat. This heat raises the temperature of the cells and produces
activity proper to each cell's structure, besides other effects it has.
You need to think of this more abstractly in order to
understand it rationally. The sun's effect on cells on earth is not merely by
external light and heat. This is obvious because only the surface cells would be
so affected, and cells that were beneath would not, except to the extent that
heat is transmitted across cells. But more deeply considered, you can see that
the cell is made of atoms and other particles whirling around in an energy field
inside a space volume that is vast in comparison to the whirling particles. To
one of these atomic particles or energy waves, the space in and around the cell
is like the space around our earth when we look up in the sky on a clear day or
night. This space in the interior of the atom is the same space that is between
the planets and stars. Scientists in Swedenborg's time (17th and 18th centuries)
called this space "ether," a word that has been used in the history of
science for centuries, up until Newton who promoted the idea of empty space
rather than ether, which is not emptiness but an energy field or atmosphere
different from air and much less dense. Later, when Newton got to the spiritual
world, he changed his mind about vacuum--see Section xx above).
Swedenborg insists that it is not rational to think of space
as nothing since nothing cannot exist, In order for space to exist, it cannot be
nothing. Following the physics of Newton, twentieth century physicists were able
to show that what was called empty space is actually filled with many
small particles of very short life spans and of various energy fields, to such an extent that in some
regions of the universe, space has a
curvature due to the bending effect of these energy fields. this was first
proven by Einstein around 1900.
Energy fields make an atmosphere that may be called ether,
which is a thin atmosphere, much thinner than air. The ether atmosphere carries
light and energy fields across the universe, between planets, and in the atomic
space of a cell. It is all one unified field or atmosphere called ether. Ether
is therefore the very physical framework for the physical universe. In recent
times scientists have discovered several new particles in ether. These very
small particles sometimes have a very short life span measured in millions or
billions of a second. It is now believed that an endless number of such
particles may exist in ether, indicating that space or ether is not empty but
densely filled.
The above explanation is at level two thinking about space
and the sun. Every subatomic particle within a cell originates from the
sun, including ether. You can see that everything in the physical universe
comes from the sun, each sun or star in its own region giving birth to that region of
space and planets. Everything on the planet is therefore from the sun. The sun
is everywhere and in everything. You can see this rationally at level two
thinking in abstract and universal terms.
3.4
The Spiritual Sun
Now apply this same rational perspective to the spiritual
world, remembering that whatever is said about the spiritual world is also said
about the mind since there is an overlap between the two--this idea is more
fully developed in Section 2.16 (Chapter 2, Volume 1). All the laws of the
spiritual world are the laws of the mind. You can see this relation when you
consider your dreams. Where are your dreams? They are not nowhere. People say
that dreams are nothing, just imagination, not reality. But this is a negative
bias that denies the reality of dreams. It is just like a novel. The characters
in the novel are fictitious, not real. They only exist in the story. But the
book is real. It has a legal identity and is protected by the law as private
property (or "copyright"). The book is the venue for the characters. The
characters are not real but the venue is real. The same is true about dreams.
The characters and places in the dream are created by the mind, projected into
imagination or visions. What are these visions made of? They must be made of
something real or else they could not be produced by the mind. The mind is able
to produce visions by means of the laws of correspondences that govern
everything in the universe, whether physical atoms or mental images.
To proceed rationally within a positive bias you can begin to
see that the spiritual world and the mind are the same world. In order for
feelings and thoughts to exist in our mind, the mind must have some mechanism
and venue to produce these feelings and thoughts. This is rational. Just like
the physical light from the sun must have physical ether-atmospheres to travel, in the same way
the light from the Spiritual Sun must have rational ether-atmospheres to be
carried into our mind. Our mind is a receptor of this spiritual light.
This spiritual light enters our spiritual body which is in
the world of spirits and is exposed there to the Spiritual Sun. Our physical
body is born on earth and simultaneously our spiritual body is born in the world
of spirits . Our mind grows and develops, not on earth, but in the world of
spirits .The mind cannot exist in physical ether-atmospheres but only in
rational ether-atmospheres. The physical sun produces the physical matter and
space on the planet and in our physical brain. The Spiritual Sun produces the
rational ether-expanse in the world of spirits. The physical sun is made of
physical matter but the Spiritual Sun is made of spiritual substances called
love and truth. Truth is spiritual light; love is spiritual heat. Both of these
substances make up the Spiritual Sun in infinite quantity. The Spiritual Sun is
an aura emanating from the Divine-Human who can be seen in the midst of it by
those who dwell in the highest heavens in their mind. Thus, the Spiritual Sun is
the method God uses to accommodate His presence with the human race and the
created universe.
It's difficult to think of truth and love as substances. At level 1 and 2
thinking we see truth and love as mental operations in our mind. Truth is
something we can think. Love is something we can feel. How can there be a Sun
from which streams forth truth and love? But at level 3 thinking we can expand
or deepen our idea of truth and love as the universal source and origin of our
thoughts and feelings.
It helps to remember that the mental world of thinking and feeling = the
spiritual world where are the minds of every human being. All minds are in the
same rational ether fed by the Spiritual Sun. The only reason we can't see
everybody else in our mind is that we are sensually tied to physical space and
time. But as soon as we are separated from the physical body and its sensation
of space and time, we become fully conscious in the spiritual world and we can
see everybody else in our mind for we are then in a mental world, also called
spiritual world, though few realize that these two are the same.
This spiritual light (or truth substance) is first received into the interior
mind, which is what we called "heaven" in previous discussion. Upon receiving
this spiritual light our interior mind is instantly activated just as the
physical cell is activated when the physical sunlight hits it, including something
indirectly from
the sunlight and heat, like electricity.. The sunlight is
received by each cell or plant according to the DNA of the plant and the
condition of its structure and material. Different plants receive the same
sunlight yet each produces something different with it, according to its genetic
code and form. Similarly, the spiritual light of the Spiritual Sun streams into
the interior mind and activates it according to the individual unique form and
quality of a person. The same spiritual light produces different and unique
effects on each human being, though there is a similarity and compatibility
between all of them.
The reaction of our interior mind, which is of course not
available to our conscious awareness, has a corresponding effect on the lower
spiritual-rational
mind, and this has a corresponding effect on the lower natural-rational mind. Now at last we
are conscious of its operation since the feelings and ideas of the natural mind
are available to our awareness. You can see that there is a rational progression
from the Spiritual Sun to the conscious natural mind. This chain of
correspondences is present with every feeling and thought we have, and with the
sensorimotor life we have through correspondence to the physical body.
The mind is therefore a multi-level organic receptor of the
spiritual light and heat from the Spiritual Sun. The spiritual light is a substance that
is alive and organic, unlike the light of the physical sun which is not alive
and not organic. The mind as a receptor contains spiritual fibers constructed
out of the spiritual substances streaming forth from the Spiritual Sun. The more
the influx or input of spiritual light and heat into the interior mind, and its downward
spiral of correspondences, the more our mind grows and matures into its full
human potential. But of course the process cannot be automatic for then we would
be organic spiritual robots rather than human beings. To be a human being we
must have the feeling that we are free and that we have our own mind to make
choices in life, whether our career, or dinner tonight or, where we step next in
our walking.
This process of freedom is maintained by the spiritual light and heat that
enters the interior mind and causes the lower mind to correspond with it.
3.5 Consciousness as Substance
The spiritual light and heat produce consciousness in our
mind. Our conscious awareness as selves and unique individuals is the operation
of the spiritual light and heat in our unique individual mind. Every
individual's uniqueness is achieved by means of the unique collection of
memories, thoughts, and feelings that one's daily life produces in our mind and
experience. We start life with conscious awareness while we are attached to the
physical body. Therefore our uniqueness as an individual depends on having this
build up of experiences in daily life called our "biography." Once we develop
a biography, personality, and a mind filled with knowledge, memories, and
understanding, we are ready to transition to the full human phase of life in the
spiritual world. Our mind is now conscious not in the natural mind as before,
but in the spiritual-rational and celestial-rational mind. We now live in the spiritual
world forever, never returning to the physical body. But the laws of development
and behavior are different in that new state of life.
The most important difference to understand is that we can no
longer continue with a mind that contains both heavenly and hellish traits. When
awakened in our spiritual consciousness a few hours after the "death" of the
physical body, we undergo psychological experiences in which it becomes very
clear to us who we really are in the totality of our mind. We are compelled to
choose between our heavenly and our hellish traits. We now must give up being
selfish and adopt an orientation of altruism. Or else, we give up altruism and
become completely, totally, and purely selfish. The same with all other
character traits. Not a single mixed feeling or motive can remain. This
separation process is called the "second death" and occurs sometime after we
arrive into the world of spirits (see Section xx).
3.6 Choosing the Heaven or the Hell in
Our Mind
It is natural to
think that we would choose heavenly life in eternity because that's pleasant and
safe while hellish life is awful and scary. Yet Swedenborg has made careful
observations of large samples of people awakening in their spiritual body for
the first time. They are called "novitiate spirits" or minds. Some people were
immediately ready to choose, either a hellish state of life or heavenly. But the
majority were not. They needed a brief period or phase in which they were
exposed to conditions and experiences that faced them with the all important
choice. Swedenborg discovered that the chief motive always wins. He called that
a person's "ruling love." All feelings in the mind are arranged in a hierarchy
of rank or importance. You can discover what your ruling love is by
self-witnessing your life choices, what activates you spend a lot of effort and
time, what styles of interacting you enjoy most, what kind of thoughts you
entertain in your own privacy, and so on. By self-witnessing your daily life you
can discover your hierarchy of loves and which one is at the very top. This is
the love that wins out in the spiritual world and seals your fate forever.
Swedenborg reports that part of this controlled experience
that is made available to "novitiate spirits" includes the ability to "travel"
with one's consciousness up and down the mind's levels. He once saw a group of
people who had just awakened in the spiritual world and taken together into the
heavenly regions of their mind where they appeared to themselves to be visiting
a heavenly city where people welcomed them. But in a little while they started
feeling anxious and they could not enjoy themselves. Soon the anxiety turned
into terror, and that into agony, so that they were seen crawling on the floor
like snakes exposed to a burning camp fire. They were then released and taken
down in consciousness to their natural mind where they revived and felt fine.
Swedenborg explains that the physiology of the mind we are conscious with,
must be compatible with the spiritual environment, and if not, internal agony is
felt and ultimately total unconsciousness. As a result of this spiritual law,
there is a permanent separation between the hellish mind and the heavenly mind
in every individual who becomes a "spirit" after separation from the physical
body.
If all this is valid you can see the benefits that are
produced by dualist and theistic ideas and explanations of the world. They make
it easier for people to be motivated to undergo character reformation for the
sake of their eternal life and happiness. If theistic psychology succeeds,
people everywhere will be able to prepare themselves better for their afterlife
in the spiritual world and thus control their final destiny.
Is it valid? This is something that can only be decided by
examining all the evidence brought forward in the Writings of Swedenborg. These
Lecture Notes and the Readings provide some of this evidence but this represents
only a fraction of what should be looked at for a rational assessment. I can
state that I have examined all the evidence as a scientist and found it valid.
Other scientists and scholars have done likewise since the publication of the 27
books of the Writings (1745-1772) and have come to a similar judgment of
validity. The Reading List and our two textbooks will allow you to explore what
others have said about Swedenborg's Writings.
The third level of thinking takes the universal and general
at level 2 and steps it up to the particular and personal, which is level 3
thinking called enlightenment. As explained above, spiritual light and heat from
the Spiritual Sun enters the interior mind and activates its operations. These
operations make up the unconscious syntax that lies behind rationality. The
interior mind is constructed organically to receive and react to spiritual light
and heat. Then, when our rational mind reacts by correspondence to the
operations triggered in the interior mind, we become conscious of the effects of
the spiritual influx. This consciousness is experienced as light or
understanding. Just prior to the moment of enlightenment the understanding of a
sentence from the Writings is opaque in that we can understand the universal in
it, but not the particular. We do not see clearly how it applies to our own
lives, our own state of mind, and our own fate.
Enlightenment is therefore nothing else than a higher level
of thinking about some spiritual topic and a deeper level of understanding some
sentence from scientific revelations. It is this clearer operation of
understanding that constitutes the rational proof that the evidence presented in
the Writings of Swedenborg are valid. Some readers will allow themselves to go
along with the Writings not from this enlightenment of the understanding, but
instead from being impressed or persuaded or convinced by Swedenborg's authority
or honesty, or being persuaded by some religion or philosophy based on the
Writings. Obviously this does not constitute proof of the validity of
Swedenborg's evidence and explanation which can only be validated rationally by
going over all the evidence and how it is integrated with the explanations. This
is not an easy thing to do and so many people will be dependent on secondary
sources and collateral literature. While this does not constitute proof of
validity, it can nevertheless be very useful to many people in bringing more
rational clarity to what they consider the mysteries of the universe.
3.7
The Nature and Character of God: A Scientific Perspective
The history of
literature informs us that the subject of God has been one of the oldest and
most discussed. This ranking of importance has not changed with the advent of
modern civilization as we know it today. A Web search on God yields 61 million
hits--one of the highest, and the Bible is still the most published book in the
history of printing. Polls indicate that the vast majority of people believe in
God as the supreme reality. In modern science however, there has been a strong
tendency to reduce discussion on God to zero. This is understandable when you
consider that nothing scientific can be known about God except through Divine
revelations. Until now Divine revelations have been relegated to religion and to
nut cases, thus nothing for science to hang on to in terms of method and theory.
This situation has suddenly changed through the Writings of
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Now for the first time in history a reputable
and highly regarded scientist has written 27 volumes of empirical and
observational reports about God and the spiritual world. Many key and famous
people in the19th and 20th centuries wrote about Swedenborg and how they were
strongly influenced by his Writings. There has never been a precedent in human
experience for what Swedenborg did. He was the only individual in human history
to be given the ability to be conscious and fully aware in both the spiritual
and natural worlds simultaneously and uninterruptedly for three decades. This special ability was given to him for a
specific purpose, as a Divine commission, so that he could be the architect of
the ultimate scientific paradigm in the modern world. I have called this
paradigm "substantive dualism," and also, "theistic science," "scientific
dualism," and "theistic psychology."
While browsing in our university library in 1981, I came upon
the Writings of Swedenborg and have studied them ever since. I was astounded by
their content and by the fact that he was unknown in all of the history of
psychology and almost unknown in all of modern science. I understood why, having
been a professional scientist and researcher since my Ph.D. in Psychology in
1962 from McGill University. I set out to incorporate the scientific data in the
Writings into modern psychology. After several years of study and research,
including articles and books I published on the Web, I have made an initial
attempt in this book to pull it all together into a somewhat formal and
systematic presentation. I hope that this attempt will encourage others to
extend and solidify this new revolutionary paradigm in science.
The scientific study of God is different from the religious
approach even though both are based on the same Divine revelations. Prior
attempts to show the common basis for religion and science have not been
generally successful because the literal meaning of revelation is not written in
a scientific style and is foreign to the way scientists are trained to think. In the middle ages religious leaders exercised a
dogmatic despotism on scientific thinking by trying to politically impose the
literal meaning of revelation as scientific fact, punishing scientists who took
a course independent of Sacred Scripture. A modern example is the case of "Creationism"
which is the politicized attempt to impose upon science teaching the literal
story of creation found in the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis in
the Old Testament of the Bible.
Now we know from the scientific revelations in the Writings
of Swedenborg that the style of writing in these eleven chapters is not
historical but figurative or symbolic, written in the language of
correspondences. The Old and New Testaments, also called "Sacred Scripture," are
written in a style that contains multiple levels of meaning extractable by
systematically applying the code of correspondences in which all Divine Speech
has been given in the history of the human race. This code is not an arbitrary
or some subjective inference or supposition someone may arrive at. There are many prior attempts to
penetrate the figurative speech of the Bible, but none of these attempts can be
scientifically adequate as long as they use subjective, inductive, and
speculative approaches known as "Bible exegesis."
3.7.1
The
Science of Correspondence
It is important to distinguish between the code of
correspondences in Swedenborg and the current interest and research in "Bible
codes" --reviewed extensively on this Web page:
www.meru.org/Codes/biblcode.html
The "Bible code" reveals absolutely nothing about the content
of revelation. It focuses exclusively on the statistical and mathematical proof
that the text of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew and Aramaic contains
systematic patterns when letters are counted in certain ways that have been
explored by computer analysis. It is not the idea of interpreting or discovering
the information that is contained in the meaning of the text. No help there. It
doesn't go even as far as exegesis or systematic literary analysis of content
and subject matter.
In contrast, the code of correspondences Swedenborg
discovered provides us with a systematic, rational, and replicable method of
extracting meaning and data about the spiritual world and God. It is like
hiding ordinary text by substituting every word in the original with a new word
according to a dictionary list, as in this made up example: "By the way any time
rain stops." If you know the dictionary code you can decipher the content using
this arbitrary dictionary:
by the way = the
any time = attack
rain = will begin
stops = at daybreak
which yields the message: "The attack will begin at
daybreak."
But this example relies on an arbitrary dictionary, which of
course makes it impossible or difficult to crack without the dictionary, just
like the Nazis in World War 2 were unable to crack the coded military messages
based on such arbitrary language substitutions agreed upon in advance by the
people involved. On the
other hand, the code of correspondences in which Divine Speech is written is not
arbitrary but in conformity to scientific laws. These scientific laws are called
"correspondences" or "the laws of spiritual-natural correspondences." In other
words, within the context of substantive dualism and the positive bias, every
phenomenon or event we can observe in the natural world, is an effect whose
cause is a phenomenon or event in the spiritual world.
Therefore another way of thinking about correspondences is to think of how
spiritual events cause natural events. Correspondences specify which spiritual
events cause which natural events. You can see why this could not have been
discovered by anyone since spiritual causes were unknown. No one before
Swedenborg had lived simultaneously in both worlds. He was therefore the only
one who could discover what spiritual events caused which natural events by
observing both worlds at the same time. But once he discovered these
relationships of correspondence, he could codify the relations and explain it to
everyone else. In fact, I know of at leas one book that presents correspondences
in a dictionary form so that one can look up a natural object like "water" and
it will give its spiritual correspondence "truth." Whenever "water" is mentioned
in Divine Speech or Sacred Scripture we are to think of "truth." The word
"water" disappears and the word "truth" is substituted for it. In this way you
can read all of Sacred Scripture and understand what it is saying about the
spiritual topics.
The relationship of correspondence is not something
Swedenborg or anyone else can invent. Emerson wrote that he was very impressed
by the genius of Swedenborg and he was especially delighted by the notion of
correspondences. But Emerson did not read much of the Writings and relied on
secondary sources and lectures by his contemporaries. As a result he never
discovered the empirical basis of correspondences, complaining instead, that he
did not like the absolutist way in which Swedenborg identified the
correspondences in the Bible. Emerson preferred to go by his own subjective
interpretations, which fit better in his non-religious transcendental
interpretations of Bible.
But in fact the laws of correspondences are objective laws
by which the universe has been created and is being managed by God today.
Scientific correspondences in Sacred Scripture are neither
figurative nor interpretive. The code of correspondences is not unlike the DNA
code which determines the growth pattern of every living cell, including the
ability of the coded matter to reproduce itself in new cells. The breaking of
the DNA code was not a matter of interpretation but involved accurate
observation from chemical analysis of the physical imprints and its specific
shape and biochemical function. A similar procedure must be used to discover the
specific laws of correspondences that govern the functional relation between a
natural event and a spiritual event. Every time X happens on earth, X' happens
in the spiritual world. The relationship between X' and X must be uncovered so
that no X on earth can occur without X' occurring in the spiritual world. This
cannot be done unless one has reliable and accurate access to the spiritual
world so that we may observe the occurrence of X'. Swedenborg was given this
unique ability by being conscious in both worlds simultaneously for 27 years
every day.
So the question about correspondences is not whether
Swedenborg was right in his interpretations of the Bible verses, but only
whether he was accurate in objectively reporting the phenomena he was able to
observe in the spiritual world.
For a scientific study, the laws of correspondences must be
shown to be universal, rational, systematic, and internally consistent without
exceptions. In addition, the code must have an explanation of where it comes
from, why it was hidden, and how it can be confirmed, tested, and furthered
through normal and cumulative scientific research. This is what Swedenborg has
accomplished by virtue of the fact that, at age 57, the respected Swedish
scientist and engineer, suddenly developed the special ability to be conscious
and fully aware in both the natural world and the spiritual world
simultaneously, and this, until his death at age 82. For 27 years Swedenborg
explored the spiritual world and kept daily records that were published by him
in Neo-Latin. The modern English edition of his Writings during those 27 years
amount to nearly 30 volumes, now also available online (see this Web site:
www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
).
Modern science is about to undergo its greatest revolution in
history. All that is needed is to exit from the negative bias and enter
the positive bias. This means to examine the observations, experiments, and
explanations presented in the Writings of Swedenborg. This book can serve as an
introduction to those who want solid rational explanations about what the
positive bias can bring to psychology.
3.8
Divine Speech or Sacred Scripture as the Source of Scientific Revelations
There
is nothing in the scientific code of correspondences that is contradictory to
religion. There is no difficulty in understanding that Sacred Scripture is
Divine Speech that is written for the entire human race, not only for a
particular ethnic group at a specific time in history.
Swedenborg's daily explorations of the spiritual world led him to
examine the text of the Old and new Testaments that was being read by those in the spiritual
world. Every book written on earth must have a spiritual source that is
unconsciously affecting the thinking process of the author, since writing a
sentence in a natural language is a natural event and all natural events have a
spiritual cause or source. Swedenborg was therefore able to examine the written
speech of human beings and contrast it with Sacred Scripture, which is Divine
Speech delivered through the mind of chosen authors. In the spiritual world
Divine Speech is called "the Word of God." Swedenborg compared the meaning
of the Word of God in the spiritual world, when he read it with his spiritual
mind, with the meaning of the Old and New Testaments in Greek and Hebrew, when
he read his Bible on earth.
All he had to do is to be accurate about writing
down the dictionary of correspondences that gave the X and X' relations, in the
manner exemplified in A Dictionary of Bible Imagery compiled by Alice
Sechrist (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1973) and based on the Writings. Note
that every correspondence has a positive and a negative meaning, so that in some
passages it refers to the positive meaning and in others to the negative
meaning. In the illustrations below, only one meaning is presented.
Beasts or Animals signify
the things in our will or our loves, e.g., "bears" signifies the state of mind
when the Word is read and not understood (Gen. 1:24); dog(s) signifies those of
small value who are outsiders (e.g., Ex.. 11:7) "fox(es)" signifies those who
rely on their own prudence (Ps. 63:10); "lamb" signifies the holiness of
innocence (Gen. 21:28, Rev. 5:6);
Carriage(s) signifies
goods from a rational origin (e.g., Rev. 18:13, Jdg. 18:21)
Husband(s) signifies the
rational mind (e.g., Gen. 3:16)
Egypt signifies the natural
mind separated from the spiritual which is the pride of self-intelligence (Isa.
19:1)
Esau signifies natural good
which was to be made Divine (Gen. 25:25)
Hand(s) signifies ability
and power (Gen. 8:9)
Jacob signifies the lowest
things of reason which are external knowledges (Gen. 25:26)
Jews
signifies those who are in love to the Divine-Human, and in the
truths of doctrine from Him (Zech. 8:23)
Mary, the Virgin signifies
the universal church at that time, throughout the world (e.g., Mat. 1:16)
Numerals signify specific
things; e.g., "1" signifies what is perfect (Gen. 11:6); "2" signifies
conjunction of pairs which complete each other (Gen. 7:9); "7" signifies the
celestial mind, fully regenerated (Gen. 2:2); "19" signifies the state of
idolatrous worship (Gen. 11:25); "40" signifies the state of temptation (Gen.
7:4, Mt. 4:1); "99" signifies the state before the union of the
Divine-Human's Human
Essence with His Divine (Gen. 17:24); "250" signifies as much as is sufficient
for use (Ex. 30:23); "144,000" signifies all who acknowledge the
Divine-Human to be the
God of heaven and earth (Rev. 7:4).
Rich(es)
signifies the spiritual goods from truth with which the
Divine-Human
was enriched at this stage of His inner life on earth (Gen. 13:2; Ex. 30:15)
Spider's web signifies
deceitful falsities (Isa. 59:5)
Transgressions or Trespasses
signifies such evils as are done against the commandments (Num. 14:41)
Uncircumcised signifies one
who is in self-love (Gen. 17:14)
Wife signifies
selfhood in the external mind (Gen.2:24)
And so on. When these and other
correspondences are applied to the text of Sacred Scripture, there emerges a new
content which is the scientific description of human development and character
reformation. In other words, the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture is given for the
use of religion, while the derived correspondential meaning is given as scientific
revelations about the human mind, life after death, the process of regeneration
or character reformation, and so on.
Here are some examples of how Swedenborg
derives the scientific meaning through the laws of correspondences:
From the mere letter of the Word of the Old Testament no one would ever
discern the fact that this part of the Word contains deep secrets of heaven,
and that everything within it both in general and in particular bears
reference to the Divine-Human, to His heaven, to the church, to religious belief, and
to all things connected therewith; for from the letter or sense of the letter
all that anyone can see is that-to speak generally-everything therein has
reference merely to the external rites and ordinances of the Jewish Church.
Yet the truth is that everywhere in that Word there are internal things which
never appear at all in the external things except a very few which the
Divine-Human
revealed and explained to the Apostles; such as that the sacrifices signify
the Divine-Human; that the land of Canaan and Jerusalem signify heaven-on which
account they are called the Heavenly Canaan and Jerusalem-and that Paradise
has a similar signification. (AC 1)
While the mind cleaves to the literal sense alone, no one can possibly see
that such things are contained within it. Thus in these first chapters of
Genesis, nothing is discoverable from the sense of the letter other than that
the creation of the world is treated of, and the garden of Eden which is
called Paradise, and Adam as the first created man. Who supposes anything
else? But it will be sufficiently established in the following pages that
these matters contain arcana which have never yet been revealed; and in fact
that the first chapter of Genesis in the internal sense treats in general of
the new creation of man, or of his regeneration, and specifically of the Most
Ancient Church; and this in such a manner that there is not the least
expression which does not represent, signify, and enfold within it these
things. (AC 4)
That this is really the case no one can possibly know except from the
Divine-Human.
It may therefore be stated in advance that of the Divine-Human's Divine mercy it has
been granted me now for some years to be constantly and uninterruptedly in
company with spirits and angels, hearing them speak and in turn speaking with
them. In this way it has been given me to hear and see wonderful things in the
other life which have never before come to the knowledge of any man, nor into
his idea. I have been instructed in regard to the different kinds of spirits;
the state of souls after death; hell, or the lamentable state of the
unfaithful; heaven, or the blessed state of the faithful; and especially in
regard to the doctrine of faith which is acknowledged in the universal heaven;
on which subjects, of the Divine-Human's Divine mercy, more will be said in the
following pages. (AC 5)
Verse 2. And the earth was a void and emptiness, and darkness was upon the
faces of the deep [abyssi]; and the Spirit of God was brooding upon the faces
of the waters. Before his regeneration, man is called the "earth void and
empty" and also the "ground" wherein nothing of good and truth has been sown;
"void" denotes where there is nothing of good, and "empty" where there is
nothing of truth. Hence comes "thick darkness" that is, stupidity, and an
ignorance of all things belonging to faith in the Divine-Human, and consequently of
all things belonging to spiritual and heavenly life. Such a man is thus
described by the Divine-Human through Jeremiah:
My people is stupid, they have not known Me; they are foolish sons, and
are not intelligent; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no
knowledge. I beheld the earth, and lo a void and emptiness, and the heavens,
and they had no light (Jer. 4:22-23). (AC 17)
Another typical passage is this:
30. Verses 14-17. And God said, Let there be luminaries in the expanse of
the heavens, to distinguish between the day and the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years; and let them be for
luminaries in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth; and it
was so. And God made two great luminaries, the greater luminary to rule by
day, and the lesser luminary to rule by night; and the stars. And God set them
in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth. What is meant by
"great luminaries" cannot be clearly understood unless it is first known what
is the essence of faith, and also what is its progress with those who are
being created anew. The very essence and life of faith is the Divine-Human alone, for
he who does not believe in the Divine-Human cannot have life, as He himself has
declared in John:
He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life, but he that believeth not
on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God shall abide upon him (John
3:36).
[2] The progression of faith with those who are being created anew is as
follows. At first they have no life, for it is only in the good and the true
that there is life, and none in the evil and the false; afterwards they
receive life from the Divine-Human by faith, first by faith of the memory, which is a
faith of mere knowledge [fides scientifica]; next by faith in the
understanding, which is an intellectual faith; lastly by faith in the heart,
which is the faith of love, or saving faith. The first two kinds of faith are
represented from verse 3 to verse 13, by things inanimate, but faith vivified
by love is represented from verse 20 to verse 25, by animate things. For this
reason love, and faith thence derived, are now here first treated of, and are
called "luminaries;" love being "the greater luminary which rules by day;"
faith derived from love "the lesser luminary which rules by night;" and as
these two luminaries ought to make a one, it is said of them, in the singular
number, "Let there be luminaries" [sit luminaria], and not in the plural [sint
luminaria].
[3] Love and faith in the internal man are like heat and light in the
external corporeal man, for which reason the former are represented by the
latter. It is on this account that luminaries are said to be "set in the
expanse of heaven" or in the internal man; a great luminary in its will, and a
lesser one in its understanding; but they appear in the will and the
understanding only as does the light of the sun in its recipient objects. It
is the Divine-Human's mercy alone that affects the will with love, and the
understanding with truth or faith. (AC 30)
And Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. That this signifies those who are
in the good of charity, but in external worship, who here are "Lot," and who
are among the evil, but separate from them-which is to "sit in the gate of
Sodom"-can be seen from the representation of "Lot," and from the
signification of "gate," and also from that of "Sodom." From the
representation of "Lot:" Lot when with Abraham represented the
Divine-Human's sensuous
part, thus His external man (as shown in Volume 1, n. 1428, 1434, 1547). But
here, when separated from Abraham, Lot no longer retains the representation of
the Divine-Human, but the representation of those who are with the
Divine-Human, namely, the
external man of the church, that is, those who are in the good of charity, but
in external worship.
[2] No, in this chapter Lot not only represents the external man of the
church, or what is the same, the external church such as it is in the
beginning, but also such as it is in its progress, and also in its end. It is
the end of that church which is signified by "Moab" and the "son of Ammon," as
of the Divine-Human's Divine mercy will appear from the series of the things that
follow. It is a common thing in the Word for one person to represent a number
of states that succeed each other, and which are described by the successive
acts of his life.
[3] From the signification of a "gate:" a gate is that through which one
enters into a city, and through which he goes out of the city; consequently,
to "sit in the gate" does indeed here signify to be with the evil, but still
to be separate from them; as is wont to be the case with the men of the church
who are in the good of charity; these, although they are among the wicked, are
still separate from them; not as to civic society, but as to spiritual life.
(That "Sodom" signifies evil in general, or what is the same, the evil,
especially within the church, was said above, n. 2322.) (AC 2324)
That a "horse" signifies the faculty of understanding is from no
other source than the representatives in the other life. Often there, in the
world of spirits, horses are seen, and this with great variety, and those also
that sit on them; and whenever they are seen they signify the faculty of
understanding. There are such representatives continually with spirits. It is
from the representation of the horse, as being the understanding, that when
horses are mentioned in the Word, the spirits and angels with man at once know
that the understanding is what is treated of. It is also from this that when
spirits from a certain distant world on being imbued with intelligence and
wisdom are taken up from the world of spirits into heaven, there appear to
them horses shining as with fire; which also I have seen when they were taken
up.
[2] From this I could see what is signified by the chariot of fire and
horses of fire seen by Elisha when Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven;
as also what is signified by the exclamation of Elisha then: "My Father, my
Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof" (2 Kings 2:11, 12);
and by Joash king of Israel saying the same to Elisha when he was dying: "My
Father, my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof" (2 Kings
13:14). That by Elijah and Elisha was represented the Divine-Human as to the Word,
will of the Divine-Human's Divine mercy be told elsewhere; the doctrine of love and
charity from the Word being meant by the "chariot of fire," and the doctrine
of faith therefrom by the "horses of fire." The doctrine of faith is the same
as the understanding of the Word as to its interiors, or as to its internal
sense.
[3] That chariots and horses are seen in the heavens with spirits and
angels, is evident from the fact of their being seen by the prophets, as by
Zechariah (chapter 1:8-10; 6:3-7), and by others, and also by Elisha's
servant, as thus described in the book of Kings:
Jehovah opened the eyes of Elisha's boy, and he saw; and behold the
mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha (2 Kings
6:17).
Moreover, where the abode of the intelligent and wise is, in the world of
spirits, chariots and horses appear continually; for the reason as said that
by chariots and horses are represented the things of wisdom and of
intelligence. Resuscitated persons after death, who are entering into the
other life, see represented to them a young man sitting upon a horse, and then
alighting from the horse; and by this is signified that they are to be
instructed in the knowledge of good and truth before they can come into heaven
(see volume 1, n. 187-188).
[4] That chariots and horses signified these things, was well known in the
Ancient Church, as also is evident from the book of Job, which is a book of
that Church, where are these words:
God hath made her to forget wisdom, and hath not imparted to her
intelligence; what time she lifteth up herself on high she cometh the horse
and his rider (Job 39:17-19).
From the Ancient Church the signification of the horse, as being the
faculty of understanding, was extended to the wise round about, even into
Greece. From this it came to pass that when they described the sun (by which
was signified love, n. 2441, 2495), they placed in it the god of their wisdom
and intelligence, and gave him a chariot and four horses of fire; and that
when they described the god of the sea, because by the sea were signified
knowledges in general (n. 28, 2120), they gave horses also to him; and that
when they described the rise of knowledges from the understanding, they
represented a flying horse which with his hoof broke open a fountain, where
dwelt the virgins that were the sciences; and by the Trojan horse nothing else
was signified than a contrivance of their understanding for destroying city
walls.
Even at this day the intellect is often described, according to the custom
received from those ancient people, under the figure of a flying horse, or
Pegasus; and learning is described as a fountain; but scarcely anyone knows
that a horse, in the mystic sense, signifies the understanding, and a fountain
truth; still less that these significatives were handed down to the Gentiles
from the Ancient Church. (AC 2762)
From all this it is now manifest whence come the representatives and
significatives in the Word, namely, from the representatives that exist in the
other life. From this source they came to the men of the Most Ancient Church,
who were celestial, and were in company with spirits and angels while living
on earth. From them the representatives passed to their posterity, and at
length to those who merely knew that they had such a signification; but
because the representatives came from the most ancient times, and were in
their Divine worship, they were venerated and held sacred.
[2] Besides representatives, there are also correspondences which suggest
and also signify something altogether different in the spiritual world from
what they do in the natural world; as the heart, the affection of good; the
eyes, the understanding; the ears, obedience; the hands, power; besides
innumerable other correspondences. These are not represented in this way in
the world of spirits; but they correspond, as what is natural to what is
spiritual.
Hence it is that every word, even to the smallest iota of all, in the Word,
involves spiritual and heavenly things; and that the Word is in this manner
inspired, so that when it is read by man, spirits and angels immediately
perceive it spiritually according to the representations and correspondences.
But this knowledge, which was so much cultivated and esteemed by the ancients
after the flood, and by means of which they were able to think with spirits
and angels, is at this day altogether obliterated, so much so that scarcely
anyone is willing to believe that it exists; and they who believe in it merely
call it a kind of mystical thing, of no use; and this for the reason that man
has become altogether worldly and corporeal; to such a degree that when what
is spiritual and heavenly is mentioned, he feels a repugnance, and sometimes a
loathing, or even nausea. What then will he do in the other life, which lasts
forever, and where there is nothing worldly and corporeal, but only what is
spiritual and heavenly, which makes the life in heaven? (AC 2763)
Only a few passages are reproduced here to show the systematic and consistent
quality of Swedenborg's application of correspondences to verses of Sacred
Scripture and the
resulting scientific information about human minds and the world. It is easy to see the
objectivity and accuracy with which the Writings demonstrate that the literal
meaning of the Old and New Testament verses is historical and deals with natural
things in this world, while unbeknownst to the reader, there is a hidden
underlying scientific sense that describes the anatomy and function of the mind
and its relation to eternal life in heaven or hell. Again it's worth noting
methodologically that Swedenborg demonstrates that this underlying scientific
information runs across all the books of the Old and New Testaments, and they
are strung out in a rational series that can be uncovered by research similar to
what Swedenborg demonstrates in relation to the Old and New Testaments.
The same method of correspondences will be applied in future research to the
Writings themselves since they constitute the third and final portion of "the
Word of God" or Sacred Scripture. While this Sacred Scripture was given to the
Western peoples of the Middle East, Europe, and America, this is only so in
their literal meaning. When you extract their correspondential meaning it
becomes obvious that this Sacred Scripture was given to the entire humanity,
both in this world and in heaven. For an initial attempt in exploring the
correspondential meaning of the Writings, see my book A Man of the Field, Volume
Two, available on the Web at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume2-nonduality.html
Consider how amazing this discovery is. The books of the Old and New
Testaments were written independently by dozens of prophets across two thousand
years or more. Most of these prophets did not possess copies of most of the
books, and yet unbeknownst to them, they wrote verses that were hiding an
internal correspondential meaning consisting of an integrated series of
scientific revelations about the anatomy and function of the mind, about human
nature and character reformation, about how God manages the universe, and about
how the entire race is in unconscious communication with each other in both this
world and the spiritual world. None of the authors through whom these Sacred
Scriptures were delivered could have even understood this inner scientific
series of rational concepts belonging to theistic psychology. Even if it had
been revealed to them, it would have meant nothing because only the modern
scientific mind today is prepared enough in rational structure to understand
theistic psychology.
This hidden integrated series is like the DNA code we have in every
cell. Now imagine if the elements that make up the sequence of the DNA code were
separated from each other and scattered in the ocean. How can we get the
sequence back? Imagine 100 submarines marked 1 to 100 went out to all the oceans
and brought back a sample of the water. Would the 100 samples allow you to
reconstruct the DNA code? The chances of that happening is a far bigger number
than the suspected age of the universe in nanoseconds! Therefore it cannot
happen. And yet, suppose it did? The 100 samples brought back by the 100
submarines did fit perfectly in the right sequence when you placed them in the
order of the number on each submarine. Suppose this did happen.
How would you explain it?
In the negative bias mode, one can only say again and again, "But that's
impossible," as materialistic thinking hits itself upon anti-gravity that
threatens to destroy its world. In the positive bias mode, a rational
explanation is given by Divine revelation, namely, that God has arranged that
the scattered pieces of the DNA code be gathered together in precisely the100
samples picked up by the submarines.
In the same way, as explained in the Divine revelations of the Writings, God
managed that only those historical details are recorded in Sacred Scripture
which arrange themselves in a perfect rational series in their inner
correspondential meaning. You can see that this would have been impossible for
the authors themselves to do this who were unknown to each other and did not
know anything about correspondences. Furthermore, the names given to people and
places had to be managed by God centuries in advance of the events, so that the
historical events in those places could represent in correspondences the
scientific meaning to be delivered to humanity at a later time--through the
Writings in the18th century and beyond.
In addition, the visions of the prophets were also such as to represent the
hidden correspondential meaning, and the visions of all the prophets over some
centuries fit together in one uninterrupted rational series of theistic
psychology, from the Genesis to Revelation, thus the
Old and New Testaments. God arranged all this so that the human race
would come into the possession of "heavenly secrets," understand them rationally
as theistic psychology, and make use of the knowledge to help people regenerate
their character for a heavenly life. Untold benefits to humankind are still to
be extracted from this infinite scientific series that is enclosed in the finite
verses of Sacred Scripture. It is a source of scientific knowledge that can
never be exhausted from now to eternity. This is because Divine Speech contains
infinite things within itself. Divine Speech is the same as Divine Truth and
this is infinite in God. There is no limit to how many different truths and
concepts one can extract from Sacred Scripture.
This is also why there is not going to be any new revelations after the
Writings of Swedenborg. There is no need for new revelations when what has
already been given is an infinite source for all the future to come. This also
simplifies things so that if anyone should claim that they have new revelations
from God, we can know in advance that this is impossible. This is why some
theistic psychologists call the Writings "the Last Testament" and "the Final
Testament." The Writings present the rationale as to why there cannot be a new
revelation from God. Hence God has revealed that there are not going to be new
Divine revelations after this. This may sound ridiculous to the negative bias
perspective, but it makes rational sense in the positive bias.
3.9 Three Experimental Proofs
Apart from the extensive content analyses of portions of Sacred Scripture, Swedenborg also presents reports
of his travels through the spiritual world and his observations there, some of
which were systematic, in the form and style of scientific experiments. Here is a
typical example. Some sentences are underlined to help in the analysis I give
following the passage.
The fourth experience.
I once saw a long way off some walks between avenues of trees, and young
men gathered together there in large groups; each of these was a
meeting where people were discussing matters relating to wisdom. This took
place in the spiritual world. I approached, and on coming near saw one whom
the others reverenced as their leader, because he surpassed the rest in
wisdom.
On seeing me he said: 'I was surprised when I watched you on your way here
and saw you at one time becoming visible to me, at another dropping out of
sight; now I saw you, now you vanished. You must surely not be in the same
state of life as the people in our country.'
I replied to this with a smile: 'I am no actor, or Vertumnus, but I am by
turns sometimes in light and sometimes in shade to your eyes. So here I am
both a stranger and native.'
At this the wise man gazed at me and said: 'What you say is unusual and
strange. Tell me who you are.'
'I am,' I said, 'in the world where you once were and which you have now
left, what is called the natural world. I am also in the world where you now
are, what is called the spiritual world. Consequently I am in the natural
state and at the same time in the spiritual state, the natural state when with
people on earth, the spiritual state when with you. When I am in the
natural state, I am invisible to you; when in the spiritual state, I am
visible. I have been granted by the Divine-Human the ability to be like this. You as
an enlightened man are well aware that a person who belongs to the natural
world cannot see one who belongs to the spiritual world, and vice versa.
Therefore when I plunge my spirit into the body, you do not see me, but when I
release it from the body, you do. This is the result of the distinction
between the spiritual and the natural.'
When he heard me mention the distinction between the spiritual and the
natural, he said: 'What distinction is that? Is it not like that between what
is purer and less pure? So what is the spiritual but a purer kind of the
natural?'
'It is not that sort of distinction,' I replied, 'The natural can never
become refined enough to approach the spiritual, so that it becomes spiritual.
It is the sort of distinction there is between prior and posterior, which have
no finite relationship. For the prior is in the posterior, as the cause is in
its effect; and the posterior derives from the prior, as the effect derives
from its cause. That is why one is not visible to the Other.'
To this the wise man said: 'I have pondered this distinction, but up to now
in vain. I only wish I could grasp it.' 'You will,' I said, 'not only grasp
the distinction between the spiritual and the natural, you will actually see
it.' Then I went on: 'You are in the spiritual state among your people
here, but in the natural state with me. For you talk with your people in
the spiritual language, which is shared by every spirit and angel, but you
talk with me in my native language. Every spirit or angel who talks with a man
speaks his own language, French with a Frenchman, Greek with a Greek, Arabic
with an Arab, and so on.
'So in order to be aware of the distinction between the spiritual
and the natural as they appear linguistically, do this: go inside to your
people, say something there, and memorize the words; then come back keeping
them in mind, and pronounce them in my presence.'
He did so and came back to me with those words on his tongue, and uttered
them; they were words completely strange and foreign, not to be found in any
language of the natural world. Repeating the experiment several times
showed clearly that all in the spiritual world have a spiritual language,
which has nothing in common with any natural language. Everyone comes of
his own accord into possession of that language after his death. I once also
discovered by experience that the actual sound of the spiritual language is so
different from that of a natural language, that even a loud spiritual sound is
inaudible to a natural person, and so is a natural sound to a spiritual
person.
Later I asked him and the by-standers to go inside to their own people,
and write a sentence on a piece of paper, and then to bring the paper out and
read it to me. They did so, and came back with the paper in their hands, but
when they went to read it, they could not, since the script was merely
composed of some letters of the alphabet with curly lines over them, each one
of which conveyed as its meaning a particular matter. Since each letter of
the alphabet there conveys a meaning, it is obvious why the Divine-Human is called
'alpha and omega'. When they again and again went in, wrote and came back,
they learned that the script entailed and comprehended countless things which
no natural script can ever express. They were told that this is because
the thoughts of the spiritual man are incomprehensible and inexpressible to
the natural man, and they cannot be transferred to another script and another
language.
Then, since the by-standers were unwilling to grasp that spiritual
thought is so far beyond natural thought, that it is relatively inexpressible,
I said to them: 'Carry out an experiment. Go inside to your spiritual
community, think of an idea, keep it in mind, and come back and expound it in
my presence.'
They went inside, thought and, keeping the thought in mind, came out; and
when they went to expound what they had thought, they were unable to do so.
For they could not find any idea of natural thought capable of matching an
idea of purely spiritual thought, so they could not find any words to express
it, for the ideas of thought become words in speech. Thereupon they went
back inside, came back, and convinced themselves that spiritual ideas were far
above natural ones, inexpressible, unutterable and incomprehensible to the
natural man. Because the spiritual ideas excelled the natural ones so much,
they said that spiritual ideas or thoughts, compared to natural ones, were
ideas of ideas, and thoughts of thoughts, and could therefore express
qualities of qualities and affections of affections. It followed that
spiritual thoughts were the beginnings and origins of natural thoughts. This
also showed that spiritual wisdom is the wisdom of wisdom, and so incapable of
expression by anyone, however wise, in the natural world.
Then they were told from the higher heaven that there is a still
more inward or higher wisdom, called celestial, which stands in the same
relationship to spiritual wisdom as this does to natural wisdom. These
forms of wisdom flow in regularly, depending upon which heaven is concerned,
from the Divine-Human's Divine wisdom, which is infinite.
At this point the man conversing with me said: 'I see this, because I have
perceived that a single natural idea is a container for many spiritual ideas;
and also that a single spiritual idea is a container for many celestial ideas.
This leads too to this conclusion, that what is divided becomes not more
and more simple, but more and more complex, because it approaches closer and
closer to the infinite, in which everything is at infinity.'
At the conclusion of this conversation I said to the by-standers: 'You
see from these three experimental proofs the nature of the distinction between
the spiritual and the natural. Likewise, why the natural man is invisible to
the spiritual, and the spiritual man to the natural, although either of them
has a complete human form. Because of this form it seems to each as if one
could see the other. But it is the interiors, which are mental, which
constitute that form, and the mind of spirits and angels is composed of
spiritual elements, whereas the mind of men, so long as they live in the
world, is composed of natural elements.'
After this a voice was heard from the higher heaven saying to one of the
by-standers, 'Come up here.' He went up, and on his return he said that the
angels had not previously known the differences between the spiritual and the
natural, because they had never before been given the opportunity of making
the comparison with a person who was simultaneously in both worlds; and these
differences can only become known by making a comparison and examining the
relationship.
Before we parted we had another conversation on this subject, and I
said that these distinctions arise solely, 'because you in the spiritual world
are substantial, not material, and substantial things are the starting points
of material things. What is matter but a gathering together of substances? So
you are at the level of beginnings and therefore singulars, we, however, are
at the level of derivatives and compounds. You are at the level of
particulars, we, however, at that of general ideas. Just as general ideas
cannot enter into particulars, so natural things, which are material, cannot
enter into spiritual things, which are substantial. It is just as a ship's
rope cannot enter or be pulled though the eye of a sewing needle, or just as a
nerve cannot be introduced into one of the fibers which compose it. This then
is the reason why the natural man cannot think the thoughts of the spiritual
man, and therefore neither can he express them. So Paul calls what he heard
from the third heaven "beyond description."
'A further point is that thinking spiritually means thinking without
using time and space; thinking naturally involves time and space. For every
idea of natural thought, but not of spiritual thought, has something of time
and space clinging to it. This is because the spiritual world is not in space
and time, as is the natural world, though it has the appearance of both of
them. Thoughts and perceptions also differ in this respect. For this reason
you can think of God's essence and omnipresence from eternity, that is, of God
before the creation of the world, because you think about God's essence with
no idea of time, and about His omnipresence with no idea of space. Thus you
grasp ideas which are far beyond the natural ideas of men.'
I went on to relate how I had once thought about God's essence and
omnipresence from eternity, that is, about God before the creation of the
world, and because I could not yet banish space and time from the ideas I
thought about, I became worried, since the idea of nature entered my mind in
place of God. But I was told: 'Banish the ideas of space and time and you will
see.' Then I was granted the power to banish them, and I did see. From that
time on I have been able to think about God from eternity, without thinking of
nature from eternity, because God is non-temporally in all time and
non-spatially in all space, but nature is temporally in all time and spatially
in all space. Nature with its time and space must inevitably have a beginning,
but not so God, who is not in time and space. Therefore nature is from God,
not from eternity, but exists in time together with its properties of time and
space. (TCR 280)
The style of the Writings is very rich. Just from this one passage many facts
about the spiritual world can be obtained, especially with the help of other
passages dealing with the same topics. Here is a list of such facts that are
contained in this passage. I have underlined the sentences above containing each
of the facts.
3.10 Observational Facts About the Spiritual World
" I once saw a long way off some walks between avenues of trees, and
young men gathered together there in large groups." Also: "I watched you on
your way here and saw you at one time becoming visible to me, at another
dropping out of sight; now I saw you, now you vanished"
This is observational evidence that the visible features in the spiritual
world appear phenomenally similar to what we can see on earth.
"a meeting where people were discussing matters relating to wisdom.
Also: "I approached, and on coming near saw one whom the others reverenced as
their leader, because he surpassed the rest in wisdom."
This indicates that when people pass on into the spiritual world their social
life is somewhat similar to the social life they had on earth.
"I am in the natural state and at the same time in the spiritual state,
the natural state when with people on earth, the spiritual state when with you"
This describes Swedenborg's dual citizenship, being simultaneously conscious
in both worlds.
"a person who belongs to the natural world cannot see one who belongs
to the spiritual world, and vice versa." Also: "The natural can never
become refined enough to approach the spiritual, so that it becomes spiritual.
It is the sort of distinction there is between prior and posterior, which have
no finite relationship."
This shows that the natural and spiritual worlds are not continuous with each
other. As explained in other passages, their relation is that of correspondence,
like causes (spiritual) and their effects (natural).
"You will,' I said, 'not only grasp the distinction between the
spiritual and the natural, you will actually see it.'"
This indicates that the distinction between natural and spiritual can be
demonstrated rationally. It's a factual issue.
"you talk with your people in the spiritual language, which is shared
by every spirit and angel, but you talk with me in my native language. Every
spirit or angel who talks with a man speaks his own language, French with a
Frenchman, Greek with a Greek, Arabic with an Arab, and so on."
This shows that people in the afterlife speak a language, that this language
is innate to everyone, and that it is different from the native languages they
spoke on earth.
"in order to be aware of the distinction between the spiritual and the
natural as they appear linguistically, do this: go inside to your people, say
something there, and memorize the words; then come back keeping them in mind,
and pronounce them in my presence.'" Also: "Repeating the
experiment several times showed clearly that all in the spiritual world have a
spiritual language, which has nothing in common with any natural language"
This proves that experimental set ups are possible in the spiritual world. In
this case the results showed that spiritual language cannot be translated into
natural language in the same sense as one can translate from one natural
language into another.
"the script was merely composed of some letters of the alphabet with
curly lines over them, each one of which conveyed as its meaning a particular
matter" Also: "they learned that the script entailed and
comprehended countless things which no natural script can ever express"
This is an observational report of what script looks like in spiritual
language.
"I said to them: 'Carry out an experiment. Go inside to your spiritual
community, think of an idea, keep it in mind, and come back and expound it in my
presence.'" Also: "they could not find any idea of natural thought
capable of matching an idea of purely spiritual thought, so they could not find
any words to express it, for the ideas of thought become words in speech."
This is another experiment in the same series. The results prove that the
thoughts we have as "spirits" (i.e., when we are in the spiritual world), is so
much more complex than our thoughts on earth, that they cannot be paraphrased
into each other.
"Then they were told from the higher heaven that there is a still more
inward or higher wisdom, called celestial, which stands in the same relationship
to spiritual wisdom as this does to natural wisdom."
This gives the information that the spiritual world is organized in levels of
height or "excellence" so that the "celestial level" of thinking is as far above
the spiritual level, as the spiritual level is above the natural. This theme of
"degrees" in the universe is discussed extensively in several books of the
Writings.
"This leads too to this conclusion, that what is divided becomes not
more and more simple, but more and more complex, because it approaches closer
and closer to the infinite, in which everything is at infinity.'"
This formulates a new scientific principle, namely, that the smaller the
object we examine the more complex it gets, until we reach the simplest of all,
and this contains an infinity of complexity. Applying this to sub-atomic
particles whose life is measured in nanoseconds, we can predict that the smaller
the particle and the shorter its life, the more complex its structure and
function. This theme is repeated elsewhere in the Writings. An additional
principle is revealed here, namely that the infinite is within the finite, not
the other way round, which is what most people think today. This theme is
explored further in other passages.
"although either of them
has a complete human form."
This states what Swedenborg was able to observe daily in the spiritual world where the people appear to each other
not only full bodied, but with senses far sharper and intense, and with a mental
power that far surpasses what we do here on earth. All the physiological and
biochemical functions in the "spiritual body" are replicas of these same
processes in the "physical body." And in fact, Swedenborg proves that the
spiritual physiology and biochemistry is prior to the physical, in exactly the
same sense as cause is prior to its effect.
"After this a voice was heard from the higher heaven saying to one of the
by-standers, 'Come up here.' "
This indicates that the spiritual world is organized into higher and lower
levels of the mind, and that those who operate from a higher consciousness level
can look down and be aware of what's going on at lower levels. Also, that the
consciousness of those at the lower level can be raised to the higher levels, at
least temporarily.
"because they had never before been given the opportunity of making
the comparison with a person who was simultaneously in both worlds"
From this we can see that Swedenborg's dual citizenship was a unique event
for both this world and the spiritual world. Also, that Swedenborg's reports and
dual presence was a source of new knowledge for both worlds. (e.g., "and these
differences can only become known by making a comparison and examining the
relationship.")
"substantial things are the starting points
of material things. What is matter but a gathering together of substances"
Here and in in many other passages, the building blocks of matter are
identified as spiritual substances. Matter, space, time, and energy are the
external effects produced by internal causes which are substantive, not
material. The source of all substances is the Spiritual Sun which everyone can
see when being resuscitated in the world of spirits, a process which lasts a few
hours after the physical body is dead.
"you are at the level of beginnings and therefore singulars, we,
however, are at the level of derivatives and compounds"
This idea is discussed throughout the Writings, namely, that substances are
"singulars" which are also called simple, while matter, which is compounded, is
derived from the simple substances. In other words, compounds are derivatives of
simple substances, and the more the simple substances are compounded, the less
perfect they become. The most perfect of all are the simplest substances called
spiritual heat and spiritual light streaming forth from the Spiritual Sun.
Spiritual heat is called love and spiritual light is called truth. Love and
truth are the simplest of all substances, hence the most perfect, as they each
contain infinite things. That is, infinite compounds can be derived from them.
Divine love and Divine truth are therefore the source of all substances and all
derivatives as matter--quite an amazing idea!
"the spiritual world is not in space
and time, as is the natural world, though it has the appearance of both of
them"
This idea is dealt with throughout the Writings. The spiritual world is not
in time and space, just as the mental world, or the world of imagination or of
dreams, is evidently not in time and space. Nevertheless, the dream world
appears like the world of time and space. Why? Because there is no other content
in our mind but what has been built up from our experience with the physical
world of time and space. Therefore it is that the spiritual world also appears
as if it were in time and space, though it is also evident that these
appearances in the spiritual world are not fixed they are in the physical world.
The scenery in the spiritual world changes instantly with changes in the mental
states of those who are there.
"you think about God's essence with
no idea of time, and about His omnipresence with no idea of space. Thus you
grasp ideas which are far beyond the natural ideas of men.' "
This idea is central to the understanding of the spiritual world and is
described and elaborated in great detail in many places in the Writings. When we
think only from our natural mind, we cannot rationally explain how God can be
"omnipresent" or "infinite" when He describes Himself as the
Divine-Human, that
is, a Person with all the parts of a person, including Self, Rationality, Goals,
Feelings, Body Parts, etc. How can a Divine Person be omnipresent? The answer is
that God is the Divine-Human in whom infinite things make one. God cannot be
present everywhere physically--this would be rationally impossible. But God can
be in all space apart from space ("God is non-temporally in all time and
non-spatially in all space, but nature is temporally in all time and spatially
in all space").
3.10.1
God, the Divine-Human
Quoting another passage (DLW 245), with my commentary added, giving the
scientific sense of the topics:
THE LORD FROM ETERNITY, THAT IS, JEHOVAH, COULD NOT HAVE CREATED THE
UNIVERSE AND ALL THINGS THEREOF UNLESS HE WERE A MAN.
This sub-title in the original Latin uses two references to God. The first, "the Lord from
Eternity" refers to the perception we have of God in our highest state of mind
or consciousness, in which we are able to receive a direct sensuous perception of the
Divine-Human in the Spiritual Sun. Swedenborg confirmed that the people who
operate mentally at their highest human potential, called "angelic" or
"celestial," have a direct view of the Spiritual Sun, and this constantly, as
long as they remain in that celestial state of mind. This means becoming
consciously aware of the operations going in our celestial mind. This state
cannot be reached while we are still attached to the physical body on earth,
but is reached by many in the afterlife.
The second reference to God, "Jehovah," refers to the concept we have of
God in the state of mind just below the celestial, called the spiritual mind
or our spiritual heaven. In this state we have a rational understanding of God
that is spiritual, which means that our direct sensuous perception of the
Divine-Human
is much weaker and we rely instead on a rational consciousness or conceptual framework
("doctrine")
that requires study and reflection. In
this state we need to study and reflect and confirm the scientific revelations
in Sacred Scripture, before we have a clear image of the Divine-Human, and
therefore, before we have an unconditional acceptance of and dependence on God.
Consciousness of the Divine-Human is present in both the spiritual
and the celestial states of mind, but it is much higher and clearer in the
celestial state.
The sub-title above makes the assertion that God, in both our spiritual and
celestial states of mind, is seen as a Divine-Human. The phrase "Divine-Human"
appears contradictory from a natural-rational perspective which sees the two
as a duality--either Divine or human, but not both. According to this view, we are human beings but
God is the Divine Being. But when we adopt a spiritual-rational perspective,
we can see that the duality is not between "Divine" and "Human" but between
"Divine-Human" and "mere human."
The reason we are called "human beings" is because we are created in the
"image" of God, that is, in the image of the "Human" part of the
"Divine-Human." Animals are not created in the image of God, hence not in the
image of the Human of the the Divine-Human. "Image of God" refers to "human"
with a lower case "h", while the original of which it is an image, is
"Divine-Human"-- "H" in the upper case. The duality is therefore between
"human" and "Human" and not between "Divine" and "Human" which makes a one as
the "Divine-Human."
The word "Human" refers to the Divine Rational mind, while "human" refers
to our rational mind.
We are human only to the extent that we are rational.
The equation human=rational is a new scientific revelation from the
Writings of Swedenborg.
Before this it was known that humans can think rationally, but it was not
known that the human part of us begins with the rational mind. In other words
human beings are created with two organs of the mind. The lower portion is
animal but the upper portion is human. We share with animals our sensuous and
corporeal mind. Above this portion is our rational mind, an organ not
possessed by animals. The rational organ is what makes us human. There are
people who immerse their consciousness in the corporeal mind by refusing to
receive communication or influence from the rational. They become human-beasts
or monsters, unable to have moral thoughts or judgment, and devoid of all
empathy for anyone. They have a sad lot in the afterlife because of other
human-beasts they are forced to live with.
Clearly then, we did not originate from animal species except in terms of
our physical body and corporeal-sensuous mind. Our rational mind could not originate from
animals since they were created without one. It is revealed that animals
originate from human affections, rather than the other way. Every animal
species corresponds to a specific operation in the human affective organ. In
general terms we can say that heavenly affections, feelings, loves, and
motives give rise by correspondence to animal species that are gentle and
useful to human beings, like the domesticated animals or like the harmless and
beautiful insects and birds. Hellish affections and motives give rise by
correspondence to animal species that are ferocious and dangerous to human
beings, such as wild beasts that attack human beings, or those that are
poisonous, or destroy crops and houses.
The sub-title above also asserts that it is not the "Divine" of the
Divine-Human that created the universe but the "Human" of the Divine-Human.
In other words, God the Divine-Human, has two attributes we can recognize,
one corresponding to the Divine, the other corresponds to the Human. The
Divine attribute is also called "Father" while the Human attribute is called
"the Son." The Divine and the Human in God are one, but in creation, they are
two. This separation is part of the process of creation that establishes an
absolute duality between "God" and "created things." God is infinite, while
created things are finite. The infinite has no beginning, while the finite
has. "The Divine-Human from Eternity" refers to this feature of God by which
the infinite has no beginning (="from eternity").
Since the Divine and the Human are one in God ('the Divine-Human"), they are
both infinite and they both have no beginning. In other words, the "Human"
part of the Divine-Human has no beginning and is infinite. Sometimes people
erroneously think that the "Human" part of God started at the Incarnation,
2000 years ago. But in the Writings it is now revealed that God is, and has
always been, the Divine-Human, not merely the Divine. And furthermore, it is
the "Human" part of the Divine-Human that Incarnated and is called "the Word
became flesh" in the New Testament. When the Incarnation work was completed
after the Resurrection and Ascension, as recorded in Sacred Scripture, the
"Human" and the "Divine" of the Divine-Human became one again. They had been
partially separated during the 33 years of the Incarnation event in
order to allow the partially separated "Human" to descend into natural
consciousness such as we have on earth. In this partially lowered state of
mind, God was able to recreate the heavens and the hells in every human mind.
From then on a new evolutionary phase of consciousness began for the human
race. This involved the new ability of rational consciousness of God through
scientific revelations in Divine Speech (see Section xx).
How is it possible for infinite God to be present in the finite created
universe as well as
outside it? Does God divide Himself into parts so that He could be present in
things or in people's minds?
No. It is not logical to say that God can divide Himself because then He
would no longer be One and infinite, simultaneously. Therefore, God is present
everywhere equally in His entirety.
As revealed in the Writings, God is present outside creation as the "Human Divine" and
God is present in creation as the "Divine-Human."
The "Human Divine" before
creation (="The Divine-Human from Eternity") is not perceptible nor understandable by
finite human minds. Therefore, in order for God to relate to finite human
beings in creation, in a conscious way from our perspective, God (="the
Father") had to create
a Form of Himself in creation as "the Son of God." In other words, the unchanging and
unchangeable Human Divine before creation (="the Father"), had to create a
Divine-Human in creation, as part of creating human beings and the universe. This is
called the Incarnation Event in human history (="the birth of the Son of God"). God had to make a direct visual
and verbal appearance in the conscious sensuous awareness of human beings.
When this Incarnation process on earth was completed, there was a new form
of God as the Divine-Human. The human race had a an entirely new relationship with God.
God had revealed to the earliest generations on earth that some day will come
in the evolution of the human race in which they could see God visibly as the
Divine-Human. Such prophecies have been recorded in the Old Testament. In the
New Testament the three Magi, or spiritual scholars, knew from these old
prophecies, when the Incarnation Event would take place, as well as its
geographic location, to which they traveled to pay homage to the birth of the
Divine Child.
The creation of the Divine-Human
marks the beginning of an entirely new and superior level of operation in the
human mind. The excellence or superiority of all mental operations is
dependent on the activation and maintenance of a new rational consciousness of
God as the Divine-Human. The higher someone's rational conception of God is,
the higher the level of mental operations he or she is capable of. Hence when
God created the Divine-Human of Himself in the natural world, a new superior
phase of evolution was made possible. The sub-title in the passage above says that unless God had
created this Divine-Human of Himself in the natural world, none of creation
could have taken place to begin with. In other words, creation of the universe and the
human race took several evolutionary steps, all of which had to be foreseen by
God from beginning to the endless future. None of it would have been possible
without all of it. Hence it is said above that creation could not have
occurred if God had not provided for the creation also of a Divine-Human of
Himself.
Continuing with the next portion of the passage.
Those who have a corporeal natural idea of God as a Man, are wholly unable
to comprehend how God as a Man could have created the universe and all things
thereof; for they think within themselves, How can God as a Man wander all
over the universe from space to space, and create? Or how can He, from His
place, speak the word, and as soon as it is spoken, creation follow? When it
is said that God is a Man, such ideas present themselves to those whose
conception of the God-Man is like their conception of a man in the world, and
who think of God from nature and its properties, which are time and space.
This passage states that the Divine-Human ("God as a Man" or
"God-Man") cannot be
understood merely from the materialistic concepts we have from our sensuous mind.
All the concepts we use in the sensuous mind are derived from sensory experience in
the physical world. This means that no matter how abstract we can make our
scientific concepts, they can never rise above physical attributes that remain within the
abstraction. This is clearly shown by the concepts and abstract theories of
materialistic and atheistic science, as we all know it today. There is no room for God in
materialistic science
today because all its concepts are derived from physical measurements and
abstractions of them, and therefore limited to phenomena in time, space, and
matter.
The passage above indicates that materialistic science sees it as an inherent
contradiction to assert that there is a God outside time, space, and matter
who is the dynamic power running the universe. There is only the universe,
according to this atheistic view, and there is nothing outside of it. Hence
there is no God and there is no creation by a God. There is only the universe
and its evolution by its own natural laws and physical energy forces. A variation on the traditional form
of atheistic science is to accept the idea that God created the universe as
long as God is merely a reference to an infinite force that always existed and
is the origin of the forces in the universe. Note carefully that this view of
God is also atheistic, hence not a genuine theistic account. A genuine or
rational theistic account must define God as a Divine-Human Person possessing
infinite power and force, and having a rational purpose for creating the
universe and running it.
In the passage above the materialistic definition of God is referred to as
to "think of God from nature and its properties." The materialistic sense of
God is self-contradictory since to talk about "creation of the universe," it
is logically implied that it is a purpose carried out rationally, and only a
Divine-Human Person has rationality and purpose, by definition.
Continuing with the passage:
But those whose conception of God-Man is not drawn from their conception of
a man in the world, nor from nature and its space and time, clearly perceive
that unless God were a man the universe could not have been created. Bring
your thought into the angelic idea of God as being a Man, putting away, as
much as you can, the idea of space, and you will come near in thought to the
truth. In fact, some of the learned have a perception of spirits and angels as
not in space, because they have a perception of the spiritual as apart from
space. For the spiritual is like thought, which although it is in man, man is
nevertheless able by means of it to be present as it were elsewhere, in any
place however remote. Such is the state of spirits and angels, who are men
even as regards their bodies. In whatever place their thought is, there they
appear, because in the spiritual world spaces and distances are appearances,
and make one with the thought that is from their affection.
The scientific sense of the above passage reveals various facts about the
human mind that are quite amazing. The mental world is equated here with the
spiritual world--a basic foundational principle of theistic psychology. Both
share the identical principles of operation and structure. It is said that "in
the spiritual world spaces and distances are appearances," which means that in
the mental world there are no physical spaces, but spiritual. What is
"spiritual space"? Since it is not physical space it is called here an
"appearance." Think of your dreams and daydreams and imaginative visions of
scenes in your mind. What kind of space is there in these mental pictures? Not
physical space. Neither is it rational to say that these images are nothing
since how can nothing be something like an imagined scene? Imagined scenes are
mental operations of the human mind, that is, in the human mind which is a
spiritual organ formed out of the spiritual substances emanating from the
Spiritual Sun in the spiritual world. Our mind is in that world because mental
operations cannot occur in physical space and matter. Thoughts are devoid of
anything physical like space and matter, hence they need a non-space and
non-matter world to exist in. This is called the spiritual world.
When Swedenborg visited the heavens and the hells in the spiritual world he
did not do so with his physical body but with his mental body, which is called
the mind. Every human being can visit their heavens and their hells since
these are in their mental world. While we are attached to a physical body on
earth we are not conscious of the spiritual world in which our mind operates.
But when the connection to the physical body is cut off at its death, we
become consciously aware of the world around our mind. We see others there and
whole societies and cities filled with amazing things that Swedenborg
describes. He did not have a special ability that other humans do not have
since ability is always an operation in some anatomical organic structure,
like the brain and the heart. The mind is a spiritual organ that has a
structure described in the Writings of Swedenborg. Hence for Swedenborg to
visit the heavens and hells of other people's minds, he had to have organic
structure to allow him to carry out these operations. And Swedenborg was an
ordinary person born in Sweden in 1688. His death is recorded as 1772.
The only thing that was different with Swedenborg is that he was able to
experience now what normally everyone experiences only later. In other words,
everyone at the death of the physical body goes through the physiological
process of "resuscitation," which takes approximately 30 hours counting earth
time. From age 57 on, Swedenborg found himself with the amazing and
unprecedented ability to be conscious in both worlds while he was still
functioning in his physical body on earth. What he saw we can all confirm as
soon as we are resuscitated in the world of spirits. Swedenborg's simultaneous
presence in both worlds was made possible by the super-natural "opening" of
his spiritual mind, which is the mind we all have and in which we become
conscious after resuscitation. This super-natural early operatioanalization of
his spiritual conscious awareness occurred for the sole purpose of giving a
well known and reputable scientist in Europe, the opportunity to explore and
describe the spiritual world in a scientific and rational manner. This amazing
event in human history was in preparation by God since the beginning of
creation.
From his childhood on Swedenborg was unconsciously being prepared for his
scientific mission into the spiritual world. All the theistic science he wrote
and published prior to the event at age 57, foreshadow and agree with in
general with the details he was able to present later. His conceptual
scientific framework before age 57 was based on his abstracted understanding
of the Bible and its concepts of God and the afterlife. Afterwards, his
scientific explanations of what he observed in the spiritual world were in
full agreement with the theistic science he had written and published before
age 57. Almost all that he wrote has been translated into English and other
language by people who appreciated and understood these new scientific
revelations.
Swedenborg's scientific system of theistic science is therefore not weird
or unfamiliar since it is based on the best of empirical science in the 17the
and 18th centuries. It can be understood and confirmed rationally by anyone
with a high school science education literacy. What is most unusual or totally
unique to Swedenborg is that he was given access to conduct systematic
observations and experiments in the spiritual world where he interviewed
thousands of people, both novices he interviewed at resuscitation, and old
timers who had been resuscitated thousands of years ago as measured by
historical time when they actually lived on this earth.
Time in the spiritual world is not physical and fixed but variable as an
appearance, just as in novels or dreams. The same is true for space, which is
called an appearance. The most amazing discovery Swedenborg made, in my
opinion, is that the geography of the spiritual world = the anatomy of the
human mind. In other words, if you close your eyes for a couple of minutes and
focus on your thoughts and mental images, you are actually in the spiritual
world where thoughts and images can exist. You are in your thoughts and
feelings. You are in your mental world. You are in the spiritual world. And if
you are in the spiritual world when being your mental world, then I must also
be in the spiritual world when I am in my mental world. But there is only one
spiritual world, as revealed in the Writings and confirmed by Swedenborg's
actual observations and experiments. The rational conclusion is awesome: We
are in the same objective world when we are each in our mental world!
Going into our mental world means going into the same objective spiritual
world where we can all see one another, communicate, and create a social
community of relationships. This is marvelous news.
Continuing with the next portion:
From all this it can be seen that God, who appears as a sun far above the
spiritual world, and to whom there can belong no appearance of space, is not
to be thought of from space. And it can then be comprehended that He created
the universe out of Himself, and not out of nothing; also that His Human Body
cannot be thought great or small, that is, of any one stature, because this
also pertains to space; consequently that in things first and last, and in
things greatest and least, He is the same; and still further, that the Human
is the inmost in every created thing, though apart from space. That the Divine
is the same in things greatest and least may be seen above (n. 77-82); and
that the Divine apart from space fills all spaces (n. 69-72). And because the
Divine is not in space, it is not continuous [nec est continuum], as the
inmost of nature is. (DLW 285)
Here it is confirmed that the Divine-Human appears visually in the
Spiritual Sun. This Divine-Human is the visible Form of the infinite Human
Divine, as discussed above. In this Visible Form God can relate and
communicate with the human race directly. Note that this Divine-Human Form is
also infinite because it is one with the infinite Human Divine or "The
Divine-Human
from Eternity." And yet it is different because this visible Divine-Human Form
was a creation in history and time on this planet.
The understanding we have of this Divine-Human determines the quality and
excellence of the mental operations in our mind. The more rationally we
understand it, the higher and superior is the quality of feeling and thinking
that we are able to receive from the Divine-Human. Swedenborg interviewed
those who are in the "highest heaven" the human race has ever achieved since
the beginning and up to the 18th century, counting earth history time. He
called the people there "the Most Ancient Church," which designates the
earliest human generations that started on this earth, hence they are the
oldest of our race. The quality and excellence of their mind was indescribably
superior to anything below them. They were full of love for and intelligence
and their perceptions were so celestial that the surrounding area where they
lived was covered with indescribably beautiful gardens and pants arranged in
"heavenly forms" that cannot be described by earthly art or natural language.
Their conception of the Divine-Human is not based in any way on ideas or
syntax of space and time. They see the Divine-Human as infinite and
everywhere, not in space but outside of space. Every portion of physical
space, whether galactic or atomic, and every portion of mental or spiritual
appearance of space, has a more inward portion that is its non-spatial or
spiritual framework. This is where God is. God has a view and operational
access to all created things through this inmost framework that is not in
space (physical) or the appearance of space (mental), but within it or behind
it or above it. These are also spatial ideas so it is difficult to describe by
natural language, but not so difficult to describe by spiritual language which
is purely rational with nothing natural in it. The Writings often use the
expression "apart from space" to describe this relationship between the
infinite and the finite.
Note also this amazing revelation in the above passage: "the Human is the
inmost in every created thing." It is talking about the Human of the Human
Divine ("from eternity"), which has been made one with the Human of the
Divine-Human ("born in time"). This Human is the inmost framework of every created
physical object or human mind. This is what is meant above when saying that
God "created the universe out of Himself, and not out of nothing." This
indicates that the inmost framework holding created objects in existence is
the Human of the Divine-Human. This Human has already been defined as the
"rational." The amazing conclusion is therefore that the universe is created
out of a rational substance which has been revealed to be Divine Truth. The
Human of the Divine-Human is Divine Truth while the Divine of the Divine-Human
is Divine Love. These two rational substances constitute the infinite mass of
the Spiritual Sun, and from this there emanates spiritual heat or love, and
spiritual light or truth. These emanations of love and truth from the infinite
Spiritual Sun are the building blocks of the spiritual world, and from these,
of the building blocks of the natural world.
It is not easy to understand this clearly at first, but clarity grows as we
proceed in our study of the Writings. As we get more and more rational in our
thinking, we get more and more clarity on Divine scientific revelations. This
growing clarity depends on two things. First, the continued rational study of
the Writings. And second, the application of what we understand to our daily
style of thinking and feeling. This progressive improvement in cognitive and
affective abilities is discussed as regeneration or character reformation in
Chapter xx. It is the basis of spiritual development.
Another important topic discussed in the above passage is that the
Divine-Human is present "apart from space" in "things first and last, and in things
greatest and least, He is the same" and "because the Divine is not in space,
it is not continuous, as the inmost of nature is." To be the same in all
things, large or small, physical or mental, is a rational necessity since the
infinite cannot be divided, or else it would not longer be the infinite for
there can be only one infinite. In other words God is present in everything
but not part of that thing. God is equally present in my mind, your mind,
Swedenborg's mind, or in any object like a sub-atomic particle or a galaxy.
And most important of all, God is not part of the created object or the mind.
god is not part of us but "apart" from us. We are in creation, God is outside
creation, though everywhere present in creation.
This is expressed in the passage above as "the Divine is not in space, it
is not continuous, as the inmost of nature is. " All created things are
continuous with each other in their own plane, the natural world in its plane
and the spiritual world in its plane. The two planes are connected by the
action of the laws of correspondences. The entire creation is therefore
continuous. But God, being apart from creation, is not continuous with
creation. We can't correctly or rationally say that "God in us" means that a
portion of the Divine is part of us. This is extremely important to understand
if we want to maintain a rational system in our mind. God and human beings, as
stated above, are an absolute duality. Nothing of the Divine-Human can be a
part of mere human beings because they are completely different structurally.
God is structurally infinite while we are structurally finite.
It is interesting to realize that the infinite can be in the finite but not
the other way around.
Galaxies are within space so space is larger than all the galaxies
combined. Further, in order for galaxies to expand every second at the
enormous speed of light, physical space must be endlessly large, and yet it is
never infinite for infinite is defined as having no beginning in existence,
while the expanding physical universe has a beginning. Hence when we say that
galaxies are within space we are not saying that the finite is within the
infinite. Instead, it is always the infinite which is within the finite, and
amazingly, all of the infinite is in every portion of the finite no matter how
small or large.
The more we study these rational ideas, the more we become spiritually
enlightened and the more human potential we are capable of.
3.10.2
The Mind-Body Connection
It is important to remember that Swedenborg's reports of the spiritual
world are unlike any other reports in the history of literature and science.
Swedenborg was accomplishing a Divine mission for which he was put in a unique
state that is unprecedented in the history of our race. At age 57 he
suddenly found himself conscious not only on earth but in the spiritual world
as well. Although this was disconcerting and confusing for awhile, he quickly
adjusted to his new mental state and continued carrying out his professional
duties for 27 years even though he was in this dual consciousness all the
time, day and night. He kept daily notes and records of his observations and
experiments. These records along with his rational explanations of them amount
to 30 volumes in English translation from the original Neo-Latin in which
scientists in Europe wrote in the 17th and 18th centuries.
In the passage quoted below Swedenborg describes some of his observations
about the "Grand Human" of heaven, which is the overall form and structure of
the heavenly cities and societies. When seen from a bird's eye view, the many
heavenly cities and lands arrange themselves into the shape of the human body,
both external and internal organs. Swedenborg relied on this when describing
which heaven he was visiting, by saying that he was in the "province of the
right eye" or "in the region of the stomach" and so on. This is indeed a
remarkable revelation. It means that our mind is shaped in the form of the
human body. People have wondered what the mind is or if it has a shape.
Descartes for instance, knew that we have a soul that is of a different
substance than the body, but he speculated that the soul or spirit was located
somewhere in the brain (pineal gland). But Swedenborg argued that the spirit
is the mind and that the mind is distributed not merely in the brain but
throughout the entire body. This means that the shape of the mind or spirit is
the same as the shape of the body. He later was able to confirm this
empirically when he saw that the map of heaven has the shape of the body, and
since heaven is in the mind, the mind has that shape as well.
Swedenborg also discovered that when he visited the heavens in his mental
super-consciousness (or "in the spirit"), he was able to sense an "inner
breathing" in his body that coincided exactly with a "general breathing" of
the heavens in which he was. This shows that there are unsuspected functional
connections and influences between mind and body, and that the heavens in one
persons' mind connects with the heaven in other people's minds to form an
objective spiritual world in which people can see each other, communicate, and
form societies.
In the passage below, quoting from the Writings (AC 3884), I add my own
commentary to highlight the thesitic psychology perspective on these
descriptions.
As the world knows nothing at all about the correspondence of heaven or the
Grand Man [or Grand Human] with every individual part of man or about the
truth that man comes into being and is kept in being from it, and as what is
going to be said on these matters will seem paradoxical and unbelievable, let
me refer to things which I have experienced and of which I am therefore firmly
convinced. On one occasion when the interior heaven was opened to me and I was
talking to the angels there I was allowed to observe the following activities
there. (It should be realized that although I was present there in heaven I
had not left my body at all, for heaven is within a person wherever he is
situated. So when it pleases the Divine-Human a person can be in heaven and yet not
withdrawn from the body. In this way I was allowed to perceive the general
activities of heaven as plainly as anything perceived by any of the senses.)
On this particular occasion I perceived four activities taking place, the
first being into the brain at the left temple. This was a general activity
involving the organs of reason, for the left side of the brain corresponds to
rational powers or those of the understanding, but the right to affections or
powers of the will.
In the above portion of the passage, notice the assertion that "man comes
into being and is kept in being from it," referring to the Grand Human, or the
overall shape of the heavens in people's minds acting as one. This is quite
astonishing for it indicates that the minds of all human beings form a unit,
which is the shape of the body and its organs. Swedenborg entered the global
human mind when he entered the spiritual world. Similarly, when we enter our
mind, we enter the global spiritual world where all minds are and form a unit.
Swedenborg entered the global heavens by the process of having his
spiritual consciousness opened to awareness, something that we don't get to do
until we are cut off from the physical body on earth, namely at our death and
immediate resuscitation in the world of spirits. On this occasion it was the
"the interior heaven that was opened" to him. Elsewhere he shows that there
are three heavens in terms of degree of "interiorness" or excellence of human
potential--intelligence, rationality, wisdom, love, happiness. Here he is
relating that he remained in his dual consciousness while being able to
observe heaven. In this way, Swedenborg the scientist on earth was able to
write down the details of what Swedenborg the spiritual explorer was able to
observe. Never before was a reputable scientist in the midst of his career
been given this amazing ability of dual consciousness. Through this special
and unique condition, the human race is now able to benefit immensely from the
facts and observations he recorded for 27 years, until age 82 when his
connection to the physical body was broken. After that hew was no longer able
to communicate his experiences in the spiritual world because such
communication is ordinarily impossible for reasons Swedenborg explains.
In the passage above, note this sentence at the end: "On this particular
occasion I perceived four activities taking place, the first being into the
brain at the left temple. This was a general activity involving the organs of
reason, for the left side of the brain corresponds to rational powers or those
of the understanding, but the right to affections or powers of the will." He
is going to tell us about the four (see passages below), but for the first,
note that he felt it in his physical body on earth in the region of his temple
on the left side. Note that he is stating here a fact about the right and left
hemispheres of the brain that was not known in science at the time he
published these observations (1746). It is only in the 20th century that the
brain was being mapped out in terms of function, so that it became known
generally that the left brain is active in verbal and digital intelligence,
while the right brain is active in visual and analogic intelligence.
Swedenborg discovered through his spiritual travels through the human mind
that the left brain correlates with "rational powers" while the right brain
correlates with "affections." Today we would say in theistic psychology that
left brain activity corresponds to cognitive operations in the mind, while
right brain activity corresponds to affective operations in the mind.
Continuing with the passage (AC3884):
[2] The second general activity which I perceived was into the breathing of
the lungs, which was gently controlling my own breathing. But it did so from
what was interior and so I had no need to call on my own will to control my
breathing or drawing of breath. I perceived plainly at that time the actual
breathing of heaven. It is an internal breathing and not therefore perceptible
to man, but flows in by means of a wonderful correspondence into man's
breathing, which is external or of the body. And if man were deprived of that
influx he would instantly fall down dead.
Swedenborg noticed that the breathing in his body on earth was synchronous
with the breathing of the interior heaven with which he was in contact on this
occasion. His breathing became non-voluntary, acting in perfect synchrony with
the general breathing of that interior heaven. The existence of such phenomena
are not known to modern science. Having this information will help many
branches of science in improving our ability to manage and heal the physical
body. The breathing of heaven is not perceptible to the physical senses as
long as we are still connected to the physical body on earth.
The external breathing of our physical body is clearly perceptible, as for
example when we start running we quickly get out of breath. But the internal
breathing of the physical body is not perceptible, though it goes on in
synchrony with the general breathing of the human mind or heaven. It is stated
here that the two types of breathing are functionally interconnected so that
the external physical breathing of the body would not be possible without its
connection to the internal breathing in heaven. This functional connection is
by the laws of correspondences that govern the interaction between natural and
spiritual events.
Continuing wit the passage:
[3] The third activity which I perceived was into the systole and the
diastole of the heart, which was at that time gentler in myself than it had
ever been at any other times. The pulse rate was regular - round about three
beats for every breath that was taken - yet such that beats ended in and so
conditioned actions taking place in the lungs. How at the end of each breath
taken the alternating actions of the heart fitted into those of the lungs I
was allowed to observe to a certain extent. The alternate sounds of the pulse
could be observed so easily that I was able to count them. They were separate
and gentle.
Here we have more details being revealed about how the physiological
operations of our body occur in synchrony and by correspondence to mental
operations of the mind, here, the upper portions called heaven. The heartbeat
and the pulse interact with pulmonary operations at a pace that is regulated
by the mind's actions in its heaven.
[4] The fourth general activity was into the kidneys; this too I was
allowed to perceive, though obscurely. From these activities it was evident
that heaven or the Grand Man has heartbeats and draws breaths, and that the
heartbeats of heaven or the Grand Man have a correspondence with the heart and
its systolic and diastolic motions, and that the breathing actions of heaven
or the Grand Man have a correspondence with the lungs and their breathing
actions. But neither can be observed by man, being imperceptible because they
are internal. (AC 3884)
It is amazing to discover the existence of an "internal" world of the mind
that regulates and coordinates the action of the heart, the lungs, and the
kidneys. elsewhere Swedenborg discusses the other organs as he journeys
through the Grand Human, indicating that the body and its detailed operations
achieve their coordination and integration not from natural law but from
mental activity in the upper portions of the human mind. In that region or
state the entire human race is present and mutually interactive.
Another interesting quote from the Writings discussing the same topic:
On another occasion also when I was led away from ideas formed from
sensory impressions in the body a heavenly light appeared to me. That light
led me even further away from those ideas, for the light of heaven holds
spiritual life within it, see 1524, 2776, 3167, 3195, 3339, 3636, 3643.
While I was surrounded with this light bodily and worldly interests looked
to be underneath me. I was still aware of them, but it seemed as though they
were more remote from me and did not belong to me. At this time it seemed to
me as though I was present in heaven with my head but not with my body. In
this condition I was also allowed to observe the general breathing of heaven
and also the nature of it. It was interior, relaxed, spontaneous, and
corresponded to my own breathing in a ratio of three breaths to one. In a
similar way I was also allowed to observe my heartbeats complementing those
of heaven. At this point the angels told me that the beating of the heart
and the breathing of the lungs in each individual being on earth sprang from
those corresponding actions in heaven. They also said that the reason why
one heart beats or a pair of lungs breathes at a different rate from another
is that the beat of the heart and the breathing of the lungs in heaven is
spread out into a kind of continuum and so into an endeavour whose nature is
such that it gives rise to those varying motions in living beings, the
variations in each one depending on its particular state. (AC 3885)
What a dramatic scene depicting Swedenborg with his head in heaven and
the rest of his body far below. He was conscious simultaneously of the
interior and gentle breathing of his celestial mind in heaven while at the
same time his natural mind and its operations relating to earthly things,
seemed disconnected far below him. Note his new discovery from this special
observational vantage point: "At this point the angels told me that the
beating of the heart and the breathing of the lungs in each individual being
on earth sprang from those corresponding actions in heaven." This was also
mentioned above in prior passages. He also discovered that the mental heaven
also regulates controlled variations of body physiology due to individual
differences.
3.11 The
Purpose of Creation
3.11.1 God, Heaven, Hell, Mind, Body
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html )
3.12
Divine Love and Divine Truth as Substances
3.13
The Infinite Within the Finite
3.14
The Spiritual Within the Natural
3.15
The Universal Laws of Correspondences
Chapter 4
The Function of Scientific Revelations
4.0
4.0.1
External
and Internal Revelation
From Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia (AC
5121):
"And Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it." That this
signifies revelation from perception from the celestial in the natural as to
what it had in itself, is evident from the signification of "saying" in the
historic parts of the Word, as being perception (n. 1791, 1815, 1819, 1822,
1898, 1919, 2080, 2619, 2862, 3395, 3509), here revelation from perception,
because said of a dream and its interpretation - all revelation being either
from speech with angels through whom the Divine-Human speaks, or from perception (of
which hereafter); and from the representation of Joseph, as being the
celestial in the natural (of which above, n. 5086, 5087, 5106); and from the
signification of "interpretation," as being what it had in itself (of which
also above, n. 5093, 5105, 5107). From this it is plain that by "Joseph said
unto him, This is the interpretation of it" is signified revelation from
perception from the celestial in the natural as to what it had in itself.
The above is a passage from the Writings that discusses the scientific
sense of the verse in Genesis 40:12. Note the expression "revelation from
perception from the celestial in the natural ." You need to know what is being
referred to before you can understand it. What does "the celestial in the
natural" refer to? Here, "the celestial" refers to the celestial mind or
the celestial portion of our mind. This is the organ that is able to receive
direct influx from the Spiritual Sun so that spiritual heat (or love) and
spiritual light (or truth) stream into it, a process called "Divine influx."
This influx is called divine not because God can enter into us, but because
the love and truth that enter into us are from the Spiritual Sun and this is
the expanse around the Divine-Human, hence it is Divine.
Note this very important principle: Whatever is from God must be fully God
since God cannot be divided into portions. This is because God is infinite and
the infinite cannot be divided but remains the infinite wherever it enters the
finite. So the infinite enters the finite, not the other way around. The
finite contains the infinite fully, not just a part of the infinite, but all
of it, since as already said, the infinite cannot be divided into lesser
portions of itself.
You need to understand rationally the way the infinite enters the
finite and "dwells" there in fullness of itself,
You can see that this is the same as saying: You need to understand
rationally the way God enters the human mind and "dwells" there in
fullness of itself,
God or the infinite "dwells" in the finite mind by adjoining love and truth
to the mind as-if they belong to the person. We experience love as a feeling,
like wanting to be useful to society, and we experience truth as an
understanding, like seeing that selfishness is destructive. God dwells within
the feeling of wanting to be useful, and the seeing that selfishness is
destructive. God dwells in the loves and truths we acquire and feel as-if our
own. How can that be? That's because the love and truth we experience as-if
our own is not our own but came into our celestial mind from the Spiritual
Sun. Now that they are in our organs, love in the affective organ and truth in
the cognitive organ, they feel like our own, as-if they were own. Even if we
know from revelation that all love and truth are God's, we still feel as-if
they are own within us.
This is where God dwells, where God is in us. It's possible only because
the love and truth in us is God's love and truth, and whatever is God's cannot
be separated from God but forever remains God's. God is infinite and
unchanging, and therefore the love and truth emanating from Himself as the
Spiritual Sun, must remain God's. God cannot give them away to created things
like the finite human mind. So if we now have the experience that the love and
truth in us is our own, then it is equivalent to being adjoined or connected
to God. But note carefully: It is never the case that we can be conjoined to
God, or merging with God, or being one with God. If this were possible, we
would become God, and each of us would be God, as some people believe.
Clearly, the possibility of being connected or adjoined to God depends on
this sensation or feeling that the love and truth in us is as-if our own.
The moment we would actually sense the influx, or become aware of it,
the as-if position is destroyed and we can never be conjoined to God, hence
not receive love and truth from God, and thus instantaneously disappear from
existence.
Consider again the phrase in the passage above: "revelation from perception
from the celestial in the natural." The celestial mind is "within" the natural
mind, which means that it is higher and superior to it. Whenever something is
said to be "within" another portion of the mind, it is always superior to it
in excellence, by far. So the celestial portion of the mind is superior to the
natural portion of the mind in mode and level of operation in its affective
organ (feelings, loves) and in its cognitive organ (thoughts, truths). The
phrase "revelation from perception" refers to the influx of truth which is
felt as-if it is our own. God prevents us from sensing influx so that we can
maintain the as-if feeling. By maintaining the as-if feeling, we can be
connected to God's love and truth, hence to God. The connection depends on our
feeling that the love and truth is as-if our own.
Scientific revelations are Divine truths contained in Divine Speech. When
we understand scientific revelations found in Sacred Scripture we are
receiving revelation from perceiving the scientific sense of a word or phrase
in Sacred Scripture. Perceiving the scientific sense is an intellectual effort
that feels like our very own effort. This is the as-if feeling we have that
those truths are our own from the effort of understanding them. Once we
understand some scientific revelation, the truth of it becomes as-if our own.
This is called rational consciousness. It does not work with sensuous
consciousness. Feeling something we call "oneness with God" is an effort to
connect with God through sensuous consciousness. This can only translate into
mystical spirituality, which inhibits all forms of rational spirituality.
Rational spirituality is necessary for the appropriation of love and truth
to self by means of the as-if feeling. The appropriation of love and truth to
self is necessary in order to be connected to God. Hence all connection to God
is based on rational understanding and not on sensuous experience. If we
appropriate the sensuous consciousness of God, we become God, and this is
impossible. It is therefore destructive of rational consciousness, our only
means of connection to God. Our heaven is embedded in our rational
consciousness, while our hell is embedded in sensuous consciousness or
corporeal spirituality, this being a state of anti-rationality or
irrationality.
Going on with the Number (AC 5121):
[2] In regard to revelations being either from perception, or from speech
with angels through whom the Divine-Human speaks, it is to be known that they who are
in good and thence in truth, and especially they who are in the good of love
to the Divine-Human, have revelation from perception; whereas they who are not in good
and thence in truth, can indeed have revelations, yet not from perception, but
through a living voice heard within them, and thus through angels from the
Divine-Human. This revelation is external, but the former is internal. The angels,
especially the celestial, have revelation from perception, as also had the men
of the Most Ancient Church, and some too of the Ancient Church, but scarcely
anyone at this day; whereas very many, even those who have not been in good,
have had revelations from speech without perception, and also by means of
visions or dreams.
This fascinating paragraph reveals and specifies many details about
scientific revelations viewed from an evolutionary perspective. The highest
portion of the mind called celestial receives revelation directly from
perception of the scientific sense of Divine Speech. But we are not conscious
of our celestial mind while we are attached to the physical body on earth,
with the unique exception of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Therefore in
order for us to become conscious of the scientific sense of Sacred Scripture,
our understanding must be enlightened by gradual acquisition of knowledge
which we must consciously build up into a coherent framework called
"doctrine." We can also call it theistic psychology, from the perspective of
organized and institutional science.
The passage above reveals that anyone can have revelation from perception
if they are willing to love the scientific revelations enough to guide their
daily life according to it. This is expressed as "they who are in good and
thence in truth." To be in good refers to our willingness to love the
Divine-Human as the source of all that we have in our mind and in our future. When we
love scientific revelations as God's Speech to us, we love good and thence
truth. The truth we perceive is loved because it is from the Divine-Human.
When we are in this state of mind, we experience perception from revelation.
We can perceive how the truth applies specifically to us, and particularly to
our feelings and thoughts. What we think must be according to truth or else we
must reject what we think. And what we feel or enjoy must be according to the
love or else we enjoy what is the opposite of love, namely love of self as
god, which is not properly love, but cupidity.
When we are unwilling to love the Divine-Human as the source of all that we
have, we can still be enlightened to see the scientific sense of Sacred
Scripture. But not by perception, only by mediation, through the intermediary
of others. Others who have perception can translate for us through
correspondences that are lower and easier to understand within the natural
perspective. It is said in the passage above that when we are in this state we
can hear a "living voice" within our mind. This refers to the sensuous
consciousness of a spiritual vision that the prophets had in the Old
Testament. The spiritual vision could be heard rather than seen, and the words
heard could be written down as Sacred Scripture. This is called an "external
revelation" to contrast with the "internal revelation" by direct perception.
Swedenborg was raised into his celestial mind and made conscious there so that
he had revelation from perception like all the inhabitants of the higher
heavens.
Continuing:
[3] Such were most of the revelations of the prophets in the Jewish Church;
they heard a voice, they saw a vision, and they dreamed a dream; but as they
had no perception, these were merely verbal or visual revelations without any
perception of what they signified. For genuine perception comes through heaven
from the Divine-Human, and affects the intellect spiritually, and leads it perceptibly
to think as the thing really is, together with internal assent, the source of
which it knows not. It supposes that it is in itself, and that it flows from
the connection of things; whereas it is a dictate through heaven from the
Divine-Human, flowing into the interiors of the thought, about such things as are
above the natural and sensuous, that is, about such things as are of the
spiritual world or of heaven. From what has now been said it may be seen what
revelation from perception is. But the revelation from perception which the
Divine-Human had (who is here represented by Joseph, and which revelation is here
treated of in the internal sense), was from the Divine in Himself, thus was
from Himself. (AC 5121)
It is clear from these details that God is very much involved
in the details of our thinking and feeling. You need to maintain rational
thinking to understand this enough in order not to feel disappointed or angry at
God. My grown up children have always expressed a distaste for this idea that
God is so involved in their thinking. It seems to them from their natural
perspective, that if this were so, there would be no point or desire to keep
thinking and living. They lose all enthusiasm for living when thinking about how
it is God who directs their attention, focus, and memory. They suddenly feel
that they are not free in that case and all joy of life leaves them, and all
desire to do anything. But as they continue to grow in rational consciousness of
God they will start feeling less and less troubled by the idea, and eventually,
they will start feeling more and more that it is their joy to know it is God
within them that activates and guides these processes in the mind, thus insuring
that we are well and that our future is well. If it were left to us to think on
our own even for a few seconds, we would instantly hate God and precipitate
ourselves into the lowest hell of our mind, where we stay forever, being
unwilling to emerge from there by loving God.
Another quote from Swedenborg (NJHD
51). (Reference numbers refer to numbered paragraphs in Arcana
Coelestia):
The Sciences and Knowledges through which the internal spiritual Man is
opened.
Those things are called scientifics which are in the external or natural
man and in its memory, but not those which are in the internal or spiritual
man, nos. 3019, 3020, 3293, 3309, 4967, 9918, 9922. Because scientifics belong
to the external or natural man, they are respectively things of service,
because the external or natural man was made to serve the internal or
spiritual man, just as the world was made to serve heaven, nos. 5077, 5125,
5128, 5786, 5947, 10272, 10471. The external man is respectively a world,
because the laws of the Divine order which are in the world, are inscribed
upon it, and the internal man is respectively a heaven, because the laws of
the Divine order which is in heaven, are inscribed upon it, nos. 4523, 5424,
5368, 6013, 6057, 9278, 9279, 9283, 9706, 10156, 10472; and in the work on
Heaven and Hell, nos. 51 to 58.
There are scientifics which concern natural things; there are such as
relate to the civil state and life, and again there are such as relate to the
moral state and life, and such as relate to the spiritual state and life, nos.
5774, 5934. But for distinction those which relate to the spiritual state and
life, and which are chiefly doctrinals, are called knowledges, no. 9945.
A man ought to become imbued with sciences and knowledges, because through
them he learns how to think; afterwards how to understand what is true and
good, and at length how to be wise; that is how to live according to what is
true and good, nos. 129, 1450, 1451, 1453, 1548, 1802. Scientifics and
knowledges are the first things, on which a man's civil, moral, and spiritual
life are built and founded; but they ought to be learned for the sake of the
use of life as an end, nos. 1489, 3310. Knowledges open the way to the
internal man, and afterwards conjoin the internal with the external man
according to uses, nos. 1563, 1616. The Rational is born through sciences and
knowledges, nos. 1895, 1900, 3086. Still, not through the sciences and
knowledges themselves, but through the affection of uses from them, and
according to such affection, no. 1895.
The internal man is opened and successively perfected through sciences and
knowledges, if the man has for an end some good use; particularly the use
which has respect to eternal life, no. 3086. In this case, the spiritual
things from the celestial and spiritual man, go to meet the scientifics and
knowledges which are in the natural man, and adopt those that agree, no. 1495.
The uses of a heavenly life are then extracted, eliminated, and elevated by
the Divine-Human, through the internal man, from the scientifics and knowledges which
are in the natural man, nos. 1895, 1896, 1900-1902, 5871, 5874, 5901. And the
scientifics which do not agree, and which are inimical, are rejected to the
sides and exterminated, nos. 5871, 5886, 5889. The sight of the internal man
calls forth from the scientifics and knowledges of the external man, only such
as belong to its love, no. 9394. Scientifics and knowledges are arranged in
bundles, and conjoined according to the loves by which they have been
introduced, no. 5881.
The things belonging to the love are then in the middle and in clearness,
under the sight of the internal man, but those which do not belong to the love
are at the sides and in obscurity, nos. 6068, 6084. Scientifics and knowledges
with a man are successively implanted in his loves, and dwell in them, no.
6325. A man would be born into every science, and into intelligence from it,
if he were born into the love of the Divine-Human, and into love towards the neighbour
but since he is born into the love of self and the world, he is therefore born
into [a state of] entire ignorance, nos. 6323, 6325. Knowledge, intelligence,
and wisdom are the sons of love to the Divine-Human and love towards the neighbour,
nos. 1226, 2049, 2116.
Since scientifics and knowledges belong to the external or natural man,
they are in the light of the world; but the truths, which have become matters
of love and faith, and have thus obtained life, are in the light of heaven,
no. 5212. Still, the truths which have thus obtained life, are comprehended by
a man by means of natural ideas, no. 5510. Spiritual influx takes place
through the internal man into the scientifics and knowledges which are in the
external man, nos. 1904, 8005. Scientifics and knowledges are receptacles, and
as it were vessels, of the truth and good belonging to the internal man, nos.
1469, 1496, 3068, 5489, 6004, 6023, 6052, 6071, 6077, 7770, 9922. Vessels in
the Word, therefore, signify, in the spiritual sense, scientifics and
knowledges, nos. 3068, 3069, 3079, 9394, 9544, 9723, 9724.
Scientifics are a kind of mirrors, in which the truths and goods of the
internal man appear, and are perceived, as in an image, no. 5201; they are
together in them, as in their ultimate, nos. 5373, 5874, 5886, 5901, 6004,
6023, 6052, 6071, 6077. Because scientifics are in the light of the world,
they are confused and obscure when compared with the things which are in the
light of heaven; consequently, so also are the things which are in the
external man, when compared with those which are in the internal man, no.
2831. Therefore, what is intertwined or confused, signifies in the Word the
Scientific, no. 2831; likewise by the obscurity of a cloud, nos. 8443, 10551.
The starting-point ought to be made from truths of doctrine which are from
the Word, and they ought first to be acknowledged; it is permitted afterwards
to consult scientifics in order to confirm these truths, which are
corroborated in this manner, no. 6047. Those who are in an affirmative
principle in respect to the truths of faith, are therefore permitted to
confirm these truths intellectually by means of scientifics, but not those who
are in a negative principle; for the affirmation which precedes inclines all
things in favour of its own side, while the negation which precedes inclines
them to its side, nos. 2568, 2588, 3913, 4760, 6047. There is an affirmative
principle of doubt, and a negative principle of doubt; the former is with some
who are good, and the latter with the evil, no. 2568. Entering into
scientifics from the truths of faith, is agreeable to order; but, conversely,
entering into the truths of faith from scientifics, is contrary to order, no.
10236. For influx is spiritual, and not physical, that is, natural; and,
therefore, it takes place from the truths of faith because they are spiritual,
into scientifics because they are natural, nos. 3219, 5119, 5259, 5427, 5428,
5779, 6322, 9109, 9110.
Whoever is in a principle of negative doubt, which in itself is negative,
and who says that he will not believe until he is persuaded through
scientifics, will never believe, nos. 2094, 2832. Those who do so, become
insane as to the things which belong to the Church and Heaven, nos. 128-130.
They lapse into falsities of evils, no. 232, 233, 6047. And in the other life,
when thinking about spiritual things, they are like drunken persons, no. 1072.
A further description of their quality, no. 196. Instances to illustrate that
spiritual things cannot be comprehended, if you enter into them in an inverted
order, nos. 233, 2094, 2196, 2203, 2209. Many of the learned are more insane
in spiritual things, than the simple-minded, because they are in a negative
principle, and are furnished in abundance with scientifics by which they
confirm the negative [state], no. 4760. An instance of an educated person, who
was unable to understand anything concerning the spiritual life, no. 8629.
Those who reason from scientifics in opposition to the truths of faith, reason
sharply, because [they do so] from the fallacies of the senses, which are
captivating and persuasive; for they can be shaken off only with difficulty,
no. 5700.
Those who do not understand anything of truth, and they also who are in
evil, are able to reason concerning the truths and goods of faith, and yet
they are not able to be in any enlightenment, no. 4214. The mere confirmation
of a dogma is not the part of an intelligent man, because a falsity can be
confirmed as easily as a truth, nos. 1017, 2482, 2490, 4741, 5033, 6865, 7012,
7680, 7950, 8521, 8780. Those who reason concerning the truths of the Church,
whether a thing be so or not, are totally in the dark with respect to truths,
and are not yet in spiritual light, nos. 215, 1385, 3033, 3428.
There are scientifics which admit Divine truths, and others that do not,
no. 5213. Useless scientifics ought to be destroyed, nos. 1489, 1492, 1499,
1500. Those scientifics are useless which regard as their end, and confirm,
the loves of self and the world, and which withdraw [the mind] from love to
the Divine-Human and love towards the neighbour; because such scientifics shut up the
internal man, so that the man is afterwards unable to receive anything from
heaven, nos. 1563, 1600. Scientifics are means for becoming wise, and means
for becoming insane; and through them the internal man may either be opened or
shut; and thus the Rational may either be cultivated or destroyed, nos. 4156,
8628, 9922.
After death the sciences are of no account, but only what a man through the
sciences has imbibed into his understanding and life, no. 2480. Still all
scientifics remain after death, but they are quiescent, nos. 2476-2479,
2481-2486.
(( NOTA BENE!))
The same scientifics which are false with the wicked because they are
applied to evils, are true with the good because they are applied to goods,
no. 6917. Scientific truths are not truths with the evil, however they may
appear like truths while they pronounce them for interiorly there is evil in
them, and from it they are falsified; science with the evil does not even
deserve to be called science, because it is without life, no. 10331.
Being wise is one thing, understanding another, being acquainted with a
thing is a further, and doing is another still; nevertheless with those who
lead a spiritual life, they follow in order and correspond, and in the doing
or the works they are together simultaneously, no. 10331. It is also one thing
to know, another to acknowledge, and still another to have faith, no. 896.
An instance of the quality of the desire of knowing with spirits, no. 1973.
The angels have an immeasurable desire of knowing and of becoming wise,
because knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, are spiritual food, nos. 3114,
4459, 4792, 4976, 5147, 5293, 5340, 5342, 5410, 5426, 5576, 5582; 5588, 5655,
6277, 8562, 9003.
The chief science with the ancients was the science of correspondences, but
this science at the present day has perished, nos. 3021, 3419, 4280, 4844,
4964, 4966, 6004, 7729, 10252. The science of correspondences existed among
the eastern nations, and in Egypt, no. 5702, 6692, 7097, 7779, 9391, 10407.
Their hieroglyphics were derived from that source, nos. 6692, 7097. Through
the science of correspondences the ancients introduced themselves into the
knowledges of spiritual things, nos. 4749, 4844, 4966. The Word was written by
mere correspondences, and its internal or spiritual sense is from that source;
and without the science of correspondences it is impossible to know that this
sense exists, or yet what the quality of the Word is, nos. 3131, 3472-3485,
8615, 10687. How much the science of correspondences excels the other
sciences, no. 4280. (NJHD
51)
4.1
Divine Management Principles
4.1.1 Divine Providence
I have been told from heaven, and led to perceive from actual experience,
that the Lord flows in directly when He also does so indirectly, and so is
present in the last and lowest degree of order no less than in the first. I have
in addition been told and led to perceive that comparatively little is
accomplished by indirect influx, that is, by influx through heaven and the
angels there, and also that by direct influx the Lord simultaneously leads
heaven and keeps every single thing there properly connected and ordered. (AC
7004)
4.1.2 The Laws of Permissions
4.2
The Grand Human
Quoting from Swedenborg:
The arrangement of affections in heaven and of lusts in hell is wonderful,
and is known to the Divine-Human alone. In each case they are distinguished into
genera and species, and are so conjoined as to act as one. Because they are
distinguished into genera and species they are distinguished into greater and
lesser societies; and because they are so conjoined as to act as one they are
conjoined like all the things that are in man. Hence heaven in its form is
like a beautiful man, whose soul is Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, thus the
Divine-Human; and hell in its form is like a monstrous man, whose soul is self-love
and his own intelligence, thus the devil; for there is no devil who is sole
Divine-Human there, but the love of self is called the devil. (DP 302)
Quoting from Swedenborg:
At the outset it must be stated who are within the Grand Man, and who are
out of it. All those are within the Grand Man who are in love to the
Divine-Human and
in charity toward the neighbor, and who do good to the neighbor from the heart
according to the good that is in him, and who have a conscience of what is
just and equitable; for these are in the Divine-Human, and consequently in heaven. But
all those are outside the Grand Man who are in the love of self and the love
of the world and the derivative concupiscences, and who do what is good solely
on account of the laws, and for the sake of their own honor and the world's
wealth and the consequent reputation, and who thus are interiorly unmerciful
and in hatred and revenge against the neighbor for their own and the world's
sake, and are delighted with the neighbor's injury when he does not favor them
for these are in hell. These do not correspond to any organs and members in
the body, but to various corruptions and diseases induced in them; concerning
which also of the Divine-Human's Divine mercy, I shall speak from experience in the
following pages.
[2] They who are out of the Grand Man (that is, out of heaven),
cannot enter into it, for their lives are contrary to it. Nay, if in any way
they do enter, which is sometimes done by such as have learned in the life of
the body to counterfeit angels of light; nevertheless on arriving there, as is
sometimes permitted in order that they may learn their own character, they are
admitted only to the first entrance, that is, to those who are as yet
simple-minded, and who have not as yet been fully instructed. And even there
those who enter as angels of light are scarcely able to tarry a few moments,
because the life there is that of love to the Divine-Human and love toward the
neighbor; and as there is nothing there which corresponds to their life, they
are hardly able to breathe. (That spirits and angels breathe, may be seen
above, n. 3884-3893.) Consequently they begin to be distressed, for
respiration takes place in accordance with freedom of life; and wonderful to
say they are finally scarcely able to move, but become like those who are in,
anguish and torment taking possession of their interiors, and they therefore
cast themselves down headlong, even into hell, where they recover their
respiration and power of motion. Hence it is that in the Word life is
represented by mobility.
[3] But they who are in the Grand Man breathe freely when they are in the
good of love; but nevertheless they are distinguished according to the quality
and the amount of the good. Hence there are so many heavens, which in the Word
are called "mansions" (John 14:2). And everyone when in his own heaven is in
his life, and receives influx from the universal heaven, each person there
being a center of all the influxes, and therefore in the most perfect
equilibrium; and this according to the amazing form of heaven, which is from
the Divine-Human alone; thus with all variety. (AC 4225)
4.3 The Perizonius Thesis
(based on
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/perizonius.html )
4.3.1
Individual Thinking and Willing
Affects the Entire Human Race
(based on
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/perizonius.html#_Toc41641620 )
4.3.2
The Special Role of Science
in the Salvation of Humankind
(based on
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/perizonius.html#_Toc41641621 )
4.3.3
The Mechanism by Which the
Race is Conjoined to God
(based on
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/perizonius.html#_Toc41641622 )
4.3.4
Rational Consciousness
and the Successive Levels of Regeneration
(based on
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/perizonius.html#_Toc41641623 )
4.3.5
The Greatest of All Uses
(based on
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/perizonius.html#_Toc41641624 )
4.4 The Laws of Correspondences
see also:
www.theisticscience.org/correspondences.html
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/correspondences.html
4.5
Scientific Revelations in Sacred Scripture
By focusing on the universal meaning of Sacred Scripture, the
natural historical meaning recedes in the background. From a sectarian religion,
Divine Speech is reconstructed into a science of the human mind and God. Note
that the literal sense is also true and is unaffected by the scientific sense
drawn from it. Hence it is not accurate to say that the scientific sense
destroys religion or impairs it in any way. In fact, it's quite obvious that
when both the literal and scientific senses are known, the literal and
historical meaning is strengthened, not weakened. Theistic psychology supports
all religions and is dependent on the literal sense as a foot is dependent on a
shoe, or as the head is dependent on a hat for protection, or as the egg is
dependent on the egg shell. The literal sense is the eggshell and the scientific
sense is the egg, or, the hat is the literal sense while the head is the
scientific sense. Take away the hat and your head has no protection, or, take
away the egg shell and the egg is lost. In the passage below, "the internal or
spiritual sense of the Word " refers to the scientific sense of Divine Speech.
Quoting from Swedenborg:
The internal or spiritual sense of the Word contains innumerable arcana.
The Word in its internal sense contains innumerable things, which exceed human
comprehension (n. 3085, 3086). It also contains inexplicable things (n. 1965).
Which are represented only to angels, and understood by them (n. 167). The
internal sense of the Word contains arcana of heaven, which relate to the
Divine-Human
and His kingdom in the heavens and on earth (n. 1-4, 937). Those arcana do not
appear in the sense of the letter (n. 937, 1502, 2161). Many things in the
prophets appear to be disconnected, when yet in their internal sense they
cohere in a regular and beautiful series (n. 7153, 9022). Not a single word,
nor even a single iota can be omitted in the sense of the letter of the Word,
without an interruption in the internal sense, and therefore, by the Divine
Providence of the Divine-Human, the Word has been preserved so entire as to every word
and every point (n. 7933). Innumerable things are contained in every
particular of the Word (n. 6617, 6620, 8920); and in every expression (n.
1689). There are innumerable
(...)
The internal sense is the very doctrine of the church (n. 9025, 9430, 10400).
They who understand the Word according to the internal sense, know the
essential true doctrine of the church, inasmuch as the internal sense contains
it. (...) (NJHD 260) (Note: The numbers refer to citations from Arcana
Coelestia.)
Quoting from Swedenborg:
But man has severed this connection with heaven by turning his
interiors away from heaven, and turning them to the world and to self by means
of his love of self and of the world, thereby so withdrawing himself that he
no longer serves as a basis and foundation for heaven; therefore the
Divine-Human has
provided a medium to serve in place of this basis and foundation for heaven,
and also for the conjunction of heaven with man. This medium is the Word. How
the Word serves as such a medium has been shown in many places in ARCANA
COELESTIA, all of which may be seen gathered up in the little work on THE
WHITE HORSE mentioned in Revelation; also in the APPENDIX TO THE NEW JERUSALEM
AND ITS HEAVENLY DOCTRINE, from which some notes are here appended.
For the reason that the natural is the ultimate in which spiritual and
celestial things, which are interior things, terminate and on which they
continue in existence, like a house upon its foundation (n. 9430, 9433, 9824,
10044, 10436).
That the Word might be such it was written by means of pure correspondences
(n. 1404, 1408, 1409, 1540, 1619, 1659, 1709, 1783, 8615, 10687).
Because the Word is such in the sense of the letter it is the containant of
the spiritual and celestial sense (n. 9407).
And it is accommodated both to men and to angels at the same time (n.
1769-1772, 1887, 2143, 2157, 2275, 2333, 2395, 2540, 2541, 2547, 2553, 7381,
8862, 10322).
And it is a means of uniting heaven and earth (n. 2310, 2495, 9212, 9216,
9357, 9396, 10375).
The conjunction of the Divine-Human with man is through the Word, by means of the
internal sense (n. 10375).
There is conjunction by means of all things and each particular thing of
the Word, and in consequence the Word is wonderful above all other writing (n.
10632-10634).
Since the Word was written the Divine-Human speaks with men by means of it (n.
10290).
The Church where the Word is and the Divine-Human is known by means of it, in
relation to those outside the Church where there is no Word and the
Divine-Human is
unknown is like the heart and lungs in man in comparison with the other parts
of the body, which live from them as from the fountains of their life (n. 637,
931, 2054, 2853).
Before the Divine-Human the universal Church on the earth is as one Man (n. 7396,
9276).
Consequently unless there were on this earth a Church where the Word is,
and where the Divine-Human is known by means of it, the human race here would perish
(n. 468, 637, 931, 4545, 10452). (HH 305)
In its scientific sense "the Church" refers to our mental
state when we are regenerating or developing spiritually through progressive
character reformation by temptations. "The Word" refers to Divine Speech and
"the Divine-Human" refers to God. "Those who are outside the Church" refers to our
mental states prior to entering the states of regeneration. Read again the
passage above by focusing away from the literal sense and towards the scientific
sense. Then do the same for the passage below. "The Church of the
Divine-Human" refers
to the fact that every individual regardless of religion is led into the states
of regeneration by the same one and only God. The "universal Church on earth"
refers to every individual who acknowledges God and God's commandments.
The church of the Divine-Human is with all in the whole world who
live in good according to their religious principles (n. 3263, 6637, 10765). All
who live in good wherever they are, and acknowledge one God, are accepted by the
Divine-Human and come into heaven; since all who are in good acknowledge the
Divine-Human,
because good is from the Divine-Human, and the Divine-Human is in good (n. 2589-2604, 2861,
2863, 3263, 4190, 4197, 6700, 9256). The universal church on earth before the
Divine-Human is as one man (n. 7396, 9276). As heaven is, because the church is heaven
or the kingdom of the Divine-Human on earth (n. 2853, 2996, 2998, 3624-3629, 3636-3643,
3741-3745, 4625). But the church, where the Divine-Human is known and where the Word is,
is like the heart and lungs in man in respect to the other parts of the body,
which live from the heart and lungs as from the fountains of their life (n. 637,
931, 2054, 2853). Hence it is, that unless there were a church where the Word
is, and where the Divine-Human is thereby known, the human race could not be saved (n.
468, 637, 931, 4545, 10452). The church is the foundation of heaven (n. 4060).
Quoting from Swedenborg:
The angels themselves declare that all their wisdom comes through the Word;
for the light they enjoy depends upon how deep is their understanding of the
Word. The light of heaven is Divine wisdom, which is visible to their eyes as
light. In the shrine where a copy of the Word is stored, the light is
flame-like and brilliant, surpassing in intensity any light in heaven outside
it. The wisdom of the celestial angels exceeds that of the spiritual angels,
more or less to the same extent as that exceeds that of human beings. This is
because the celestial angels have the good of love from the Divine-Human, and the
spiritual angels have the truths of wisdom from the Divine-Human. Where the good of
love is, there too dwells wisdom; but where truths are, wisdom does not dwell
except to the extent that the good of love is there too. This is why the Word
is written differently in the Divine-Human's celestial kingdom from that in His
spiritual kingdom. For in the Word of the celestial kingdom the expressions
convey the different kinds of good of love and the characters the affections
of love; in the Word of the spiritual kingdom the expressions convey the
truths of wisdom, the characters the inward perceptions of truth. These facts
will allow one to conclude what wisdom there is lurking hidden in the Word we
have in the world. For in it lies hidden all the wisdom of the angels, which
is beyond description; and a person after death enters into possession of this
wisdom, if by means of the Word he is made an angel by the Divine-Human. (TCR 242)
As the external of the Word appears in heaven of a scarlet color, and as
there is an influx out of heaven into man's memory, in which what is drawn
from the Word appears of such a color, therefore scarlet was employed in
relation to the remembrance of things. (AC 9468)
4.6
Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech
4.7
Dying and Resuscitation
4.8 The Second Death
4.9
Immortality
or Life in Eternity
4.10
God, the Divine-Human
Volume 2: Personality and
Development
Chapter 5
Research Methods in Theistic Psychology
5.0
Theistic psychology is based on three empirical methodologies--
(1) Extractive analysis of Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech
(2) Predictive theories and principles
(3) Applications to self-improvement in daily life
The diagram above pictures the three
distinct methodologies that exist in theistic psychology. Extractive research is
the basis and beginning of all other methodologies. An illustration of this
technique is given in the next section immediately below which extracts the
universal scientific meaning of Genesis Chapter 22. Predictive research is
represented by the many theories, models, and principles that I present in this
book in all four volumes. In theistic psychology all theories and
interpretations are called "predictive" because they predict that the principle
or theory will be confirmable by Sacred Scripture. Any theory or principle that
has not been confirmed remains in an ambiguous status. It is not known whether
it is a true representation of reality or a false one. But when the proposed
interpretation or theory is confirmed by Sacred Scripture, it takes on a new
status. It is now known that it is a true representation of reality.
Applied research in theistic psychology centers around the "self-witnessing"
method. This is a term I created before I started reading Swedenborg and
reflects the kind of empirical approach I was interested in for several decades.
Imagine my delight in discovering in Swedenborg that the self-witnessing method
is the key technique for regeneration, character reformation, and spiritual
development. Volume 3 discusses applications of theistic psychology in several
major areas of daily life.
The diagram shows applied theistic psychology with a lateral arrow because its
focus goes outside research with Sacred Scripture. Extractive research is
pictured with a vertical arrow upward because knowledge and information is being
extracted from the scientific meaning of Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech.
Predictive research is pictured with a vertical arrow downward because it
projects ahead what we have not confirmed in Sacred Scripture. Additional
comments about the diagram are given in the Preface.
The analysis presented in the next section is an
illustration of the extractive methodology. It clearly shows that
the scientific sense of the Old and New Testaments is entirely independent of
their historical and poetic sense which serves for the Jewish and Christian
religions. People from other religions can read these Sacred Books of Divine
origin, but they may not see them as universal, of equal relevance to all
peoples. They may have their own religious literature which is more relevant to
their cultural group. And even if they appreciate the universal significance of
the Bible, it remains in their eyes a historical ethnic tradition to which they
may not belong.
Few people know about the details of the scientific
revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg. One of the main revelations is the
unveiling of the code of correspondences in which the Old and New Testaments are
written. This section shows how this is done by Swedenborg. When we consider the
decoded meaning, it turns out that it is about the anatomy of the human mind and
how every person can develop spiritually as a way of preparing for immortal life
in the spiritual world. This is obviously a universal topic that has nothing to do with the
ethnic-historical
narrative in the literal meaning of the New and Old Testaments. Swedenborg
demonstrated that the literal-historical meaning of all Sacred Scripture has
nothing to do with the universal meaning of Divine Speech. Thus, while all
Sacred Scripture is a cultural document tied to an ethnic group and religion,
its internal scientific meaning, when reconstructed, is universal for the entire
human race. The universal scientific knowledge is Divine Speech contained or
hidden within the literal-historical. The Writings of Swedenborg have revealed
the precise method of this reconstruction from Sacred Scripture to Divine
Speech. The central feature of this reconstructive method is called the code or
laws of correspondences.
It would be impossible to figure out this hidden
universal scientific meaning without the code of correspondences. The Christian
Bible is the most published book in the world and if you check the library
shelves you will see that more books have been written about the Bible than any
other topic. Despite
this amazing intellectual effort, not one author has ever even suspected that
the Bible is written in a code, which when decoded, yields a textbook of
theistic psychology. All sorts of other ideas have been fabricated, but not the
actual reality, as explained in this book.
All the information you will read in this book is derived
exclusively from the Writings of Swedenborg. What is different in this book is
that I am applying the information from the Writings to the modern science of
psychology, a field I have taught and practiced for the past 42 years. I began
reading the Writings 23 years ago.
So the Old and New Testaments turn out to be science books
of universal relevance to every person, regardless of religion, culture, century of birth,
or planet. No religion or ethnic group can claim primary ownership or
destination of the Old and New Testaments when considered from the perspective
of their hidden scientific meaning revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg. They are Divine scientific revelations
given to humanity independently of religion, culture, or century. This was not
known about the Bible until the Writings of Swedenborg made the revelation.
So now every religion can claim the Old and New Testaments
for its own, since the purpose of religion everywhere is to prepare
the individual for immortality. In that basic sense religion has been more
scientific than science, given that science has become atheistic and ridicules
the idea of immortality. Religion is far closer to being scientific since it
teaches that there is one God and that our souls or spirits are immortal. But
now we have something far more scientific than religion, namely theistic science
based on the Writings of Swedenborg.
It’s important to understand that nothing can take away the
connection people feel towards the Old and New Testaments and the Writings of
Swedenborg as the source and center of their religion—Jews, Christians, and New
Church Christians. The fact that these books of Sacred Scripture also have a
scientific sense hidden within, in no way weakens their holy function as books
of religion for Judaism, Christianity, and the New Church. In reality, the
scientific sense within the literal only strengthens the importance of the
literal. The Writings explain that the literal meaning is the "most holy"
because it contains all the levels of meanings that Divine Speech embodies.
The literal religious sense of these sacred writings are
not affected in any way by the fact that there is also a universal scientific sense hidden
within. This too was intended by God to bring untold benefits to humankind. This
intimate connection between Sacred Scripture and theistic science is easy to understand when you consider what is
the content of this scientific meaning when it is reconstructed through the
method of correspondences. The laws of correspondences govern not only the
style of Divine Speech but also the causal relationship
between natural phenomena as effects and their spiritual phenomena as their causes.
Obviously, this kind of
science supports religion because without religion there is no Sacred Scripture
and without Sacred Scripture there is no theistic science.
As the analysis in the next sections demonstrates, the
universal scientific content or subject matter of Chapter 22 in the Book of
Genesis, is the anatomy of the human mind and the steps of spiritual development
every person undergoes, though some individuals are willing to go further than
others. The purpose of these Divine scientific revelations in Sacred Scripture
is to give human beings everywhere the ability to change their inherited
character and to prepare it for life in heaven to eternity. No scientific
knowledge can be more important than this when we consider what's at stake.
It is clear therefore that the purpose of religion and
theistic science are the same, namely, to prepare people for their life in
eternity. Religion and science use different methods and different concepts.
Both are needed for improving life on earth and preparing it for life in the
spiritual world. Religion is needed because all Sacred Scripture has been given
to establish a religion. Without religion on this earth we would not have Sacred
Scripture and there would be no way in which Divine Speech could reach our mind.
The Writings say that without a rational and systematic system of explanation
religion cannot succeed because the modern minds will not believe what they
cannot understand rationally. And so theistic science based exclusively on
Sacred Scripture is needed. The two support one another like a cup supports the
liquid inside.
Further, they are related developmentally. As the Diagram
shows, literacy comes first in mental development. Then religion, which cannot
be understood without literacy since spiritual ideas are rational and require
rational understanding. Without rational understanding only a mystical or
persuasive belief system is possible. Swedenborg shows that only a rational
belief system allows the development of a regenerated character capable of
living in heaven. Once religion is established in the mind through a connection
with Sacred Scripture, we can elevate our understanding of God by studying God's
Speech about scientific knowledge that is hidden within Sacred Scripture. This
new knowledge reinforces and solidifies our connection to religion since it
explains the detailed mechanisms by which God operates the universe, details
that are not available in the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. As the Writings
explain, what we can understand rationally about God, we can accept permanently
to eternity.
The more we develop our rational consciousness of God the
more God enlightens us and the more we can explain the details of God's works
and how we fit into it.
We are going to review how the Writings extract the
scientific sense of the Old and New Testaments using the code of
correspondences. This code is like a DNA code because it consists of the
scientific laws that describe the exact relationship between natural events as
effects and spiritual events as causes. Note that Swedenborg did not invent this
code. Nor does it represent his attempt to interpret the Bible figuratively, as
some have done. Rather, Swedenborg observed in the spiritual world what happens
when he reads Bible verses in the natural world. Since he had dual consciousness
he was able to see what spiritual events were happening when particular natural
events were occurring on earth.
Note also that this code is the spiritual DNA of natural
events, so that it is not restricted to reading the Bible. This is what makes it
scientific. The code is about the scientific laws that interconnect the two
worlds. The reason that the Old and New Testaments are written in this code is
that these books of Sacred Scripture are Divine Speech. The words and verses
spoken by God through the mind of earthly prophets, were heard as well by the
inhabitants of the spiritual world. Everything God imparts to the human race
follows this sequence of descent from God. It first goes through the three
heavens (see Chapter 12) and only then into the minds of people who are still
living on earth.
The books of the Old and New Testaments therefore exist in
heaven, as witnessed by Swedenborg, but in their spiritual language. Swedenborg
also saw the Writings that he himself had authored. Although he wrote every line
himself, from his own thinking and understanding, he wrote only what he was
requested to write by the Divine-Human Himself. The Writings complete what the
Old and New Testaments have begun, so that the entire revelation took these
three sets to complete. Hence they are called the “Threefold Word,” because
Divine Speech is called the Word in Western tradition.
You can see from this that the Sacred Scripture we possess
has a relation to the Sacred Scripture in the spiritual world. This relationship
is that of external to internal. Divine Speech starts in its inmost form as
received in the celestial language of the highest heaven in human minds. From there it filters
down to the spiritual language of the intermediate heaven. From there it is
filtered down to the spiritual-natural language of the lowest heaven. From there
it is filtered down to the world of spirits where are the natural mind of the
people still on earth. This now is the level Divine Speech that we are familiar with, namely, the
literal text of the Threefold Word in a natural language, and then translated,
into different natural languages.
It’s crucial to realize that the celestial meaning (Third
Heaven) is contained within the spiritual meaning (Second Heaven), and both are
contained in the spiritual-natural meaning (First Heaven), and all three are
contained in the natural-historical meaning (the versions known on earth). Once
you realize this, you can also see that all four levels of meaning are also in
our mind since the anatomy of the mind is the same as the geography of the
spiritual world, as already explained (see Section xx).
Since we are only conscious in the natural mind, while
still on earth, the only way we can know what the three inner meanings are is by
using the code of correspondences to reconstruct, or extract, each of the three
inner meanings. This is what Swedenborg has done. He has applied the code of
correspondences to the verse by verse, and word by word analysis, of the entire
books of Genesis and Exodus, in the Old Testament, and the Book of Revelation in
the New Testament. In addition he adds numerous samples of verses from the other
books of the Old and New Testaments to demonstrate that they too use the same
code of correspondences as in these three books.
5.0.1 The Unique Properties of Sacred
Scripture
I will illustrate in some detail how the Writings achieve
this amazing result. You will note two types of proofs that we are dealing with
regarding Divine Speech, which is totally unlike the speech authored by human beings.
Ordinary books do not have these three sets of inner meanings that one can
extract from the literal using the universal code of correspondences. The first
type of proof is that the same code of correspondences applies to all the books
of Sacred Scripture, even though they had dozens of different authors over
thousands of years, and none of them knew anything about a hidden code in what
they were writing.
The second type of proof is that the inner content of major
portions of these books refer to events that were to happen hundreds of years
later. This is known to some extent from the literal sense in the case of
visions and prophecies. It is believed that prophets were given visions and
voices that they wrote down and that the content of what they wrote, at the
literal level of meaning, refers explicitly to events to come, like famines and
plagues, or wars of captivity and liberation, or God’s Incarnation event. But it
was unknown, until the Writings, that hidden in the literal meaning of the
visions and prophecies, and of the histories and poetry, there were three other
rational meanings of a spiritual and celestial content.
For instance, as in the passages to be examined below, it
is shown that the Abraham story of the Binding of Isaac to be sacrificed on the
altar (Genesis Chapter 22), contains in its hidden meaning the mental struggles
experienced by Jesus when a Divine Child growing up among the Jewish nation
thousands of years after Abraham’s biography. The events of Abraham's life as
told in Genesis are written down in exactly the right fashion to represent the
mental struggles of the Incarnate God when still a Child. The Writings declare
that every detail in the historical narrative of the patriarchs is accurate. So
particular events happened thousands of years before the Divine Child on earth.
Then these events were written down in a historical narrative. Then the code of
correspondences was revealed thousands of years later, and lo and behold, the
sequence of events represents the exact sequence of the mental struggles of The
Divine Child on earth. These struggles are of evolutionary significance for the
human race and need to be studied scientifically (see Section xx).
How could this be possible unless the Abraham story is
Divine Speech dictated to Moses?
This secret lay hidden in the Old Testament story for all
these centuries without a single human being on this earth suspecting its
existence. Of course the inhabitants of the three heavens knew some of it
because to them the Old Testament appears in its celestial and spiritual
meanings. To us on earth, it is only now that our natural mind is allowed to
know it. This new revelation to humankind is called the Second Coming and ushers
in a new age for religion and science.
All this is crucial for theistic psychology given the fact
that the struggles undergone by the Divine Child and later Divine Adult, are of
evolutionary significance to the human race. These mental struggles of God
Incarnate on earth are actually new mental pathways that God-Man created for all
human beings. These mental pathways did not exist before; they had not yet been
created so that no human being could have those thoughts and feelings. And yet,
without those thoughts and feelings it is impossible for human beings born on
earth to regenerate, that is, to develop a spiritual character, and without
this, no one can enter eternal life in heaven. The entire human race, past,
present, and future, was thus in danger of becoming one enormous hell to
eternity.
This is because the people in the hells had evolved to such
an extent that they were able to fabricate false ideas that kept everyone
prisoner to them and allowed hellish traits to become their normal way of
operating and living. This influence of the hells over the human race had to be
broken by God but without destroying the human race. God could not destroy human
beings that He had created to be immortal. He had to save them, first by
delivering them from the grip of the hells, and second, by giving them the
mental means of resisting and rejecting the hells. These rational mental
pathways or techniques did not exist and could not be created except in one way,
long foreseen and provided by God as part of creation and evolution. This way
was God’s Incarnation as an ordinary human being--in the external mind, but the
Divine-Human in the inner spiritual mind.
The growth and development of the ordinary human part of
the Divine-Human was
different from human beings. Humans have a human father, and a human
soul from him. But the Divine Child had a human mother, but His Own Divine as the
soul. Jesus was therefore God within the natural mind of an ordinary human. This
ordinary human had to be educated and informed from the Divine soul within
Himself, who He really was and what He came to accomplish. The passage below
gives us details about what Jesus accomplished in his mind in relation to the
hells, how he fought and ordered the hells by creating new meanings, or new
spiritual truths, by which the hells were subdued and contained within their
sphere, no longer able to threaten the spiritual survival of every human being
on earth and in the world of spirits.
Remember that "the hells" is just another word for a
portion of the human mind in every individual. Hence the universal scientific
and evolutionary significance of these details.
Once Jesus went through these struggles or “temptations,”
He had created the means by which all human beings could henceforth struggle
with the hells in the mind that they are born with, using the new truths He had created. These
new truths were promulgated through Divine Speech, written down as Sacred
Scripture by specially prepared individuals.
This is what makes these revelations scientific. The
developmental steps Jesus went through are the developmental steps every human
being can go through and achieve liberation from hellish traits. Theistic
psychology describes and studies these new mental techniques for character
reformation or spiritual development. Hence we can call the source of this new
knowledge Divine “scientific revelations.”
A crucial aspect of this revelation which makes it
scientific, is that it is verifiable by anyone who is willing to use appropriate
and effective empirical verification procedures. The developmental steps and
anatomy of the mind that is revealed here apply to the sequential events that
every individual must go through. Anyone who is willing to step through the full
sequence of regeneration can observe and monitor each step along the way through
the method of spiritual self-witnessing (see xx).
5.0.2
Analyzing Divine Speech: The Scientific Sense of Genesis 22
The existence of "Divine Speech" and its character are
discussed in this passage of the Arcana Coelestia (AC 6996):
Send I pray by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send. That this signifies
that the Divine truth proceeding from the Divine-Human will be mediately
uttered, is evident from the representation of Moses, who says this, as being
the Lord as to the Word, that is, as to Divine truth (see n. 6752); from the
signification of "sending," when said of the Lord, as being to proceed (n.
2397, 4710); and from the signification of "sending by the hand," as being by
another to whom power will be given, namely, the power of uttering the Divine
truth proceeding from the Divine-Human of the Lord; and as it denotes by
another to whom power is given, it denotes mediately. It was shown above (n.
6982, 6985), that the Divine truth proceeding immediately from the Lord's
Divine-Human cannot be heard and perceived by any man, nor even by an angel.
Therefore in order that it may be heard and perceived, there must be
mediation, which mediation is effected through heaven, and afterward through
the angels and spirits with the man.
[2] This can be plainly known from the fact that man cannot even hear the
spirits who are with him speaking with one another; and if he heard he could
not perceive, because the speech of spirits is without human words, and is the
universal speech of all languages. Moreover spirits cannot hear angels; and if
they heard they could not perceive, because the angelic speech is still more
universal. Nay, the angels of the inmost heaven can be still less heard and
perceived, because their speech is not a speech of ideas, but of affections
which are of celestial love. Seeing that since these kinds of speech are so
far away from man, that they cannot possibly be heard and perceived by him,
what then, so to speak, must be the Divine speech, which is infinitely above
all the kinds of speech in the heavens! It is said "the Divine speech," but
the Divine truth proceeding from the Divine-Human of the Lord is meant. This
being so, it can be seen that the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, in
order to be heard and perceived, must pass to man through mediations. The last
mediation is through the spirit who is with the man, who inflows either into
his thought, or by means of a living voice.
[3] That the Divine truth proceeding immediately from the Lord cannot be
heard or perceived, is also evident from the correspondences and derivative
representatives; namely, that the things a man speaks are presented quite
differently with spirits; and the things spirits speak, quite differently with
the angels. This can be seen from the spiritual sense of the Word and its
literal sense, in that the literal sense, which is adapted to man, is
significative and representative of the things which are in the spiritual
sense; while this latter sense is not perceptible to man except insofar as it
can be presented and expressed by such things as are of the world and of
nature; and still less the angelic sense. What then must be the case with the
Divine truth proceeding immediately from the Divine of the Lord, which is
infinitely above the angelic understanding, and which is not perceptible in
heaven except insofar as it passes through heaven, and so puts on a form
adapted and suited to the perception of those who are there, which is effected
by means of a wonderful influx, not at all comprehensible to anyone! These
things have been said in order that it may be known that the Divine truth
proceeding from the Lord cannot be heard or perceived by anyone, except
through mediations. (AC 6996).
In other words, "Divine Speech" refers to Divine Truth
issuing from the Divine-Human in the Spiritual Sun. The spiritual light
proceeding from the Spiritual Sun is Divine Truth and Divine Speech. It is
Divine Truth adapted to the human mind since in itself Divine Truth is infinite
and this cannot enter into human understanding. Spiritual light issuing from the
Spiritual Sun permeates the spiritual world with the expanse of rational ether.
It is in this substantive ether constructed from truth that the human mind is
born and develops to eternity. The spiritual light enters into the human mind
located in the world of spirits, where it is born, and is encased in a spiritual
body also made of the substance of truth conjoined with the substance of love.
Love or spiritual heat, and truth, or spiritual light, are thus the construction
substances out of which all things that exist have been created. Love and truth
are the inmost framework of every created object, whether the mind or a rock on
earth.
Love and truth from the Spiritual Sun are combined more and
more as they descend into the two worlds. At its purest and simplest, love and
truth are infinite substances, but as they begin to be combined more and more,
the substance becomes less pure and less and less similar to the original Divine
state of purity and infinity. The descent of Divine Truth or Divine Speech into
the human mind takes places by stages or degrees that do not overlap with each
other. The first entry of Divine Speech into human consciousness is at the
uppermost region of the mind called "heaven." People who are willing to be
elevated by God all the way to the top of their conscious mind are in heaven and
are able to perceive Divine Speech at the level of celestial meaning ("Third
Haven"). Next the Divine Meaning descends by correspondence into its next degree
in the mind called the "spiritual mind" or "Second Heaven." At this level of
rational consciousness we are able to understand spiritual correspondences of
Divine Speech.
The rational understanding we have at the spiritual level
is far below that we have at the celestial level. The spiritual mind cannot
comprehend the celestial mind so far apart they are. Below this is the "natural
heaven" or "First Heaven" which is within the natural mind after it has been
regenerated. At last, in its final degree of descent, Divine Speech appears in
natural correspondences in which Sacred Scripture is written.
The Writings of Swedenborg have revealed the laws of
correspondences which govern the relationship between celestial correspondences,
spiritual correspondences, and natural correspondences. Without knowing these
laws no one is capable of reconstructing Divine Speech up the ladder of
correspondences. But now anyone can who is willing to follow the steps indicated
in the Writings regarding how to reconstruct Divine Speech or the Word in its
various "inner senses" or meanings.
At the level of natural correspondences there are two
platforms of understanding or rationality by which we can comprehend them. They
are called the natural-rational mind and the spiritual-natural mind. One is
within the other in terms of an interior degree. The spiritual-natural organ of
the mind is created or implanted by God in the interior degree within the
natural-rational mind. The natural-rational mind grows and develops through the
rational content of natural order as we detect it through our physical senses.
To begin with this natural-rational level of thinking is atheistic and
materialistic. Atheistic science as we know it today is at the level of the
natural-rational thinking. At this level we are unable to comprehend rationally
anything that is not an abstraction based on the physical universe. We can be
religious, but this is called "faith" and this is ordinarily viewed as more
mystical than rational.
But as we begin our reformation and regeneration in adult
life (see Section xx), God activates this dormant spiritual organ of
consciousness within our conscious natural mind. The organ grows and develops to
the extent of our cooperation with God in our regeneration through temptations
(see Section xx). As the spiritual-natural organ develops it gives us conscious
awareness of meaning that are conveyed in spiritual- correspondences and
celestial-correspondences. The Writings call this growth process as the
"elevation of the mind into heaven." It is also called spiritual
"enlightenment."
Thus, as we progress in our regeneration or character
rebuilding, we are able to comprehend higher level rational correspondences or
meaning of Divine Speech. At first we are only able to comprehend the interior
meaning of natural correspondences. This is called the interior-natural
consciousness or "First Heaven." When we can become conscious of the interior
meaning natural correspondences our consciousness is in effect in the First
Heaven with all those who are also there forming a universal community. This can
be illustrated by considering the meaning of Divine Speech when Sacred Scripture
gives us the Commandments (see Section xx). Let us consider the Third
Commandment.
Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy; for six days you are
to labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath for Jehovah
your God. (Exod. 20:8-10; Deut. 5:12, 13 in the Old Testament of the Bible).
This is an example of Divine Speech as Sacred Scripture in
a natural language. It is written in historical and natural style called
"natural correspondences" to Divine Speech. At this level of literal thinking
God is telling us to reserve the seventh day of the week as a religious holiday.
IN other words, we are to shift focus from our week day work and activities to
special "holy" day of rest from work and dedicated to God. At this level of
rational thinking there appears nothing else in Divine Speech but instructions
on the external conduct of our life. But when we apply the verse of Sacred
Scripture to our life because it is from God, we are given a deeper rational
understanding of what is in the verse. Our rational consciousness is elevated to
our First Heaven and in that mental state we are able to comprehend the interior
meaning of the verse. Instead of the external natural-rational understanding of
the verse, we now are able to see a spiritual-natural meaning within it.
The comprehension of the interior-natural correspondences
of the verse gives an entirely new and higher rationality for understanding the
verse of Sacred Scripture. Here, the spiritual-natural meaning of "Sabbath" is
"instruction in holy things about God and heaven." The Hebrew word "Sabbath"
literally means "rest from work." So in the literal natural sense the verse
commands us to take a day of rest, but in the spiritual-natural meaning the
verse commands us to instruct ourselves in spiritual truths about God and
heaven. These two meanings are far apart and one cannot be deduced from the
other. People can obey the commandment at the literal level of resting from
work, and yet not obey the commandment of instructing themselves in the holy
things of God. Fundamentalist practices tend to focus almost exclusively on the
literal natural meaning of Sacred Scripture.
However, when we reflect upon our religion rationally we
can compare one verse with others and thereby construct new understandings that
can coalesce into a cognitive system or philosophy of God called "doctrine."
Doctrine is a rational and coherent expression of our understanding of Sacred
Scripture. As we form doctrine in our mind we begin to understand verses of
Sacred Scripture in a more interior or spiritual sense. In this case, as we
practice the literal rest period commanded, we are also motivated to be
instructed further in God and heaven, and especially, in realizing all that God
commands us to do.
Once we understand the spiritual-rational correspondence of
"Sabbath" as instruction in religion, we can go even deeper to reconstruct the
spiritual-rational correspondences in the verse. When this is understood our
rational mind is elevated to the Second Heaven. Regarding the Sabbath
commandment, we now can see what the Writings are discussing about this verse:
Sabbath in the language of the original means rest. Among the Children of
Israel the Sabbath was the holiest of observances, because it represented the
Lord. The six days represented the Lord's toils and battles against the hells,
the seventh His victory over them, and so rest. Since that day represented the
completion of the Lord's whole act of redemption, it was for that reason the
height of holiness.
When, however, the Lord came into the world, so that representations of Him
ceased, that day became a day for instruction in Divine matters, and also a
day of rest from work, for meditation about matters conducive to salvation and
everlasting life, and a day for love towards the neighbor. (...) (TCR 301)
Note that we are told something new here that is information from the
spiritual world and not from the natural world. There is nothing in the
commandment to keep the day of rest about spiritual temptations, and yet the
expression "rest from labor" in the spiritual sense means the period of peace
following the labor of temptation. When this verse is reconstructed at the
level of spiritual-rational correspondences (Second Heaven consciousness), we
can see that Divine Speech is discussing here the state of mind in
regeneration when we undergo temptations, resist them by means of Divine
truths, and win freedom from the evil spirits to which we were previously tied
(see Section xx). After a victory in temptation we feel the close presence of
God, and we bask in a mental state of freedom from slavishness to our emotions
and obsessions. This is the spiritual Sabbath.
The Commandment to keep the Sabbath refers therefore to the absolute requirement
that we acknowledge God's operational presence in our thoughts and feelings as
we struggle to obey God's Commandments in our efforts at character reformation
or regeneration. To disobey this Commandment is to reject the idea in our mind
that God is operating our mental activity, and to adopt instead the point of
view that we alone are operating our mental activity. This rejection is death or
eternal hell because the denial of God in our mental operations neutralizes
God's efforts to save us. It is like driving a car without wearing seat belts.
We thereby neutralize the safety feature that will save us from injury and death
in case of a collision. When we are in the state of mind called the Sabbath
rest, we are in heavenly peace on earth, that is, we are experiencing a
correspondence of our true heaven. In this mental state, there is rational
consciousness of the spiritual kind, and this is called eternity.
There is also a deeper peace at the level of our Third Heaven when we advance in
our regeneration enough so that we can face celestial temptations. We can then
understand the verse in its celestial-rational correspondence. This level of
meaning of Sacred Scripture always discusses details about how God creates new
and higher mental states for humankind (see Section xx).
An analysis of the higher meanings of the Ten Commandments
will be found in Chapter xx.
The next Section examines the character of Divine Speech by
analyzing the text of a chapter in Genesis in the Old Testament that contains the Abraham
story of the binding of his son Isaac. I will make a running commentary as we go through each
selected passage.
5.0.3
The Binding of Isaac on the Altar
Genesis Chapter 22, Verses 1 to 19:
1. And it came to pass after
these words, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham; and he
said, Here am I.
2. And He said, Take I pray
thy son, thine only one, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee to the land
of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains
which I will tell thee of.
3. And Abraham rose early in
the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his boys with him, and Isaac
his son; and he clave the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went
unto the place of which God told him.
4. On the third day, and
Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.
5. And Abraham said unto his
boys, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the boy will go yonder, and we will
bow ourselves down, and will come again to you.
6. And Abraham took the wood
of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took in his hand
the fire and the knife; and they went both of them together.
7. And Isaac said unto
Abraham his father; and he said, My father; and he said, Here am I, my son. And
he said, Behold the fire and the wood; and where is the lamb for a
burnt-offering?
8. And Abraham said, God
will see for Himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son: and they went both
of them together.
9. And they came to the
place which God told him of; and Abraham built there the altar, and laid the
wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
10. And Abraham put forth
his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11. And the angel of Jehovah
called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham; and he said, Here am
I.
12. And He said, Put not
forth thine hand upon the boy, and do not anything unto him; for now I know that
thou fearest God, and thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only one, from Me.
13. And Abraham lifted up
his eyes, and saw, and behold a ram behind, caught in a thicket by his horns;
and Abraham went, and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in
the stead of his son.
14. And Abraham called the
name of that place, Jehovah-will-see, as it is said to this day, In the mountain
Jehovah will see.
15. And the angel of Jehovah
called unto Abraham a second time out of heaven.
16. And said, By Myself have
I sworn, saith Jehovah, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld
thy son, thine only one,
17. That in blessing I will
bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed, as the stars of the
heavens, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall inherit
the gate of thine enemies.
18. And in thy seed shall
all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast harkened to My voice.
19. And Abraham returned
unto his boys; and they rose up, and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham
dwelt in Beersheba. (…) (AC 2763)
In this chapter in the internal
sense the Divine-Human's most grievous and inmost temptations are treated of, by which
He united His Human Essence to His Divine Essence; and also the salvation by
this union of those who constitute the Divine-Human's spiritual church. (AC 2764)
The Divine-Human's most grievous and
inmost temptations are treated of (verses 1, 3-6, 9-11). Concerning the unition
of His Human Essence with His Divine Essence, or His glorification, by means of
them (verses 2, 11, 12, 16). Concerning the salvation by the Divine-Human's
Divine-Human
of the spiritual, of those who are in charity and faith, within the church
(verses 2, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19). And concerning the salvation of
those who are in good, outside the church (verses 20, 21, 22, 23, 24).(AC 2765) (..)
My commentary:
Note the overall summary of the Chapter given here, namely,
that Genesis 22 deals with the “most grievous” temptations Jesus had to undergo.
Other chapters deal with other temptations. Keep in mind that the purpose of
God’s Incarnation was to produce a situation in which the ordinary human mind of
Jesus, His natural mind, was to face the false ideas of the hells by which they
were keeping the people on earth from developing their heavenly character.
Meanwhile, the natural mind of Jesus would be fed information about spiritual
truths from His Divine Spiritual Mind, and with these new spiritual truths,
Jesus could defeat the arguments and persuasions of the people in hell. The
God-Man on earth had to face the same hells we face, the same false belief
systems that justified holding on to hellish traits. No human being was able to
come up with these new truths that were needed to defeat the arguments,
persuasions, and influence of the hells upon the Fallen inherited natural mind.
Jesus allowed His inherited human natural mind to be
exposed gradually to the falsities and persuasions of the hells, defeating them
one by one by means of the new spiritual truths. In this way, He made steady
progress towards His final goal, which was to completely neutralize the hells
and contain them within their habitations in the “lower earths” of the spiritual
world. Jesus had to enlighten and regenerate His inherited natural mind. This
could be accomplished only by means of temptations. Why?
Because this natural mind He inherited could not be
compelled from above, without being destroyed. Jesus could have compelled His
natural mind to obey, but this would only have driven its attachment to the
hells even more, making it impossible for this natural mind to be regenerated
and glorified or made one with the Divine, just as our natural mind makes a one
with our spiritual mind and celestial mind. Since the natural mind could not be
compelled from above, there was only rational or scientific method Jesus could
use to remove all the evil attachments that was in this rational mind from
heredity through Mary. This method was the same that we must use to regenerate
our natural mind, namely, undergoing a series of temptations.
What happens when our natural mind faces temptation? For
instance, for years we may have gotten used to driving aggressively. Almost
everybody does it at some times. It’s part of our culture. You see your parents
going it, characters on TV, in video games, all your friends. And so you
continue to accept your behavior. This acceptance is a tie to certain hells that
you’ve inherited and reinforced in yourself by maintaining it as a habit. Say
you realize one blessed day that aggressive driving is a hellish trait. You
suddenly realize in horror that you’ve been breaking Divine Commandments since
aggressive driving puts others in danger and upsets them, adding to their
stress.
Clearly a habit that results in endangering and upsetting
others cannot be a heavenly trait. You try to tell yourself to stop being
aggressive behind the wheel, yet your corporeal and sensuous mind are doing the
driving and reacting, not your enlightened natural-rational mind. Yet the
natural-rational mind cannot compel the lower natural mind to obey. The lower
natural mind is out of your control because some hell society is in control, by
an inherited built in connection. The only way you can free yourself is by
enlightening the lower rational mind so that it voluntarily from its own self,
breaks the connection by rejecting it as something you reject because it is from
hell. This takes re-training or self-modification efforts which consist of
self-witnessing your feelings, thoughts, and actions, keeping track of them,
evaluating them, then rejecting them and acquiring new habits that are opposite,
until one gradually ceases to be an aggressive and impatient driver and starts
to be a supportive and peaceful driver.
What allows your lower natural to reject the hellish trait
it has gotten used to and finds satisfying?
Only the process of temptation. For instance, you may hurt
someone badly one day as a result of the way you drove. Suddenly you are face to
face with your own evil. If you then take to heart you will feel shocked that
you are this way, that you engage in this evil. If you don’t try to explain your
evil away, and if you believe in God and heaven, then you will feel like
rejecting your long term habit and its satisfaction. The temptation is the doing
something that is opposed to your beliefs. You injured someone due to your
impatience and you now can either justify it and be damned, or recoil from it
and be saved. Every temptation provides a fine line balancing point between
choosing evil or good. This apparent equality is carefully maintained by God for
every individual for it is the only method of salvation available. No temptation
is permitted by God to face us unless He can provide this fine line balance. A
temptation that is overwhelming, preventing free choice, is never permitted, as
has been revealed in the Writings.
And so the only way the inherited human natural mind of
Jesus could be regenerated and made Divine is my subjugating it with temptations
during which He had the choice of accepting or rejecting His old belief system.
The Writings reveal that Jesus went through all the temptations human beings go
through so that He could conquer all the hells, not just some of them. Each hell
had a particular persuasive hold on the unregenerate inherited natural mind of
everyone on earth. Jesus had to face them each in turn and conquer them by
fabricating new truths they could not oppose. These new truths came down into
His natural conscious mind from His unconscious Divine Mind, until at last all
the hells were conquered with all the new truths that were needed.
Once this was accomplished, His ordinary natural mind died
in the crucifixion, and He then resurrected with a Divine Natural Mind and
Divine Natural Body. I present these details here as a context to understand the
passage we are analyzing. These details are given in other passages not
presented here, but see the many references to other Numbered Paragraphs with
the passage.
The Divine Natural Mind and Body is called the Glorified
Human. In the passage above it is said that “He united His Human Essence to His
Divine Essence.” This means that He Glorified His Human. From now on God was to
be called the Divine-Human, and anyone on earth or in the spiritual world, can
be aware of Him, communicate with Him, be led by Him, and thus be saved for
eternal life in heaven. In the passages below we shall see more details about
these struggles and how they took place. The reason we must acknowledge and
communicate with the Divine-Human is that this is the only way we have access to
the new truths He created while on earth.
Our heavenly life is inside these truths. Unless we
appropriate these new truths as our own by understanding and love, we have no
heaven to go to or to dwell in. Our heaven exists inside these new truths.
Heaven is a property of rational consciousness. Our only entry point to our
heaven is through the development of our rational consciousness. This must be
accomplished through gradual regeneration by temptation.
5.0.4
The Mental Struggles of the Divine-Human
on Earth
Continuing with the presentation:
Verse 2. “And He said, Take I pray
thy son, thine only one, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee to the land
of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains
which I will tell thee of.” "He said, Take I pray thy son," signifies the Divine
rational begotten by Him; "thine only one, whom thou lovest," signifies the sole
one in the universe by which He was to save the human race; "even Isaac,"
signifies its quality; "and get thee to the land of Moriah," signifies a place
and state of temptation; "and offer him there for a burnt- offering," signifies
that He should sanctify Himself to the Divine; "upon one of the mountains,"
signifies the Divine Love; "which I will tell thee of," signifies as He should
perceive. (AC 2771)
My Commentary:
The paragraph above is awesome to contemplate. Isaac was a
real person and Moriah was a real mountain in the Holy Land. And Jehovah did
indeed talk to Abraham telling him the things listed above. These events
occurred a thousand years before Jesus struggled to form new mental pathways for
human beings. These struggles are described in detail in the Abraham biography
written a thousand years earlier. This is awesome! Imagine that you find a book
one day in some bookstore for old used books, and as you browse through it, it
is the story of your life. Feverishly you turn the pages and you see all the
details are true, even what you thought and how you felt when you were 6 or 12.
You turn to the date when the book was published and you see 1899—decades before
you were born. What would you think?
Let’s look at how the passage extracts the details of
Jesus’ mental struggles and development, by applying the code of
correspondences. Recall that Divine Speech is written in this code because the
code is determined by the laws of correspondences that scientifically define the
interconnectivity between the natural and spiritual worlds. God creates through
scientific laws because all things are created by means of spiritual light and
heat from the Spiritual Sun, and spiritual light is the same as truth. Hence
truth is a substance by which God creates all things. Things cannot be created
out of nothing, as some erroneously believe. Things must be created out of
something, namely, the spiritual substance of truth. Rationality is the
application and derivation of truth in the mind. This is why heaven is
constructed out of our rational consciousness.
Continuing with the passage:
He said, Take I pray thy son. That
this signifies the Divine rational begotten by Him, is evident from the
signification of a "son," as being the rational (see n. 2623); here the Divine
rational, because by the son is meant Isaac; and that he represents the
Divine-Human's
Divine rational has been shown above (n. 1893, 2066, 2083, 2630). And as the
Divine-Human made His rational Divine by His own power, as has been often said, by "thy
son" is also signified that it was begotten by Him (see n. 1893, 2093, 2625).
(AC 2772) (…)
My Commentary:
Note the many references to other Numbered Paragraphs in
the same Work called Arcana Coelestia (=Heavenly Secrets in Latin), which
runs for 12 volumes in English translation. Swedenborg painstakingly proves
every little detail of every assertion he makes about correspondences in the Old
and New Testaments. The paragraph above is from Number (AC 2772). You can see
from the progression of the Numbers in the references (numbers in parentheses)
that he keeps track of all the single proofs he gives earlier, to make sure the
reader can retrace the development of any one sub-topic and proof. You will also
note in the subsequent passages below, that the Writings are rooted in the
verses of the Old and New Testaments, and also, that the Old Testament, the New
Testament, and the Writings make up one unit called the Threefold Word.
The paragraph above reviews these prior proofs of
correspondence in Sacred Scripture:
(a) whenever “son” is mentioned, the scientific reference
is to our rational mind (not the sensuous mind, not the spiritual mind).
(b) whenever “Isaac” is mentioned, the scientific reference
is to the Rational Mind of the Divine-Human.
(c) whenever “thy son” is mentioned, the scientific
reference is to the origin or formative state of the rational mind.
At one level of meaning, the scientific reference in “thy
son” is to the Divine-Human’s Rational Mind. At another level of meaning, the
reference is to our regenerated mind or heavenly traits. “Thy son” is a natural
correspondence for what mentally we think of as the “originating idea.” The
originating idea of a plan or formula is also referred to as the “father”
clause. We also use the term “fathering” a concept or trend in fashions, etc.
These connections exist because our language contains built
in correspondences between physical events or qualities and mental or spiritual
qualities and references. As pointed out elsewhere, the ancient civilizations
had a knowledge of correspondences, which had been passed down the generations
from the most ancient celestial race (see Section xx). In modern times the
knowledge was forgotten or turned into myths and fables. To some extent the
science of aesthetics is aware of correspondences. Emerson took the idea of
correspondences from the Writings and turned it into something different,
namely, poetic and artistic vision or feeling.
5.0.5
The Meaning of Sacrifices in
Worship
Continuing with the Chapter being analyzed:
“And offer him there for a
burnt-offering.” That this signifies that He should sanctify Himself to the
Divine, is evident from the representation of a burnt-offering among the Hebrew
nation and in the Jewish church, as being the most holy thing of their worship.
There were burnt-offerings and there were sacrifices, and what these represented
may be seen above (n. 922, 923, 1823, 2180). Their sanctifications were made by
means of them, and hence it is that by "offering up for a burnt-offering" is
here signified to be sanctified to the Divine, for the Divine-Human Himself sanctified
Himself to the Divine, that is, united His Human to His Divine by the combats
and victories of temptations (see n. 1663, 1690, 1691 at the end, 1692, 1737,
1787, 1812, 1813, 1820).
[2] It is a common belief at this
day that the burnt-offerings and sacrifices signified the Divine-Human's passion, and
that by this the Divine-Human made expiation for the iniquities of all; indeed, that He
took them upon Himself, and thus bore them; and that those who believe are in
this manner justified and saved, provided they think, even though it were in the
last hour before death, that the Divine-Human suffered for them, no matter how they may
have lived during the whole course of their life.
But the case is not really so: the
passion of the cross was the extremity of the Divine-Human's temptation, by which He
fully united His Human to His Divine and His Divine to His Human, and thus
glorified Himself. This very union is the means by which those who have the
faith in Him which is the faith of charity, can be saved. For the supreme Divine
Itself could no longer reach to the human race, which had removed itself so far
from the celestial things of love and the spiritual things of faith, that men no
longer even acknowledged them, and still less perceived them. In order therefore
that the supreme Divine might be able to come down to man in such a state, the
Divine-Human came into the world and united His Human to the Divine in Himself; which
union could not be effected otherwise than by the most grievous combats of
temptations and by victories, and at length by the last, which was that of the
cross. (AC 2776)
The above passage discusses the meaning of “sacrifices” in
the Old and New Testaments. References are given to earlier Numbered Paragraphs
where the details are first proven, one by one. Here, in summary form, it is
recalled to the reader that sacrifices in the Old Testament were commanded
because they represented, or symbolically stood for, the Incarnation event.
Recall that the Incarnation event was the greatest evolutionary step in the
creation of the human race. It began a new age for humankind, an elevation of
the human consciousness to God. The Incarnation event created a visible
Divine-Human in the external world. This became necessary when the human race on earth
had falsified and distorted Sacred Scripture available to them. This distancing
from Divine Speech destroyed their spiritual rationality.
They were unable to love God except externally, for
personal benefit, reward, or power. People born on earth were at the edge of
doom, invaded and controlled by evil spirits from hell, who held on to them by
these falsities and their evil loves. A God visible on earth was not yet a
possibility, not yet part of the evolution of the race’s consciousness of the
Divine and of their future in eternity. God had foreseen this from creation, and
when the time was ripe, God Incarnated as a Divine Child born of a virgin in the
Holy Land where He had been worshipped in Name as Jehovah.
Jehovah, the infinite Human Divine God, came out into the
external world to create a visible God out of Himself. For reasons already
discussed above, this task of “glorifying His Human begotten in the world” had
to involve treacherous and disturbing temptations He had to suffer Himself to
undergo with that portion of Himself that was not yet regenerated.
Once the task was accomplished, the Glorified Divine-Human
was visible in our rational consciousness. Every person since then has been
given the capacity to picture the visible Divine-Human, to read the Divine
Speech of the Divine-Human in Sacred Scripture, and to love the Divine-Human
with such intensity that we can strive to arrange every detail of our daily life
for His sake, for the sake of our love for Him. By acting, thinking, and feeling
for His sake in accordance with His Word, we are able to elevate our
consciousness to heaven and to abide in heavenly life to eternity.
God’s commandment that we love Him more than anything, is
for this reason only, that if we follow that commandment, He is then able to
give us what He longs to give us—life in eternity in heaven in the maximum
conjugial bliss and happiness possible, endlessly increasing. This is what He
commands us to love Him more than anything. The Divine Commandment a scientific
built in process for mental development, not something that God desires for
being worshipped or glorified by humans. In the passage below, more details are
given on how this scientific mechanism works.
Continuing with the analysis of the Chapter:
[3] Hence it is that the
Divine-Human can
from His Divine-Human illumine minds, even those far removed from the celestial
things of love, provided they are in the faith of charity. For the Divine-Human in the
other life appears to the celestial angels as a Sun, and to the spiritual as a
Moon (n. 1053, 1521, 1529, 1530, 2441, 2495), whence comes all the light of
heaven. This light of heaven is of such a nature that when it illumines the
sight of spirits and angels, it also illumines their understanding at the same
time.
This is inherent in that light, so
that in heaven so much as anyone has of external light, so much has he of
internal light, that is, so much of understanding; which shows wherein the light
of heaven differs from the light of the world. It is the Divine-Human's
Divine-Human
which illuminates both the sight and the understanding of the spiritual; which
would not take place if the Divine-Human had not united His Human Essence to His Divine
Essence; and if He had not united them, man in the world would no longer have
had any capacity of understanding and perceiving what is good and true, nor
indeed would a spiritual angel in heaven have had any; so that they would have
had nothing of blessedness and happiness, consequently nothing of salvation.
From this we can see that the human race could not have been saved unless the
Divine-Human had assumed the Human and glorified it. .) (AC 2776)
My Commentary:
Here again in this passage it is repeated that the Divine
Light or Truth, and the Divine Heat or Love, were inverted into their opposites
by the time it reached our conscious level in the natural mind here on earth.
There was an inability of the human race on earth to be moved by this process of
filtering down, which had worked before, but no longer. Therefore it was
necessary for the Visible Divine-Human to be created in the consciousness of the
race.
The above passage gives us this amazing scientific
revelation: that spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun is actually an event of
enlightenment of our consciousness by means of the clear vision of full
understanding. Spiritual light is received differently by people in accordance
with their ability or willingness to understand scientific truths about God and
human development.
The highest angels are the top consciousness people in the
universe, being closest in apparent location to the Spiritual Sun. Those of us
who get there, or reach that inner state of consciousness, are called “celestial
angels” and we live in the Third Heaven to eternity. We are the first human
contingent to receive the Divine Light and Heat, that is the Divine Wisdom and
the Divine Love from the Spiritual Sun. From the minds of the celestial angels,
it filters down to the minds of the angelic spirits in the Second Heaven, and
finally to the angelic spirits of the First Heaven. From them the Divine Light
and Heat are transmitted to the internal-natural of those who are undergoing
regeneration on earth.
This means that they are enlightened in their natural mind
and conscious awareness. They are able to receive interior confirmation of truth
when they read it. It is not possible to misguide them with a wrong scientific
theory or belief system. They are able to see through falsities and to recognize
what is from heaven and what from hell, that is, what is good and what is not
good, what is true and what is not true. They are liberated from the daily
emotional spin cycle (see Section xx). The live in conjugial love and feel
blessed in what they possess from the Divine-Human, whom they keep before their
focus of attention every day and every hour of the day. They look forward to
their conjugial life in heaven. They progress in wisdom and love throughout the
days of their life on earth, and thereafter, in heaven to eternity.
The rational mind is regenerated from top down. First, the
natural-rational mind, through one’s knowledge and love for Sacred Scripture.
Second, the sensuous mind, through self-witnessing one’s threefold self (see
Section xx). Finally, the corporeal mind, through physical disciplines performed
for the sake of regeneration or character reformation (see Volume 3 of A Man
of the Field:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume3-nonduality.html
When the natural mind is being regenerated at these three
levels, there is a new physiological formation within the natural mind that
becomes operational. This new portion is more interior than the natural-rational
operations of the mind, which means that it is capable of higher consciousness
available to our awareness. This superior interior portion of the natural mind
is called the “spiritual-natural” and also the “interior-natural.” These refer
to the level of our consciousness or ability to understand and see scientific
facts about God and human development. This superior understanding requires an
enlightened state, which is a mental state resulting from our reception of
spiritual light in the interior-natural organ of the natural mind. IN this state
of enlightenment we become capable of communicating with the angelic spirits of
the First Heaven. We have spiritual perception while still on earth.
With this new organ developing in the interior of our
natural mind, we become capable of perceiving ever more interior degrees of
meaning within Divine Speech. The deeper we can understand Sacred Scripture the
higher our perception of scientific truths about our mental development or
regeneration. The higher our conscious awareness of these interior truths, the
more we can be regenerated, and the higher the state of life that we enter and
develop further in eternity.
There is an orderly and lawful process by which this new
spiritual organ develops within our natural mind and conscious awareness. First,
we acquire understanding and perception similar to the level of thinking and
feeling of the angelic spirits in the First Heaven. Their consciousness is
within the spiritual-natural degree of operation, and this is the level we can
first become conscious of.
As we progress in regeneration or character reformation,
the interior-natural organ develops a more interior level of operation
equivalent to the angelic spirits of the Second Heaven. This level of our
understanding is far above that of our first phase of enlightenment, called the
First Heaven. Now we use in our thinking spiritual-rational correspondences, not
merely natural-rational as before.
Finally, we progress to the third degree of spiritual
consciousness, equivalent to that of the Third Heaven. The interior-natural
organ is now fully developed and we are able to perceive and understand
celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Speech. We have the wisdom and
power of perception of angels on earth.
It is this kind of developmental facts that this passage
refer to, along with their earlier references, the content of which I am filling
with my commentaries.
5.0.6
The Passion of Christ
Continuing with the Chapter analysis:
[4] Hence then anyone may infer
what truth there is in the idea that men are saved if they only think from a
kind of interior emotion that the Divine-Human suffered for them, and took away their
sins, however they may have lived; whereas the light of heaven from the
Divine-Human's
Divine-Human cannot reach to any but those who live in the good of faith, that
is, in charity; or what is the same, those who have conscience. The very plane
into which that light can operate, or the receptacle of that light, is the good
of faith, or charity, and thus conscience. (That the spiritual have salvation
from the Divine-Human's Divine-Human, may be seen above, n. 1043, 2661, 2716, 2718.) (AC
2776). (…)
This passage illumines the current (2004) controversy and
popularity of Mel Gibson’s move The Passion which, according to
commentators, is a faithful rendition of the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus
according to the Gospels of the New Testament. The movie has broken all
attendance records in the history of movies, both in the U.S. and in other
countries where it is shown with subscripts. Movements have arisen to encourage
people to see it and a lore is beginning to develop that people are experiencing
renewal of faith and conversions after seeing the movie, even some who confess
they had murdered people.
All of this emotion and religious fervor is based on the
belief that it is Jesus’ extreme suffering and sacrifice on the cross to which
they owe their salvation and future life in heaven. It is thought that Jesus
takes away their sins through His sacrifice for them and the whole human race.
And the more they can identify and empathize with the pain Jesus endured, the
more they feel that their faith strengthened and renewed. The movie of Jesus’
crucifixion plays up the gory violent details of blood and bone breaking. It’s
as if the director wanted to express his strong faith by using his best talents
to show up the blood and gore, to make sure the audience can sufficiently
identify with it or be moved by it. This emotional response is what people
interpret as their faith being strengthened.
The above passage (written around 1745), refers to this
belief system as “the idea that men are saved if they only think from a kind of
interior emotion that the Divine-Human suffered for them, and took away their sins,
however they may have lived.” This belief system was common among the Lutherans
in Sweden, but it has become near universal among Christians today. The idea
originates with Paul’s Epistles which forms the backbone of the philosophy of
sacrifice as salvation. The Writings discusses all the details of this belief
system, where and when it originated in the Christian Church, and why it is an
outdated perspective, not grounded in Sacred Scripture itself.
The passage above states that we cannot be saved
vicariously by Jesus “however they may have lived.” If this were possible, the
Divine-Human would instantly save every human being. Why would He not? If there
are unsaved people, that is, people who sink into hell in the afterlife, it’s
because God could not prevent such a terrible fate for them. The passage
explains what constitutes being saved. They are saved “who live in the good of
faith, that is, in charity; or what is the same, those who have conscience “ It
explains that heaven in eternity is located within that state of conscience.
The merit of Jesus cannot be attributed to anyone—unless
the individual lives a life of conscience. This is why Jesus says so often in
the New Testament “Follow Me,” by which He means “Do my Commandments,” which He
specified globally as “Love Me” and “Love your neighbor,” by which He means,
lead a life of conscience and develop your skills so that you can be useful to
others and society. This is what saves. And to accomplish this, the individual
must be helped by Jesus, the Divine-Human, must appeal to Him, for no one has
power on their own, not even to overcome a single temptation.
Left to our power and our own devices we would not
regenerate from within but only from without, so that within we remain with our
evil tendencies and affections. Upon the second death, these hellish loves and
falsities finally come out, and pull us down to the hell in our mind. The only
way to be saved is to be change one’s character through conscience and reliance
on the truths of Sacred Scripture.
Recently I received a group email message with an anonymous
poem that illustrates the mental processes associated with a view of The
Passion movie that hinges on identifying with Christ's suffering and His
willingness to suffer for us:
STILL HE WALKED
He could hear the crowds screaming "crucify, crucify"
He could hear the hatred in their voices,
These were his chosen people.
He loved them,
And they were going to crucify him.
He was beaten, bleeding and weakened.
His heart was broken,
But still He walked.
He could see the crowd
as he came from the palace.
He knew each of the faces so well.
He had created them.
He knew every smile, laugh, and shed tear,
But they were contorted with rage and anger.
His heart broken,
But still He walked.
(...)
He looked back at the crowd,
at the people who were spitting at Him,
throwing rocks at Him and mocking Him
And He knew that because of Him,
they would never be alone.
So for them, He walked.
The sounds of the hammer striking the spikes
echoed through the crowd.
The sounds of his cries echoed even louder,
the cheers of the crowd,
as His hands and feet were nailed to the cross,
intensified with each blow.
(...)
Jesus could have asked God to end his suffering,
but instead He asked God to forgive.
Not to forgive Him,
but to forgive the ones
who were persecuting Him
as He hung on that cross,
dying an unimaginable death.
(...)
When I forget how much My God loves me,
I remember His walk.
When I wonder if I can be forgiven,
I remember His walk.
When I need reminding of how to live like Christ,
I think of His walk.
And to show him how much I love him,
I wake up each morning, turn my eyes to Him,
And I Walk.
Author: Unknown
The thought processes portrayed in this poem are based on a
belief that it is the suffering of Christ that saves us from hell. Christ was
innocent of all sins and thus qualified for being offered up as a human
sacrifice, as in the days of the Old Testament when God ordered animal
sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins. The Epistles of Paul present a theology
for the Christian religion that is based on this belief system in sacrifices.
God is appeased by sacrifices. God forgives our sins when we give the proper
sacrifice. The Christ was the proper sacrifice because He was without sin and He
was willing to offer Himself up for the forgiveness of sins, not His own, but
that of the people.
The poem above, written two thousand years after Paul's
Epistles, echoes this theme, and resending the poem to email groups, is an act
of agreement with Paul's theology and its affirmation in the mental processes of
many Christians today.
Note the sentiment in the poem "When I need reminding of
how to live like Christ, I think of His walk." Why think of His walk? Presumably
because it once more reawakens with new strength our faith in Him. And this
faith in Him is that He saved us by His willingness to sacrifice Himself for us.
He was willing to lay down His life for those He loved, which was all of us.
These thoughts provide an occasion for strong emotions to invade our affective
mind. But as Swedenborg found by observation, these emotions do not go beyond
our natural mind. These emotions of faith by empathy with Christ's suffering,
look for a sensuous consciousness of the Divine, an identification with Jesus,
the human, who was immolating Himself to appease the Divine Father.
Faith based on identification with the human suffering of
Jesus is a mystical faith that is blind and persuasive. Perhaps it is an entry
point for a more rational development of one's faith, and in that case it is
positive to begin with. But if this is the end of the road in one's faith, then
it remains in the surface of our personality and character. In order for it to
penetrate to the spiritual levels of our character we need to move to a more
rational understanding of what "the walk" really was and how it contributes to
our salvation today.
First, we need to see the rational contradictions in the
sacrifice version. It is a contradiction to think of God as angry and demanding
a sacrifice to appease His anger. This doesn't sound like the omnipotent God of
pure love and wisdom. It sounds more like a human king or petty tyrant whose
anger is appeased by the punishments and sacrifices of his people. The Writings
reveal that God agreed to a worship of sacrifices during the Moses religion
because the people insisted on it. Had God denied them a worship of Him through
animal sacrifices, they would have abandoned God altogether and pursue idol
worship and human sacrifices, as was the practice of the nations around them.
But later, God reveals in the Old Testament that He does not want sacrifices.
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
That sacrifices were by no means acceptable to Jehovah, thus were merely
permitted and tolerated for the reason just stated, is very evident in the
Prophets, as we read in Jeremiah:
Thus saith Jehovah Zebaoth the God of Israel, Add your burnt-offerings
to your sacrifices, and eat flesh. I spoke not unto your fathers, and I
commanded them not in the day that I brought them out of the land of
Egypt, concerning burnt-offering and sacrifice; but this word I commanded
them, saying, Obey My voice, and I will be your God (Jer. 7:21-23).
In David:
O Jehovah, sacrifice and offering Thou hast not willed, burnt-offering
and sin-offering Thou hast not required. I have desired to do Thy will, O
my God (Ps. 40:6, 8).
In the same:
Thou delightest not in sacrifice, that I should give it; burnt-offering
Thou dost not accept. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit (Ps.
51:16-17).
(...)
[7] From all this it is now evident that sacrifices were not commanded, but
permitted; also that nothing else was regarded in the sacrifices than what
is internal; and that it was the internal, not the external, that was
acceptable. On this account also, the Divine-Human abrogated them, as was likewise
foretold by Daniel in these words:
In the midst of the week shall He cause the sacrifice and the oblation
to cease (Dan. 9:27),
where the Divine-Human's advent is treated of.(...) (AC 2180)
How can God be angry or hate something, and then how can
God be "propitiated" or calmed down by an animal sacrifice? The Writings reveal
that Divine Speech appears in this mode when filtered into the natural mind
where a natural psychology governs our perceptions. In other words, the Divine
appears to us in a natural form according to our natural ideas of an earthly
king or despot. God keeps this appearance going in our minds when in that lower
state of worship. God keeps this appearance to keep open the possibility of our
progression to a more interior form of worship, which consists of more rational
concepts of God and of His management principles and style. From a rational
consciousness of God we can know that anger is from hell and therefore cannot be
with God. We must know therefore that when Sacred Scripture say something that
is not rationally acceptable about God, we are to look for the underlying
spiritual message. In the case of anger, it is this: That God appears angry to
us when we are evil. Swedenborg saw evil spirits scamper to hide under rocks and
in caverns when a ray of light from heaven entered their domain. This ray of
light corresponds to Divine Truth, and so when evil spirits are faced with
Divine Truth they experience such terror that they think they are being punished
by a vengeful God.
Remember that anger and hate are affective operations in
the natural minds of people. Negative emotions originate from the people in the
hells of their mind. These emotions are hellish and are produced by the
inversion of heavenly affections flowing in from God through the heavens. It is
rationally impossible for anger and hate to travel upward from the natural mind
into the spiritual mind, and then into the celestial mind and then into the
Spiritual Sun and into God's Mind. This upward progression of hellish affections
is impossible by the structure of the universe as created. Instead, all
affections and truths flow down from God through the layers, and they are
inverted in the hells of people's minds. This explains rationally why Sacred
Scripture describes God as angry and hating sin. It is how God appears to us
when we are lodged in the hells of our mind. Sacred Scripture was given to
people everywhere, the majority of whom are born in the hells of their mind and
must be willing to climb higher by means of revealed truths from God.
As revealed in the Writings, the Incarnate God used His
mere human inherited from Mary to face the hells with new truths He fashioned in
His mind as an infirm human. Within this infirm human was His Human Divine, for
He was "the Divine-Human from Eternity" come down from heaven. For that purpose God
entered the natural world in time and history. Prior to that moment God was
omnipresent apart from space and time. God was not present in space and time
(see Section xx). When God Incarnated as a mere human He for the very first time
became present both apart from time and space and in time and space.
It is obvious that it was God who empowered people to have
the idea, the desire, and the act of crucifying His mere human body. He only
appeared helpless to those who carried it out and witnessed it. He is the one
who gave them the power to do it to Him. He permitted this in His Divine
Providence because this is what He had planned all along since creation. God's
love burns with the ceaseless desire to bring every human being to the heavens
in their minds. God is with every individual in the midst of sin. What is sin?
It is to think, feel, and act from the hell in us. Who maintains this hell in
every mind? There is no other power in existence than God's power.
Hence we must understand rationally how God actually
manages the universe and people. These laws of Divine management or Providence
have been revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg. All good events and qualities
are provided by God, while all evil events and qualities are allowed by God. He
has the power to stop any of it and all of it, but He will not use this power to
stop the evil because it would destroy the as-of self independence and freedom
of the individual to choose. Without this free choice, we cannot be elevated to
heaven. Hence God will not stop people from turning good into evil, but He will
moderated people's evils constantly so that more evil than is necessary shall
not come into existence.
The suffering of the Divine-Human on the cross was the last
temptation or passion He made Himself endure. By this act He was able to face
the worst of all the hells in the human race, and defeat them by means of the
thought processes and feelings He created for that occasion. Since then every
human being can similarly face their own hells by means of the mental operations
the Divine-Human created in overcoming every temptation. Everyone can now be
regenerated by character reformation through temptations that the Divine-Human
arranges at the right time and in the right proportion of intensity and
quality--just what is needed for each unique person to gain victory and
self-change.
Continuing with the Chapter analysis:
“And went unto the place of which
God told him.” That this signifies His state at that time according to
perception, is evident from the signification of "place," as being state (see n.
1273-1277, 1376-1381, 2625); and from the signification of "God saying," as
being to perceive from the Divine (n. 2769, 2778). As regards the state itself,
it is described in this verse, that is, the state which the Divine-Human assumed when He
underwent temptations, and here that which He assumed when He underwent the most
grievous and inmost temptations. His first preparation for that state was that
He entered into a state of peace and innocence, and that He prepared the natural
man in Himself, as also the rational, so that they should serve the Divine
rational, and that He adjoined the merit of righteousness, and in this manner
elevated Himself.
These things cannot be explained
at all to the comprehension, or be presented to the idea, of anyone who does not
know that many states exist together, and these distinct from one another; and
who does not also know what a state of peace and innocence is, what the natural
man is, what the rational man, and also what the merit of righteousness is; for
he must first have a distinct idea of all these, and must also know that the
Divine-Human from His Divine could induce upon Himself whatever states He pleased, and
that He prepared Himself for temptations by inducing many states. Although these
things are in obscurity as of night with men, they are nevertheless in clearness
as of day with the angels, who being in the light of heaven from the
Divine-Human, see
in these and similar things innumerable things distinctly, and from the
affection flowing in at the time perceive ineffable joy. Hence it is evident how
far human understanding and perception fall short of angelic understanding and
perception. (AC 2786).
My Commentary:
Note the scientific meaning of “place” in Divine Speech,
namely mental state. Sacred Scripture frequently mentions a place in the
historical narrative and in poetic visions. This shows that God is frequently
discussing the topic of mental states, and this is because the purpose of Sacred
Scripture is to elevate our understanding from the natural to the spiritual, so
that from the spiritual we could reorder the natural mind from its inherited
state of disorder to a new arrangement of order as defined for us by our Creator
for the sake of our salvation. Salvation refers to the acquisition of a heavenly
character that God can keep in maximum happiness to eternity.
The passage above says that “He prepared the natural man in
Himself, as also the rational, so that they should serve the Divine rational.”
In other words, God Himself was in charge of the mental development of the
Divine Child, God’s own Incarnation or appearance in the physical world. God is
present everywhere, as is well known, but it is not widely known yet that God is
present everywhere in space but apart from space. The infinite God cannot be
limited to physical space, which is His creation. Neither can the infinite be
divided but is always the same as one. The only rational scientific answer is
that God is present equally in all space but apart from space. God is one, and
there is no pluralism about His Presence and Identity as the Divine Supreme
Person. God does not appear in multiple places to many people, for this would be
a division of Himself into many parts, and that is not rationally possible for
the infinite Being. Instead, God is present equally with every created object or
mind, not in the created structure itself, but apart from it, or underlying its
inmost framework.
This underlying inmost framework is not in space because it
is spiritual, and the spiritual is not in space. Nor is the mental in space
since the mental and the spiritual form a one. For the same reason God cannot in
the minds or souls of people in the sense that this is accepted in some Eastern
philosophies and belief systems. We cannot rightly say, “the God in me greets
the God in you,” since God is not in me and not in you. No part of me is part of
God. Instead God is said to “dwell” in me, or to dwell in the soul of every
human being. This means that God dwells in me but apart from me. In other words,
God and I can be co-present. Or, God and I can be adjoined to each other, but
never “conjoined,” meaning an overlap or sharing of parts.
In the entire explication of Genesis Chapter 22 it is being
shown how God-Man as a Child on this earth, made Himself go through
developmental mental states as He transformed his inherited and evil natural
mind by struggling with the falsities of the hells that kept people captive to
them. Having created these new mental pathways or truths, the Incarnate God-Man
brought salvation to the human race, meaning, that any individuals who wanted to
could now transform their inherited evil natural mind into a heavenly mind that
can live there to eternity. In this passage we are told that it is God who
prepares us for the temptations we must undergo in order to become aware of our
falsities and evils, so that seeing them in us, we may reject them as no longer
of us.
We need the right kind of thoughts and feelings to
accomplish this. God supplies the right kind of temptation at the right time
when we are in a state of mind in which we can accept His fighting for us
against the hells. We cannot fight on our own for we cannot resist the hells. We
must therefore acknowledge that the Divine-Human fights for us just as He fought
for Himself when He subdued the hells by the new mental truths He revealed to
Himself from His Divine.
Every human being anywhere can now obtain salvation for
heaven by mentally stepping through the pathways established by the Incarnate
God during His life on this earth. These pathways have been revealed in
scientific terms through the revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg. We are
analyzing here portions a few Numbers in Arcana Coelestia, one of the
works of the Writings, a portion that extracts the scientific sense of Chapter
22 of Genesis in the Old Testament. The passage above that “many states exist
together, and these distinct from one another” and that we need to know “what a
state of peace and innocence is, what the natural man is, what the rational man,
and also … that the Divine-Human from His Divine could induce upon Himself whatever
states He pleased, and that He prepared Himself for temptations by inducing many
states.”
Continuing with the analysis:
“On the third day.” That this
signifies completeness, and the beginning of sanctification, is evident from the
signification of the "third day." "Day" in the Word signifies state (n. 23, 487,
488, 493, 893); as also does "year," and in general all periods of time; as an
"hour," a "day," a "week," a "month," a "year," an "age;" as also "morning,"
"noon," "evening," and "night;" and "spring," "summer," "autumn," and "winter;"
and when "third" is added to these, they signify the end of that state, and at
the same time the beginning of the following state. As the Divine-Human's sanctification
is here treated of, which was effected by temptations, the "third day" signifies
completeness, and at the same time the beginning of sanctification, as also
follows from what has been already said.
The reason of this signification
is that when the Divine-Human had fulfilled all things He would rise again on the third
day; for the things that were done, or that would be done by the Divine-Human when He
lived in the world, were in the representatives of the church as if already done
(as also they were in the internal sense of the Word); for in God to be and to
become are the same; indeed all eternity is present to Him. (AC 2788)
My Commentary:
Here we find out that when considering their scientific
meaning, words in Sacred Scripture relating to time and period, like day, year,
age, winter, morning, night, etc., refer to the variety of specific mental
states we undergo in regeneration or spiritual development. “On the third day”
refers to a mental state that completes a particular phase of development, given
that the number 3 in the Word always refers to that which is complete or
completed.
The passage reveals that when God-Man suffered Himself to
be crucified, He did this on account of its spiritual correspondence, in accord
with what was written about Him in various Old Testament passages. And also,
because everything God does is for the entire human race for all times. His
Speech is therefore by correspondences, as explained above, and also His
specific actions, like arranging for His Own Crucifixion and suffering Himself
to carry it through. It was after all He Himself who gave the idea and the power
to those men to do this to Him. Hence the act of Resurrection on the third day
after His burial.
The Glorified Physical Body that He made to arise from the
tomb was completely pure and untainted by the former inherited deficiencies and
tendencies to evil. IN fact, we are told that the risen Natural Body was made
one with the Divine so that it could now be called the Divine Natural Body of
the Divine-Human. This Divine Natural Body can be seen in the Spiritual Sun,
which is a hot aura of Love and Wisdom around this Body and emanating from it in
infinite quantity.
Continuing with the Chapter, here, regarding the scientific
meaning of the number 3 throughout samples of Holy Scripture:
[2] Hence the number "three" was
representative, not only in the Ancient Church and in the Jewish, but also among
various nations. (See what is said concerning this number above, n. 720, 901,
1825.) That this was the origin of the signification of "three," is evident in
Hosea:
Let us return unto Jehovah, for
He hath wounded, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up;
after two days He will revive us, on the third day He will raise us up, that we
may live before Him (Hos. 6:1-2);
(…)
Jesus said to the Jews, Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He spake of the temple of His
body (John 2:19-21; Matt. 26:61; Mark 14:58; 15:29).
(…)
[6] When they came into the land
of Canaan the fruit was to be uncircumcised three years, and was not to be eaten
(Lev. 19:23).
At the end of three years they
were to bring all the tithes of their increase in that year and lay it up in
their gates, that the Levite, the sojourner, the orphan, and the widow might eat
(Deut. 14:28-29; 24:12).
(…)
David was to choose one of three
things: seven years of famine in the land; or that he should flee before his
enemies three months; or a pestilence in the land three days (2 Sam. 24:12-13).
(…)
So in the following passages:
Peter denied Jesus thrice (Matt.
26:34, 69 and following verses).
The Divine-Human said to Peter three
times, "Lovest thou Me?" (John 21:17).
Also in the parable, the man who
planted the vineyard sent servants three times, and at length his son (Luke
20:12; Mark 12:2, 4-6).
They who labored in the vineyard
were hired at the third hour, the sixth hour, the ninth hour, and the eleventh
hour (Matt. 20:1-17).
Because the fig tree did not bear
fruit for three years, it was to be cut down (Luke 13:6, 7). (…) (AC 2788)
I’m only presenting a small sample here to indicate that
Swedenborg was painstakingly careful in proving the scientific sense of some
word by showing how it had the same sense in all other passages in Sacred
Scripture, even though they were written by different people at vastly different
epochs.
5.0.7
Evolutionary Footsteps for the Human
Race
Continuing with the Chapter analysis, we are given a lot
more details about the progressive development of His mental states, the same
mental states we must go through, by “following Him” or stepping through the
footsteps and pathways He created.
“And will come again to you.” That
this signifies conjunction afterwards, is also evident without explication. As
the Divine-Human's most grievous and inmost temptations are treated of in this chapter,
all the states that He assumed when He underwent these temptations are
described. The first state is described in the third verse, the second state in
this verse, the third state in the verse next following, and the rest
afterwards.
But these states cannot be
expounded to the common apprehension unless many things are first known, not
only respecting the Divine-Human's Divine, as here represented by Abraham, but also
respecting His Divine-Human as represented by Isaac, and respecting the state of
this rational when He engaged in and underwent the combats of temptation (this
being the "boy"); and also what and of what quality the former rational was, and
also the natural which it had; and likewise what the state was when the one was
adjoined to the other, and what the state was when they were more or less
separated.
Moreover many things concerning
temptations must be known, as what exterior and interior temptations are, and
hence what were the inmost and most grievous temptations the Divine-Human had, and which
are treated of in this chapter. So long as these things are unknown, the things
contained in this verse cannot possibly be described to the comprehension; and
if they should be described, even most clearly, they would still appear obscure.
To the angels, who are in the light of heaven from the Divine-Human, all these things
are manifest and clear, indeed blessed, because they are most heavenly.
[2] Here we will merely say that
the Divine-Human could not be tempted at all when He was in the Divine Itself, for the
Divine is infinitely above all temptation; but He could be tempted as to His
human. This is the reason why when He was to undergo the most grievous and
inmost temptations, He adjoined to Himself the prior human, that is, the
rational and the natural of it, as described in verse 3; and why He afterwards
separated Himself from these, as is said in this verse; but nevertheless
retaining something by means of which He could be tempted; which is the reason
why it is not here said, "Isaac my son," but "the boy," by whom is meant the
Divine rational in such a state, namely, in a state of truth, prepared for the
most grievous and inmost combats of temptations (see n. 2793).
That neither the Divine Itself nor
the Divine-Human could be tempted, must be evident to everyone simply from the
fact that not even the angels can approach the Divine, much less the spirits who
induce temptations, and still less the hells. Hence it is manifest why the
Divine-Human
came into the world, and put on the human state itself with its infirmity; for
thus He could be tempted as to the human, and by means of the temptations
subjugate the hells, and reduce each and all things to obedience and into order,
and save the human race which had removed itself so far away from the supreme
Divine. (AC 2795)
My Commentary:
The passage above explains further what I have already
discussed in my commentaries above.
Continuing with the next selection (remember that I’m
skipping and sampling):
As regards the putting on of the
various states by the Divine-Human which is here treated of, they cannot but be unknown
to man, because he never reflects on his changes of state; which are
nevertheless going on continually, both as to what is of the understanding or
the thoughts, and as to what is of the will or the affections. The reason of his
not reflecting upon them is that he believes that all things in him follow in
natural order, and that there is nothing higher which directs; whereas the case
is that all things are disposed by means of the spirits and angels with him; and
all his states and changes of states are therefrom, and are thus to eternity
directed by the Divine-Human to ends which the Divine-Human alone foresees.
That the reality is so, has become
most fully known to me now by the experience of many years. It has also been
given to know and observe what spirits and angels were with me, and what states
they induced; and this I can solemnly assert-that all states, even to the least
particulars, come from this source and are thereby directed by the Divine-Human. It has
also been given to know and observe that in every state there are a great many
others, which do not appear, and which together appear as one general state; and
that these states are disposed in relation to the states which follow in order
in their series. With a man these things are done by the Divine-Human; but with the
Divine-Human
Himself, when He lived in the world, they were done by Himself; because He was
Divine, and the very being of His life was Jehovah. (AC 2796)
My Commentary:
In the above passage are stated in summary form many
amazing scientific revelations about the operation and development of the human
mind. You can see in this passage several key principles in theistic psychology
discussed frequently in this book. Let’s list them in the order they appear in
the passage above:
1. As individuals grow their mind goes through a series of
phases, just as the physical body goes through visible maturation steps. Each
phase consists of a series of developmental mental states and there is never a
time when this flow of states ceases.
2. God is in charge of the operation of this series with
every individual from the moment of birth to eternity. The series could not
proceed without God’s immediate involvement, moderating one step and preparing
the next step in advance by adjusting the current step, and so on.
3. The series of developmental steps brought on by God
moment by moment can be monitored by the individual through “reflection” or
spiritual self-witnessing (see Section xx). People don’t do this ordinarily
because they are in the negative bias mode of living their daily lives, even if
they have an active religious life in the community. Spiritual self-witnessing
is to monitor and evaluate the sequence of mental states in any specific
situation or task activity. It is thus a spiritual discipline in the service of
our regeneration efforts (see Volume 3 of A Man of the Field
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume3-nonduality.html
4. The negative bias mode of living is to operate on the
assumption that “there is nothing higher which directs.” Theistic psychology is
based on the positive bias assumption, which is that “all things are disposed by
means of the spirits and angels with him; and all his states and changes of
states are therefrom.” This is discussed in theistic psychology under the topic
of the “vertical community” (see Section xx).
5. The vertical community refers to the fact that, as
stated in points 3 and 4, every developmental step in our mental operations is
managed closely by God, not immediately, but immediately, “by means of the
spirits and angels with him.” This is the vertical community to which every
human mind on earth is connected and without which we would have absolutely no
mental activity. God always follows this principle of mediate action, which is
His method for maintaining the total networking of the human race, so that
whatever happens to one individual anywhere affects in some way every other
individual anywhere. What a stupendous concept! And how grand! It has been
revealed that to God the entire human race appears as one (see Section xx).
6. But the operation of the vertical community is more
specific than this universal networking effect. God connects us and reconnects
us, moment by moment, to different “spirits and angels” that make up our
vertical community at any one moment. God uses these more direct and specific
influences as a Divine Psychologist who lovingly and wisely manages our
regeneration needs—what things we need to become aware of when, or, what kind of
experience we need to be prepared for the next phase.
7. Swedenborg confirms these revelations about the vertical
community by careful scientific observations extended over a period of several
years on a daily basis. Through his unique dual consciousness, he was able to
see the spirits and angels in his own vertical community, who they were, what
their character was, and how often they were exchanged for different spirits and
angels. “Spirits” is the name used for people who pass into the afterlife and
are resuscitated a few hours later in the world of spirits. “Angels” is the name
used for people who enter the afterlife, and shortly thereafter, are elevated to
their heavens.
8. The character of the spirits and angels in our vertical
community determines our mental state. Our mental states are “induced” by our
vertical community. For instance, suppose you are standing in your bathroom
flossing your teeth. God has to bring certain spirits and angels into your
vertical community to allow you to perform the flossing activity. Our freedom of
choice is maintained in every detail by balancing the vertical community to
include good spirits and evil spirits. For instance, when I floss, I experience
many kinds of celestial temptations that challenge my love for doing a good job
at flossing. I have to overcome the impulse to hurry and skip parts. Many issues
like this arise during the daily routine that takes about three minutes. How to
hold the floss for most effectiveness. How to curl it and uncurl it so the
circulation in the finger isn’t cut off. How to be efficient and not use up more
floss than is necessary. And other temptations and resolutions (see Section xx).
God manages every little detail of my mental states during flossing. And the
management method involves the vertical community.
9. The organization of mental states is hierarchical (“in
order in their series”), like the top down syntactic construction of a sentence
when we talk. During self-witnessing we can confirm this organization or
“series.” At first many mental operations appear as one undifferentiated whole,
as when we try to describe flossing prior to self-witnessing. We can hardly
mention a few things about it. But after some self-witnessing effort we can
mention hundreds of things about it. The passage tells us that “in every state
there are a great many others, which do not appear, and which together appear as
one general state.”
Continuing with the next paragraph of the passage:
[2] The changes of state with man
as to what is of the understanding and as to what is of the will, and the order
in which they follow on, as also the series through which they pass, and thus
how they are bent by the Divine-Human as far as possible to good, it belongs to the
angels to know.
The wisdom of the angels is such
that they perceive all these things most minutely. Hence it is that these things
which are revealed in the internal sense concerning the changes of state with
the Divine-Human, are clearly and distinctly perceivable by the angels, because they are
in the light of heaven from the Divine-Human; and they are also in some degree
intelligible to a man who lives in simple good; but they are merely obscure and
as nothing to those who are in evil, and also to those who are in the deliriums
of wisdom; for these have obscured and extinguished their natural and rational
light by many things which have induced darkness, however much they may believe
that they are preeminently in light. (AC 2796)
The above passage reveals an important and special feature
of theistic psychology. It is stated that when our consciousness and character
is raised to the celestial level of our mind (“the wisdom of angels”), we gain
the capacity to observe our mental operations in great detail. It is like the
people who train themselves in linguistic analysis and are able to recognize in
their mind the syntactic hierarchy that generates the sentence they are hearing.
Or it is like expert chess players who are able to look at a position on the
board and recognize in it a pattern of relations with which they are very
familiar and can instantly reproduce from memory. In our angelic mind we can
recognize the details of where we are in a series of our mental operations.
Even more startling is the revelation here that the clarity
with which we can be aware of our mental operations depends on the progress
we’ve made in our regeneration. While we are undergoing mental states that are
evil in thoughts and feelings, we are unable to accurately observe ourselves. As
we move on to heavenly or good traits, we become progressively more conscious of
the details of our thoughts and feelings. This serves our spiritual development,
since regeneration involves becoming more and more aware of the details of our
thoughts and feelings, so that we may modify them appropriately.
5.0.8
The Scientific Meaning of Sin
and Sacrifices
Continuing with the next selection:
“To slay his son.” That this
signifies until whatever was from the merely human was dead, is evident from the
internal sense of these words; for they signify the Divine-Human's most grievous and
inmost temptations, the last of which was that of the cross, in which it is
evident that what was merely human also died. This could not be represented by
Abraham's son or Isaac, because to sacrifice sons was an abomination; but it was
represented so far as it could be, namely, even to the attempt, but not to the
act. Hence it is evident that by these words, "Abraham took the knife to slay
his son," is signified until all that was merely human was dead. ). (AC 2819)
My Commentary:
Note the assertion that human sacrifice is an abomination,
and yet Abraham was planning to sacrifice his son because it seemed to him that
God was commanding him to do so. The fact is that God abhors all sacrifices, as
indicated in several places in the Old Testament as for instance:
Thou delightest not in sacrifice,
that I should give it; burnt-offering Thou dost not accept. The sacrifices of
God are a broken spirit (Ps. 51:16-17).(see AC 2180)
The Writings reveal that sacrifices were not commanded but
permitted by God because the people of the Old Testament insisted on a worship
based in animal sacrifices, and had God not permitted this, they would not have
accepted the religion from Moses. In consequence, God gave them strict rules on
the procedures and rituals for carrying out sacrifices, as we can read in the
book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. The dimensions and construction
materials of the Temple in Jerusalem where the sacrifices were going to take
place were specified in strict detail. Highly specific details and exact
measurements for the Temple construction were given, and numerous details were
specified regarding animal sacrifices--what species for what sin, and how to
dispose of the blood and the carcasses.
Every single detail of size, material, color, or ritual
act, was commanded because they were all natural correspondences to spiritual
meanings or realities. The inhabitants of the heavens were closely involved with
these details since Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech originates from God and
then filters down through the three heavens to the natural mind and hence to a
written record in a natural language.
All sacrifices were natural events or rituals that
represented by correspondence some detail about the Divine-Man’s life and work
on earth. These representations were endowed with Divine power. The Divine power
within the representative acts and meanings caused a “conjunction” to occur
between “heaven and earth.” In other words, the minds of the people who
worshiped with these representatives were affected, and so were the physical
events around them, like the weather, the crops, the fertility, the national
unity, the international peace. Had these representative worship rituals not
been permitted to them the connection between heaven and earth would have been
disturbed and rendered less effective and beneficial. The worship rituals had to
be spiritually representative otherwise they would not have involved the people
in the spiritual world and thus the contact between heaven and earth would be
broken.
In the scientific sense “to slay his son” (in the passage
above) refers to the slaying of the Lamb of God or Jesus on the Cross. By this
Divine act—dying on the cross—“ what was merely human also died.” To the
disciples and angels who did not want Jesus to die, Jesus said that He must die.
Why must He? Is He not the omnipotent God? The answer is that He is the
omnipotent and He could have not done this to Himself, but He chose to do it
because this is what was foretold in Divine Speech for many centuries. Jesus
said that He came to fulfill the Word of the Old Testament, referring thereby to
the fact, not known to anyone on earth, that every detail of the sacrifices
represented something about the Work He came to earth to accomplish, and this
Work was to struggle with the hells and subdue them by means of the new truths
His natural mind fashioned, as discussed several times above. “Hence it is
evident that by these words, ‘Abraham took the knife to slay his son,’ is
signified until all that was merely human was dead.” ). (AC 2819)
Continuing with the next passage:
[2] That it was known from the
most ancient time that the Divine-Human was to come into the world, and was to suffer
death, is evident from the fact that the custom prevailed among the Gentiles of
sacrificing their sons, believing that they were thus purified, and propitiated
to God; in which abominable custom they could not have placed their most
important religious observance, unless they had learned from the ancients that
the Son of God was to come, who would, as they believed, be made a sacrifice. To
this abomination even the sons of Israel were inclined, and Abraham also; for no
one is tempted except by that to which he is inclined. That the sons of Jacob
were so inclined is evident in the Prophets; but lest they should rush into that
abomination, it was permitted to institute burnt-offerings and sacrifices (see
n. 922, 1128, 1241, 1343, 2180). (AC 2818)
My Commentary:
Once again it is stated in the passage above that
sacrifices were not God’s choice but the people’s choice to which God agreed
under strict conditions. The idea that we are saved by the sacrifice of the Son
of God on the cross is an idea that has remained intense and rooted in for many
centuries in the Catholic and Protestant religions. It is not surprising
therefore that this topic is treated of so often and in such detail in the
Writings, which are the revelations of the Second Coming, and thus revealing all
the hidden secrets about the representative nature of the Jewish sacrifices.
As pointed above, the current intense reaction to the movie
The Passion (of Christ) demonstrates that this idea is still operational
in the psyche of Christians as a whole. If you listen to Sunday sermons in
Church or on TV from any Christian denomination you will note once again that
the death of Jesus on the cross is made the centerpiece of the religion and
worship. Hence it is extremely important for people to discover what the
Writings reveal regarding sacrifices and salvation.
Continuing with the next sample, which lists references to
prior Numbers where these points were demonstrated in detail:
That the evils and falsities in a
man who is being regenerated are subdued by temptations, not abolished (n. 868):
That truth has the first place in combat (n. 1685): That man combats from the
goods and truths which he has acquired by knowledges, though they be not in
themselves goods and truths (n. 1661): That evil spirits and genii excite the
falsities and evils in a man, and hence come temptations (n. 741, 751, 761).
That in temptations man thinks
that the Divine-Human is absent, whereas He is then more present (n. 840): That man can
by no means sustain the combats of temptations of himself, because they are
against all the hells (n. 1692 at the end): That the Divine-Human alone combats in man
(n. 1661, 1692): That by means of temptations evil genii and spirits are
deprived of the power of doing evil and inspiring falsity in man (n. 1695,
1717): That temptations come with those who have conscience, and more acute ones
with those who have perception (n. 1668): That temptations rarely exist at this
day, but in their place anxieties, which are of another character and from
another source (n. 762): (AC 2819)
My Commentary:
Sacrifices represent atonement of sins, meaning that God
forgives us, that we are therefore purified of the sins, and now continue life
in peace and safety. When God-Man incarnated, He taught the people that
sacrifices represent Him, and that now that He has incarnated, no more
sacrifices are to be performed. Instead, a new method for the forgiveness of
sins has been initiated for the human race. This new method is internal, not
external. In other words, it is mental or spiritual, not natural and physical.
The human race now is able to be liberated from the grip of the hells that make
us sin. This new method consists in character reformation, which to be
successful, requires that we step through the mental paths created by Jesus when
alive on earth. This means thinking the new truths and feeling the new feelings
that the God-Man created for the human race.
You can see rationally that the new method is the only
method, and that the prior method of sacrificing did not work except for the
earthly benefits. The people arriving into the afterlife were not able to enter
heaven no matter how much they sacrificed and were benefited by it on earth.
This is because they merely expected their hellish traits to be forgiven, not to
be taken away. People kept sinning after the sacrifices, necessitating the
continue practice of sacrifices all one’s life on earth. But thereafter, the
sacrificing was of no use because in the afterlife the inner character takes
over by necessity of spiritual law. They were then instructed about what they
really need to do, but to no avail. They were unwilling, for the most part, to
undergo character reformation in the spiritual world. Hence they sunk down into
the hells of their minds, regardless of the sacrifices they performed.
In the passage above we are informed once more that the
only way one can be saved is by character change, and the only way we can reject
our hellish traits is by temptations. As indicated in earlier discussion,
temptations are brought on by specific experiences arranged and timed for every
person by God. God fights for the person and overcomes, not the person through
one’s own power. We cannot glory in the victory of overcoming temptations
because it is accomplished By the Divine-Human, not by us. Yet we must agree and
cooperate. Temptations are not brought to anyone who will not agree and
cooperate with God, which we do either through our knowledge of Sacred
Scripture, or through our conscience, or both.
Temptations are mental struggles or “combats from the goods
and truths which one has acquired by knowledges.” We cannot undergo temptations
until we either know some Divine truth from revelation, or we have a direct
intuitive perception from our inborn conscience that something is evil or good.
The knowledge or perception of what is good or evil must precede the temptation.
For instance, in natural temptations, we must have knowledge of the
physical dangers we run if we do not overcome and do the right thing, like
flossing regularly or staying honest on the job. In spiritual
temptations, we must have knowledge of heaven and hell, of God’s Commandments,
and the danger we run if we do not overcome and cling to the truths of
our faith or theistic science. In celestial temptations, we must have
knowledge of our loves, of how they affect others as well as ourselves,
and the dangers we run if we do not overcome and cling to the love of God and
the love others.
Continuing with the next passage, which lists more
references where temptations were discussed in earlier Numbers:
That men spiritually dead cannot
sustain the combats of temptations (n. 270): That all temptations are attended
with despair respecting the end (n. 1787, 1820): That after temptations there is
fluctuation (n. 848, 857): That the good learn by temptations that they are
nothing but evil, and that all things are of mercy (n. 2334): That by
temptations goods are conjoined more closely with truths (n. 2272): That men are
not saved by temptations if they yield in them, nor if they think that they have
merited by them (n. 2273): That in every temptation there is freedom, and
stronger than out of temptations (n. 1937). (AC 2819)
My Commentary:
Note that undergoing temptations is an orderly and
scientific process that goes through specific steps to which we must adapt
appropriately or else the temptation is rendered ineffective for spiritual
development or character reformation. One of the consequences of temptations is
to discover that we “are nothing but evil.” In other words, by inheritance we
acquire such a vast number of evil traits and tendencies, that we are filled
with evil impulses all the time, even when on the surface we appear to be good
and decent. But this is only a surface put on as the temptation demonstrates to
us.
The above passage explains that “by temptations goods are
conjoined more closely with truths.” This is why temptations require that we
already have some knowledge about physical dangers of risk, spiritual dangers of
truth, and celestial dangers of love. We have spiritual truths, but instead of
spiritual goods we have spiritual evils. The temptation process contains and
restricts the evil and replaces it with good, which is conjoined to the truth we
already have. Regeneration is therefore the process by which God attaches goods
to the truths we have acquired from moral teachings and Sacred Scripture. Now we
can act from love by means of truth, which is what constitutes heaven.
Continuing with the next sample:
“Behind, caught in a thicket.”
That this signifies entangled in natural knowledge, is evident from the
signification of being "caught," as here being entangled; and from the
signification of a "thicket" or "tangle" as being memory-knowledge-explained in
what follows. That the spiritual are held entangled in natural knowledge in
regard to the truths of faith, is as follows. The spiritual have not perception
of good and truth, as the celestial have, but instead of it conscience formed
from the goods and truths of faith which they have imbibed from infancy from
their parents and masters, and afterwards from the doctrine of faith into which
they were born. They who have no perception of good and truth have to be
confirmed by knowledges.
Everyone forms for himself some
idea respecting the things he has learned, and also respecting the goods and
truths of faith; for without an idea, nothing remains in the memory otherwise
than as an empty thing. Confirmatory things are added thereto, and fill up the
idea of the thing, from other knowledges, even from memory-knowledges. The
confirmation of the idea itself by many things causes not only that it sticks in
the memory, so that it can be called forth into the thought, but also that faith
can be insinuated into it. (AC 2831)
My Commentary:
This passage gives us the scientific meaning of “tangled”
and “thicket” which refer to plants, bushes, and vines. Throughout the text of
Sacred Scripture references to vegetation signify things about the cognitive
organ of the mind, while animals signify things about the affective organ of the
mind. The thickets, and tangles of vines and branches are natural
correspondences to conceptual hierarchies and taxonomies.
For example, if you’re familiar with the logical
classification system known as Roget’s Thesaurus you will recognize how
the meaning relations reach across semantic categories, like intertwining
branches. The reason branches and vines grow in this fashion is because they
correspond to mental properties, in this case cognitive structures that overlap
in meaning. Few people knew of this connection between plants and the cognitive
mind until it was revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg.
Different types of branches or vines correspond to
different features of the cognitive networks we all have in the mind and memory
structures. “Thicket” represents “memory-knowledge” which designates whatever we
have acquired externally by experience and are stored representatively in the
cognitive organ. The reason this is being discussed here is that our Fallen race
is materialistic and monist in terms of memory-knowledges we acquire in our
daily life on earth. All our memories come from what we experience through the
senses in the external physical world.
It is stated in the above passage that “the spiritual have
not perception of good and truth, as the celestial have, but instead of it
conscience formed from the goods and truths of faith which they have imbibed
from infancy from their parents and masters.” We are being referred to as “the
spiritual” in contrast to the “celestial” race that existed prior to the Fall.
The split-brain race that came into existence after that original race, did not
have dual consciousness. The only source for their knowledge of good and evil
came from a “conscience” formed by “the goods and truths of faith” we acquire
through our socialization process. As a result, we are “held entangled in
natural knowledge in regard to the truths of faith.” In other words, our
semantic categories about the world and reality, and specifically our ideas
about God and the afterlife (“truths of faith”), are “entangled” in natural
categories that ignore the spiritual categories from which they originate and to
which they are connected by the laws correspondence. We need to know and
recognize this prior to opting for the positive bias perspective on science and
reality.
5.0.9
Three Types of Spiritual
Perception
Continuing with the passage, which will give us further
details about the anatomy of our mind and how it functions, specifically
regarding the three types of perception through which we raise our consciousness
and develop spiritually:
[2] As regards perception in
general, since few know what perception is, this must be declared. There is
perception of what is good and true in celestial and spiritual things; there is
perception of what is just and equitable in civil life; and there is perception
of what is honorable in moral life. As regards the perception of what is good
and true in celestial and spiritual things, the interior angels have this
perception from the Divine-Human, the men of the Most Ancient Church had it, and the
celestial, who are in love to the Divine-Human, have it. These know at once, from a kind
of internal observation, whether a thing is good and whether it is true; for
this is insinuated by the Divine-Human, because they are conjoined with Him by love.
Spiritual men, however, have no
such perception of good and truth in celestial and spiritual things, but instead
of it have conscience which dictates; but as before said, this conscience is
formed from the knowledges of good and truth which they have imbibed from their
parents and masters, and afterwards from their own study in doctrine and in the
Word; and in these, even though not entirely good and true, they put their
faith. Hence it is that men can have conscience from any doctrine whatever; even
the Gentiles have something not unlike conscience from their religion.
My Commentary:
According to this passage, the three types of perceptual
operations are as follows:
(a) perception of what is good and
true spiritually
(b) perception of what is just and
equitable in public behavior
(c) perception of what is
honorable and moral in personal behavior
The perception what is good and true spiritually is a
capacity of our celestial mind. The most earliest generations on this earth had
that kind of perception since they were conscious in both worlds, as Swedenborg
was. When we enter our heaven following the second death, we are in our
celestial mind, either the highest portion of it called the “Third Heaven” or
the lowest called the “First Heaven.” However, note carefully that it says that
those of us “who are in love to the Divine-Human, have it.” This is very encouraging
indeed. It means that there is a special organ within the natural mind that can
give us this celestial perception.
As explained above in one of my comments, the natural mind
has the capacity of containing a spiritual organ that can replicate in a
representative way the higher order mental operations taking place in the
unconscious spiritual and celestial mind. This spiritual-natural organ gives us
full conscious awareness of spiritual truths and goods by means of higher order
correspondences (see Volume 2 of A Man of the Field:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume2-nonduality.html
The development and operationalization of the
spiritual-natural organ is dependent on our regeneration or character
reformation efforts. These efforts must be motivated by love for the
Divine-Human and the knowledge that our heaven is within the Divine-Human’s Rational
Mind. To the extent that we can align our rational mind to the Divine Rational
Mind, to that extent we gain perception of spiritual truths and celestial goods,
right here on earth, in full consciousness and awareness. We are then in a state
of spiritual enlightenment.
The passage above also informs us that conscience gives us
intuitive perception of what is good and true spiritually, though this is
imperfect in comparison to the rational perception of spiritual truths in our
new spiritual-rational organ, just discussed. The imperfect nature of conscience
comes from the fact that its content is mixed through socialization practices
and religious belief systems, many of which are not spiritually true but can
lead one to spiritual truths. These are called “mediate truths and goods.”
For example, the worship by sacrifice which was discussed
above, was not in itself true and good, not something that actually prepared
their character for life in heaven. But when the sacrificial worship, even if
pagan, was taken sincerely, it contained the fear and worship of God. This was
sufficient to establish for them a life of conscience. When they arrived in the
afterlife, this life of conscience now formed the basis for their instruction in
actual truths and goods, which they were then willing to accept. Thus they
entered their heavens.
Here is what we are further told about conscience and the
importance of spiritual self-witnessing:
[3] That the spiritual have no
perception of the good and truth of faith, but say and believe that to be true
which they have learned and apprehended, is sufficiently evident from the fact
that everyone says that his own dogma is true, heretics more than others; and
that they are not able to see the truth itself, still less to acknowledge it,
although thousands of things should declare it.
Let everyone explore himself and
see if he is able to perceive from any other source whether a thing is true; and
if when a thing most true is made manifest to him he still does not fail to
acknowledge it. As for example, one who makes faith the essential of salvation,
and not love: even if all should be read before him which the Divine-Human spoke
concerning love and charity (see n. 2373), and if he should know from the Word
that all the Law and the Prophets hang upon love to the Divine-Human and charity toward
the neighbor, he will nevertheless remain in the idea of faith, and will say
that this alone saves. It is otherwise with those who are in celestial and
spiritual perception. (AC 2831)
Evidence is mentioned here showing that our spiritual race
living by conscience evolves all sorts of belief systems (“faith”) that are
contradictory to each other and fall into “dogma,” which refers to unscientific
conclusions based on no evidence yet enforced on others. These contradictory and
dogmatic variations of human conscience shows that conscience is not pure, like
spiritual perception, but mixed up with socialized and ethnic belief systems. At
this level of mental operations “they are not able to see the truth itself,
still less to acknowledge it, although thousands of things should declare it.”
An example given elsewhere in the Writings is the dogma of
“faith alone saves,” which is erroneously based on some things Paul says in the
Epistles and which Luther elaborated on when establishing the intellectual basis
of Protestantism. This dogma declares that since no one is capable of fulfilling
“the Law” in Sacred Scripture, we cannot be saved by our actions, but must rely
on blind faith in the saving power of the Blood of Christ who died for us. As a
result, preachers and teachers tell the people that they are saved by this blind
faith, even if they do not reform their character. This is because God no longer
looks upon their sin, now that they are saved by the sacrifice of the Son of God
on the cross.
The Writings show the many places in both the Old and New
Testaments where it is declared, even by Paul, that we are not saved by a faith
of rituals and declarations, but only by ceasing to sin and living a charitable
life according the commandments, both in their letter and in their spirit. Hence
it is said above that “they are not able to see the truth itself, still less to
acknowledge it, although thousands of things should declare it.” The thousands
of things that declare the truth are the many references in Sacred Scripture
that warn us that only when we stop our evil thoughts and feelings can we enter
heaven.
The passage above refers to those who “who make faith the
essential of salvation, and not love,” which is another dogma frequently
rejected in Sacred Scripture, including Paul in his Epistles. Even though the
relevant passages in Holy Scripture are shown to them, they “nevertheless remain
in the idea of faith, and will say that this alone saves,” and that “when a
thing most true is made manifest to him they still do not fail to acknowledge
it.” Such are the disadvantages of a conscience based on blind faith that
ignores the sayings of Sacred Scripture in one place, and pick only those places
that support the dogmatic beliefs.
Continuing with the passage, we receive more explanations
on the nature of perception and its evolutionary origin:
[4] As regards the perception of
what is just and equitable in civil life, however, those in the world who are
rational have this, and also the perception of what is honorable in moral life.
These two perceptions distinguish one man from another, but by no means do such
men for this reason have the perception of the good and truth of faith, because
this perception is higher or more internal, and flows in from the Divine-Human through
the inmost of the rational.
[5] The reason also why the
spiritual have no perception of the good and truth of faith, is that good and
truth are not implanted in their will part, as with celestial men, but in their
intellectual part (see n. 863, 875, 927, 1023, 1043, 1044, 2256). Hence it is
that the spiritual cannot arrive at the first degree of the light in which the
celestial are (n. 2718), but have what is obscure in comparison (n. 1043, 2708
at the beginning, 2715). That the spiritual are entangled in natural
memory-knowledge in respect to the truths of faith, follows from this. (AC
2831)
My Commentary:
The perception of what is good and true in public and
personal life comes from the development of the natural-rational mind. One does
not have to belong to a religion in order to be a useful law abiding citizen and
a moral neighbor. We learn to act rationally on the natural plane of life and
society by suppressing our irrational and evil impulses. This suppression is not
possible to maintain once the person is regenerating because these evils are
brought out by the experiences of temptations. But those who do not suffer
themselves to undergo regeneration arrive in the afterlife, as Swedenborg talked
to some of them, and demand that be admitted to heaven since they had lived a
useful and moral life. But when they are taken to their second death, which
means that they are immersed in all their internal loves, the evil that was
suppressed now feels liberated like a genie in a bottle, and they trot off to
their hells.
This must be taken very seriously if you care about your
eternal future. The Writings explain that we are able to be aware of our
suppressed evils except by temptations, and these are brought to us only if we
are prepared to fight and overcome, that is, are prepared to undergo a series of
temptations for the sake of character reformation. As further explained in the
following passage:
[10] The reason why in the Word
memory-knowledges are called "thickets," is that they are comparatively of such
a character, especially when the cupidities of the love of self and of the
world, and the principles of falsity, seek for them. Celestial and spiritual
love is that which disposes into order the knowledges which are of the exterior
memory; and the love of self and of the world is that which perverts the order,
and disturbs all things in it. These things the man does not take notice of,
because he places order in perverted order, good in evil, and truth in falsity.
On this account these things are in entanglement; and also on this, that the
things of the exterior memory, where these knowledges are, compared with those
in the interior memory, where rational things are, are as in a thicket, or as in
a dark forest.
How shady, opaque, and dark it is
there in comparison, a man cannot know so long as he is living in the body; for
he then supposes that all wisdom and intelligence are from this source; but he
will know in the other life, when he comes into the things of his interior
memory. That in the exterior memory, which is proper to man while he is living
in the world, nothing is less to be found than the light of intelligence and
wisdom; but that all is relatively dark, disorderly, and entangled there, may be
seen above (n. 2469-2494). (AC 2831)
My Commentary:
A “thicket” represents the way our thinking gets entangled
when we rely on our own self-made ideas about God and regeneration. We start
with a love for evil and a resistance to character reformation that forces us to
give up our evil delights and pet ideas. This is called the “cupidities of the
love of self and of the world, and the principles of falsity” that support these
evil loves. When we are in such a lost state, whatever we experience as
delightful is called good and true. We completely lose the ability to
distinguish between actual good and truth and actual evil and falsity that
masquerades in our own eyes as good and truth.
The only way out of this terrible and dangerous life
dilemma is to compel ourselves to learn spiritual truths from revelation and to
order our natural mind so that it agrees with the revealed spiritual order. As
soon as we are committed to doing this, God brings new knowledge by which we can
fight our temptations and progress steadily in this regeneration path. The more
we acquire rational consciousness from scientific revelations, the more we can
disentangle the spider webs of false beliefs that keep our evils in place.
Continuing with the next passage, which gives us more
detail about how we get entangled in the exclusively natural perspective,
ignoring spiritual revelations:
“By his horns.” That this
signifies with all power in regard to the truths of faith, is evident from the
signification of "horns." "Horns" are mentioned in many places in the Word; and
there signify the power of truth from good; and in the opposite sense the power
of falsity from evil; here the meaning is that the spiritual who are signified
by the "ram" are entangled in natural memory-knowledge with all their might in
regard to truth, and hence that they are deprived of the power of perceiving
truths. For the more anyone consults natural memory-knowledges, and sticks fast
in them in his animus and mind in regard to the things which are truths of
faith, the more does he lose the light of truth, and with the light, the life of
truth.
Everyone may know this from
experience, if he attends and reflects, from those who say that they can believe
nothing unless they comprehend that it is so by means of the things of sense, or
of memory-knowledge. If you explore their quality, you will find that they
believe nothing; and moreover that nothing seems to them more wise than to
ascribe everything to nature. There are many also who say that they believe
although they do not comprehend; when nevertheless, in secret with themselves,
they reason equally as others do from the things of sense and memory-knowledge
concerning the truths of faith, as to whether a thing is so. These either have a
kind of persuasion breathed in from the love of self and the world, or they do
not believe at all. Their quality is manifest from their life. Both classes are
indeed in the Divine-Human's spiritual church, but they are not of the church.
They who are of the church are in
a life of good, and have faith in truths; but the spiritual have faith in other
truths besides those which have been impressed on them from infancy, and which
they have afterwards confirmed to themselves from doctrine or from some other
source. Such is the state of the spiritual, which state is here described by the
"ram caught in the thicket by his horns" (see just above, n. 2831). (AC 2832)
My Commentary:
In the passage above we find out that the scientific sense
of “horns” refers to “the power of truth that is in faith.” In the Writings
“faith” is used in two ways—blind faith and rational faith. Blind faith
characterizes religion while rational faith characterizes theistic psychology.
Both truths and falsified truths are referred to in Sacred Scripture by the
horns of animals because horns represent the animals power to fight and defeat
its enemies. Truths have power to defeat evils but falsities also have power to
defeat goods. It all depends on how the person uses the truths or the falsities.
A ram’s horns represent the power of false beliefs to
entangle us in the thicket of a natural life devoid of spiritual development. As
it is said above, “The more anyone consults natural memory-knowledges, and
sticks fast in them in his animus and mind in regard to the things which are
truths of faith, the more does he lose the light of truth, and with the light,
the life of truth.” Here, blind faith is being referred to, not rational faith
which is based on an enlightened understanding from Divine scientific
revelations.
The negative bias perspective is referred to in the above
passage as “those who say that they can believe nothing unless they comprehend
that it is so by means of the things of sense.” Materialism denies the spiritual
because the spiritual is not perceivable by the physical senses. About those who
think this way it is said that “nothing seems to them more wise than to ascribe
everything to nature.” Thinking this way keeps them in irreality. But it is not
only the materialist who falls into this mental trap. Those who have a religion
of blind faith do not examine the logic of their belief system. They say they
believe because it is faith and they do not have to understand its mysteries.
They may belong to a religion but “they are not of the Church. Their quality is
manifest from their life.”
For spiritual development we must go beyond the religious
truths “which have been impressed on us from infancy.” We must examine the
teachings of our religion and belief systems in the light of rationality and
science, not atheistic science which denies Sacred Scripture, but theistic
science which examines and scrutinizes Sacred Scripture for its scientific
revelations.
Continuing with the next selection that discusses the role
of faith and charity in our spiritual development, that is, the role of truth
and love:
“In the mountain Jehovah will
see.” That this signifies charity, by means of which it is provided by the
Divine-Human
that they should be saved, namely, the spiritual, is evident from the
signification of a "mountain," as being love and charity (see n. 795, 796,
1430). That "Jehovah will see" denotes the Divine-Human's providence, or what is
provided by the Divine-Human, was said just above (n. 2837). Here charity is spoken of,
and not love, on account of the difference between charity and love (see n.
2023). That the spiritual are saved by charity, and not by faith separate from
charity, is evident from many passages in the Word. With charity and with faith
the case is this: charity without faith is not genuine charity, and faith
without charity is not faith.
That there may be charity, there
must be faith; and that there may be faith, there must be charity; but the
essential itself is charity; for in no other ground can the seed which is faith
be implanted. From the conjunction of the two mutually and reciprocally is the
heavenly marriage, that is, the Divine-Human's kingdom. Unless faith is implanted in
charity it is mere memory-knowledge; for it goes no further than the memory;
there is no affection of the heart which receives it; but when it is implanted
in charity, that is, in the life, it becomes intelligence and wisdom. Charity
without faith, such as is with children and with upright Gentiles, is only
ground in which faith is implanted-if not in the life of the body, still in the
other life (see n. 1802, 2280, 2290-2309, 2419, 2589-2604). (AC 2839).
My Commentary:
In the above passage it is stated that we (‘the spiritual”)
are regenerated for heaven “by charity, and not by faith separate from charity.”
This is known to everyone who is familiar with the teachings of the Old and New
Testaments, namely that “charity without faith is not genuine charity, and faith
without charity is not faith.” I hear this issue debated frequently on Christian
radio broadcasts. People would call in the talk show presentation and ask about
how do they know they are saved since they still feel like living in their old
habits, and do. So they want to know if they are saved or not? The standard
answer given is that they are saved as long as they were sincere in confessing
their faith in Jesus, and that He died to save them form their sins. Then they
are told that there is a process called “sanctification” by which the Holy
Spirit leads them to show their faith in their life. Then they are told that
that to live a life of faith means to go to Church, to seek fellowship with
other Christians, and to confess their faith in Christ publicly to anyone who
will listen. But is this really true?
The Writings show that it is not true. The life of true
faith is not fellowship, Church attendance, and confession of religion, but
charity, which is defined as changing how we think and act so that we do things
for the sake of others, not just for the sake of self. As long as we are mean to
people, or care more about our own comfort zone, we do not live a life of
charity. For instance, in our work, we need to be honest and sincere,
considering the uses we se serve and for which we are paid. Doing a good job and
being useful to neighbors, family, and society—this is the life of charity that
leads to salvation. Faith without this charity is useless for salvation, as
witnessed by Swedenborg when he monitored what happens to people who arrive in
the afterlife with a strong faith not based on a life of use and caring for
others at least as much as caring for self. They have no faith they can hold on
to in the afterlife because it is not based on altruism. They sink down into
their hells where many profess faith but don’t mean it.
The New Testament frequently warns us that faith can only
be “implanted” in charity since “in no other ground can the seed which is faith
be implanted.” Salvation consists of the “heavenly marriage” which refers to the
conjunction between our faith and our charity, that is, our understanding of
truth and the doing of it. In the Writings faith refers to rational faith or
theistic science. Faith implanted in charity means that we are motivated to live
the truth we know, and when we proceed in this way, our faith “becomes
intelligence and wisdom.”
5.0.10
The Elevation of Consciousness
Continuing with the next selected portion (remember we are
skipping in between Numbers):
“As the stars of the heavens.”
That this signifies the multitude of the knowledges of good and truth, is
evident from the signification of the "stars," as being the knowledges of good
and truth (see n. 1808, 2495). The spiritual are they who in the Word are in
various places compared to the stars, and this owing to the knowledges of good
and truth which they have; but the celestial are not so compared, because they
have not knowledges but perceptions; moreover the stars illumine the night, and
the spiritual have a light of night (as from the moon and stars) in comparison
with the light of day in which the celestial are. (That the spiritual have
comparative obscurity may be seen above, 1043, 2708 at the beginning, 2715.) (AC
2849)
My Commentary:
When Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech filters down to the
word “stars” in a natural language, earlier scientific meanings can be derived
from this word if we know what it is a correspondence to in the spiritual world.
In the passage above it is revealed that the spiritual or mental correspondence
to stars are the knowledges of good and truth. God refers to the mentality of
the split-brain race on earth as stars that are both countless and providing
light at night. Our mentality is spiritual, that is, intermediate between
natural and celestial. Our celestial mind is as far above our spiritual mind as
the light of the noon sun is far more brilliant than the light of the moon and
stars at night.
God-Man on earth has prepared the mental pathway we can
take to reach our celestial mind. The pathway that leads from the spiritual to
the celestial is called love. When we love to do something we notice that we
have an insight into it that others do not. We comprehend more at a glance that
they can and we can fix it and improve it. This is the case with some physical
activity like a hobby or specialty. It is even more true in the spiritual world
where love is far more powerful than the entire nature with its cataclysmic
energies. If, when we arrive in the afterlife, we are willing to love the
Divine-Human, this love instantly illuminates our surround and fills it with heavenly
sights, sounds, and odors. Such is the creative power of love in the spiritual
world.
If we are willing to love the Divine-Human, our
consciousness is immediately elevated to its highest potential in whichever
developmental phase we are going through. When we are reading Sacred Scripture
with the same love, acknowledging the Sacred Scripture as the Speech of the
Divine-Human, we are enlightened to our highest potential of understanding
within the phase of regeneration that we are in. We perceive ever more detailed
scientific meanings within the Divine Speech, meanings which are infinite in
number and fitting together in endless series and spirals expressing ineffable
heavenly forms that cannot be expressed in a natural language.
The more we continue progressing in our heavenly character
development the more we penetrate into the endless semantic space of God’s
Rational Mind. The more we are willing to receive Divine love from the
Divine-Human, the more we can love the Divine-Human, and the more we love the
Divine-Human, the deeper and deeper we are capable of penetrating into the Divine
Rational Mind, along with its celestial delights and blessedness. It is not
necessary to postpone this mental state until “we get there.” The celestial
state is available to us now through the spiritual-natural organ within the
natural mind, discussed above.
We need to understand the what is at stake here and its
mechanism. Does it make a difference to you if you end up in the First Heaven
rather the Second, or the Third? It is stated in the Writings that once you
undergo your second death and enter heaven, your position of entrance remains
fixed to eternity. In other words, your basic foundational mental state does not
change to eternity. Within this basic mental identity state, you can experience
an endless series of progressions of new states to eternity. But you cannot
ascend to a higher foundational state or identity. So the people who enter the
First Heaven stay there forever, and the same with the Spiritual and Celestial
Heavens.
In the mental states of our First Heaven our consciousness
is called interior-natural or spiritual-natural. In other words it is similar to
the consciousness we have here on earth after we have been regenerating
progressively. I say similar because in actual comparison the inhabitants of the
First Heaven are more purely enlightened than what our enlightenment is in the
spiritual-natural organ discussed above. Our enlightenment is representative but
not actual, as long as we are in this world tied to a physical body.
Because of this representativeness of higher states within
our interior-natural organ, if operational, we are able to know and understand
the difference between the mental states of the three heavens. You will spend
your day very differently if you dwell in the First Heaven of your mind vs. the
Second or Third. Swedenborg describes the occupations and cities of all three
heavens. People in the First Heaven have thoughts and feelings that project a
daily life that is similar to what it was like for them on earth, but cleaned up
of any evil or degradation and disorder. Swedenborg saw shops, shoppers,
carpenters, civil officials, games and sports, Churches, beautiful houses and
palaces. These outward appearances, like a beautiful dream, were instantaneous
creations of their loves and wisdom, endlessly varied and involving their
creativity, so that the people felt fully blessed.
Life in the Second Heaven involved the people there less in
sensorimotor activities and more in verbal and intellectual exchanges and
studies. They loved to debate and hold conferences on various issues of
interest, which varied endlessly to their great delight. Their habitations,
clothes, and art were distinctly superior to what Swedenborg was able to see in
the First Heaven. Their thoughts and understandings filtered down to the First
Heaven where they were transformed in the minds of people there, to the subjects
and knowledges they were interested in, all having to do with the trades,
commerce, sports, and government.
Life in the Third Heaven is so superior to that in the
Second Heaven that the subjects forming the thoughts and perceptions of the
people there are incomprehensible to the people of the Second Heaven. When
people in the Third Heaven speak to one another or reflect to themselves, the
celestial meanings filter through to the minds of the people in the Second
Heaven. They then experience an internal enlightenment and excitement at the new
thoughts and insights they are able to have. These thoughts and insights are the
spiritual correspondences of the celestial subjects that filtered down.
In summary, the differences between the three heavens in
our mind are vast. The thoughts, insights, and feelings we have at these three
levels are vastly different in excellence and power. When we love sensorimotor
activities and involvements the most, we are in our First Heaven. When we love
cognitive activities and involvements the most, we are in our Second Heaven.
When we love affective activities and involvements the most, we are in our Third
Heaven.
Continuing with the next sample:
“And as the sand which is upon the
sea shore.” That this signifies the multitude of corresponding
memory-knowledges, is evident from the signification of the "sea," as being
memory-knowledges in general, or a gathering of them (see n. 28, 2120); and from
the signification of "sand," as being memory- knowledges specifically or in
particular. Memory-knowledges are compared to "sand," because the little stones
of which sand is made, in the internal sense signify memory-knowledges (n. 643,
1298).
It is here said that they shall be
multiplied "as the stars of the heavens," and also "as the sand of the sea
shore," because the stars or knowledges have relation to the rational, but the
sand of the sea shore or memory-knowledges to the natural. When the things of
the rational man, namely, the goods and truths of knowledges, agree with those
of the natural man, namely, with memory-knowledges, so that they make a one, or
mutually confirm each other, they then correspond. To this correspondence the
Divine-Human reduces the rational and natural things of man when he regenerates him, or
makes him spiritual. From this cause it is that both the stars of the heavens
and the sand of the sea shore are here mentioned; otherwise one would have been
sufficient. (AC 2850)
My Commentary:
The passage above discusses the all important topic of the
difference between our natural-sensuous mind and our natural-rational mind. The
natural-sensuous mind is called “sand” and “ocean or sea,” while the
natural-rational mind is called “stars.” Rational mental operations are called
stars while observational data from sensory input is called “sand.” Our thinking
and reasoning process when sticking to the input data is lower in insight or
understanding to that of more abstract and rational thinking about the data. We
call this higher operation an explanation or a theory of the data. As stars are
far above the sand, so are rational explanations far above mere sensory
observation of phenomena.
The passage above says that “When the things of the
rational man, namely, the goods and truths of knowledges, agree with those of
the natural man, namely, with memory-knowledges, so that they make a one, or
mutually confirm each other, they then correspond.” This is something God
accomplishes in our mind as we are being regenerated by Him, to the extent of
our willingness to cooperate. Our natural-rational mind or understanding is
reformed first by means of Sacred Scripture, if we study it with love. Then our
natural-sensuous and natural-corporeal are brought into agreement with the
rational so that we become an enlightened heavenly person here on earth.
5.0.11
Thy Seed Shall Inherit the Gate of Thine
Enemies
Continuing with the next Number:
“And thy seed shall inherit the
gate of thine enemies.” That this signifies that charity and faith shall succeed
in the place where evil and falsity were before, is evident from the
signification of "inheriting," as being to receive the Divine-Human's life (see n.
2658); here, to succeed in the place, because when charity and faith are in the
place where evil and falsity were before, then the Divine-Human's life succeeds there;
from the signification of "seed," as being charity and faith (see n. 1025, 1447,
1610, 1941); from the signification of a "gate" (explained in what follows); and
from the signification of "enemies," as being evils and falsities, or what is
the same, those who are in evil and falsity: in the internal sense of the Word
these are signified by "enemies" and "foes." (AC 2851)
My Commentary:
The historical event in the Bible of God blessing a
person’s descendants used to intrigue me prior to starting to read the Writings.
Similarly, when a patriarch or prophet blessed somebody it was often in the form
of blessing their offspring, that they should be numerous as the stars or the
sand. I tried, but failed, to be impressed by such an event. To me it was not
such a big deal whether my descendants were very numerous, or even frankly,
extinct. I did not have the same feeling for a continuation of my line. Why did
some others care so much, I wondered. I came up with the idea of “blood lust,”
which later I found discussed in the Writings.
It turns out that blood lines do not count in the
afterlife. When we ascend to the heavens of our mind we find there others in
their heaven. It seems that we are sharing the same heaven in the spiritual
world. Swedenborg observed that when people first get there, they are welcomed by
others. When the newcomers see the people there they have the amazing strong
feeling that they are coming back after a long absence. Everyone is so
inexplicably familiar and everyone looks like they belong to one family.
This external appearance is instantiated by correspondence
to their ruling love. At their second death, people seem to themselves to arrive
in a city that feels familiar, where others who feel like old friends, welcome
them as neighbors. Everyone ends up in the city or society where others already
dwell who share the same category of ruling love. There is an endless variety of
ruling loves, and an endless variety of the affections controlled by a ruling
love. As a result, there are endless cities and societies that make up the
overall Heaven called the Grand Human (see Section xx).
When we dwell in the consciousness of our heaven in the
company of “affectional similitudes” of one another, we do not recognize or know
the natural origin of any of the people there. Remember that the process of the
second death quiets the natural mind so that in our heaven we have no memories
of earth, therefore no memories of children and parents on earth. Swedenborg
observed the plight of parents who never fully gave up the blood lust
attachments. They had been parents who accepted their children’s faults because
nothing their children did could be wrong in the parents’ eyes.
As a result, when they passed on and entered heaven, they
were fine, but when their children passed on, they had the strong desire to
descend to their natural mind so that they could meet the children in the world
of spirits. All desires in heaven are automatically instantiated, so that they
were suddenly out of their heaven and back into the world of spirits where they
greeted the children, now grown up, with great affection and joy.
The children, now adults, progressed toward their second
death by displaying the hellish traits they brought with them. The parents were
horrified but they could not break the contact of affection they felt for them.
They were forced to witness all the horrendous evil of their children coming out
in far greater intensity and proportion than what they knew them as on earth
where they merely looked upon these as cute quirks or forgivable weaknesses of
character. They suffered much and for many sequences of negative mental states,
until at last they were so devastated that they were able to desire to be cut
off from their children. The instant they felt this desire, it automatically
brought them back to their ranking love, and hence, back to their familiar and
beloved heaven and friends there.
We find the same warning in the Writings about forming an
inner friendship with a friend who is of an opposite genius. Inner friendships
are permanent, crossing over into the afterlife, and are difficult to break
there, involving much suffering. External friendships with anyone cannot hurt us
because nothing that is external remains operational at the second death.
The passage above is about the scientific sense of “And thy
seed shall inherit the gate of thine enemies.” Why does God care about such
things? Or why does God go along with Abraham’s blood lust? There are two parts
to the answer. First, God does not care about such things but God permits them
for the sake of the salvation of the people who insist on it from their free
choice. God’s mechanism for giving His Divine Speech to humankind was to filter
it through all the layers of the human mind, starting with the highest heaven
there. By the time it reaches the lowest portion of the mind, known as the
natural mind, the words of Divine Speech seem natural, referring to trees,
animals, peoples, events in cities and countries that still exist today.
But God’s Speech did not start that way! Instead God said
something about how we can cooperate with Him in our regeneration for heaven.
But these words automatically get transformed by the universal laws of
correspondence as they descend from high consciousness to low consciousness in
the human mind. Now, through the Writings of Swedenborg, the code of
correspondences has been once again revealed to the people on earth. Swedenborg
shows us how to apply this code to get back what was there originally before it
filtered down into the natural mind. This Section is an example of how this is
done for Genesis Chapter 22.
When we apply the code of correspondences to Sacred
Scripture we derive immensely more from it than the prophets who received it in
his natural mind as it descended from heaven, and then wrote it down. Often the
Old Testament verse begins with God instructing the prophet to write something
down, as in this passage:
Jehovah said, Son of man, take a
stick and write on it, For Judah and for the children of Israel, his companions.
And take another stick and write on it, For Joseph - the stick of Ephraim and of
the whole house of Israel, his companions and join them together, one to the
other into one stick for you, that both may be one in your hand. Thus said the
Divine-Human Jehovih, I, behold, I am taking the stick of Joseph which is in the hand of
Ephraim and of the tribes of Israel his companions, and I will add them to the
stick of Judah, and make them into one stick, and they will be one in My hand.
And I will make them into one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel;
and one king will be king to them all, and they will no longer be two nations,
nor will they ever be divided into two nations again. Ezek. 37:16, 17, 19, 22.
(AC 3969)
This passage would be quite puzzling about God’s seemingly
odd ways. But now we know that the natural meanings can be decoded by
spiritual-natural correspondences to obtain the scientific sense contained in
Divine Speech when it is in our celestial and spiritual minds. The Numbered
Paragraph section in the Writings where this passage from Ezekiel is discussed
(AC 3969) is in connection with explaining the meaning of Judah and why he was
called by that name. Judah, in its scientific sense, refers to our celestial
mind wherever this name is mentioned in the Old and New Testaments.
But as yet scarcely anyone knows
that these things are meant in the Word when the name Judah is mentioned, the
reason being that the historical descriptions of the Word are thought to be
simply historical descriptions, and the prophetical utterances to belong among
such things as have fallen into oblivion, except for some of them from which
doctrinal inferences may be drawn out. No belief exists that those descriptions
and utterances have a spiritual sense within them, because at the present day no
knowledge exists of what the spiritual sense is, or indeed of what the spiritual
is.
And the chief reason for this is
that the life which people lead is the natural life. This is such that when they
have that life as their end in view or it is the only life they desire, it blots
out both spiritual knowledge and faith - so much so that when spiritual life and
a spiritual sense are spoken of, these are like something that does not really
exist or else are something unpleasant and depressing which, because it does not
accord with natural life, they find distasteful.
Such being the condition of the
human race at the present day it neither understands nor wishes to understand by
the names mentioned in the Word anything else than the nations, peoples,
individual persons, regions, cities, mountains, or rivers, which those names
denote. Yet in the spiritual sense names mean real things.
[2] That 'Judah' in the internal
sense means the Divine-Human's celestial Church, in the universal sense His celestial
kingdom, and in the highest sense the Divine-Human Himself may be seen from many places
in the Old Testament where Judah is mentioned, for example, from the following:
In Moses…(AC 3969)
There then follows different passages from various parts of
the Old Testament and in each case the scientific sense of Judah is the
celestial portion of the human mind where heaven is. This is truly amazing and
cannot be explained except as Divine Speech. Recall that these Old Testament
books were written independently by dozens of prophets over many centuries. How
could it be that what they wrote down in visions and voices and historical
events contain the same scientific sense hidden within it and transformed into
historical events and their details. How could this be? The only rational
explanation is that it is Divine Speech which has this characteristic of always
containing the same scientific sense hidden, or filtered down and transformed,
in the words of historical narratives and poetic expressions.
Continuing with the next selection:
[2] As regards the signification
of a "gate," there are in general two gates with every man; the one opens toward
hell, and is opened to the evils and falsities therefrom; in this gate are
infernal genii and spirits; the other gate opens toward heaven, and is opened to
good and the truths therefrom; in this gate are angels. There is thus a gate
which leads to hell, and a gate which leads to heaven. The gate of hell is
opened to those who are in evil and falsity, and only through chinks round about
above does anything of the light from heaven enter, by means of which they are
able to think and reason; but the gate of heaven is opened to those who are in
good and the truth therefrom.
[3] For there are two ways which
lead into man's rational mind-a higher or internal one, through which good and
truth from the Divine-Human enter, and a lower or external one, through which evil and
falsity come up from hell. The rational mind itself is in the middle, and to it
these ways tend. That mind, from the goods and truths which are in it, is
compared in the Word to a city, and is called a "city." And because it is
compared to a city, and is called a "city," gates are attributed to it, and it
is often described as being besieged and stormed by enemies, that is, by evil
genii and spirits; and as being defended by angels from the Divine-Human, that is by the
Divine-Human. (AC 2851)
My Commentary:
This passage is packed with anatomical facts about the
human mind, facts which are used in theistic psychology to build our rational
understanding and spiritual consciousness and to apply it to the daily needs of
people in society. The scientific sense of “gate” and related concepts like
“city” ,“street”, “pavement” and so on, refer to the structural parts of the
rational mind, at all three levels (see Section xx). Here we are given
anatomical facts about how information enters our cognitive operations.
There are two paths of information sources to our conscious
mind here on earth, one from above, namely the spiritual world, called the “gate
of heaven,” and one from below the natural mind, called the “gate of hell.” Our
hellish habits develop and mature by using the information from the hells in our
mind, coming up from below into our corporeal and sensuous mind (see Section xx). The rational mind is in between. The lower or external portion of the
rational mind is called natural-rational. The upper or inner portion of the
rational mind is called spiritual-rational and celestial-rational.
The rational function of our mind therefore is the key to
our salvation or life in heaven to eternity. Our lower natural knows evil from
hell. Our higher natural knows good from heaven. As long as we are still on
earth, God keeps a perfect balance between these two rational operations in
every individual. In this way, we are always free to choose which we reject.
Only such free choices, rejecting the evil information and delight, can
permanently separate us from them, leaving behind only the good delights and
truths, which are from heaven.
5.0.12
Invasion of the Hells
Continuing with the text we are analyzing:
The infernal genii and spirits,
with their evils and falsities, cannot come further than to the lower or outer
gate, and in no case into the city. If they could get into the city, or into the
rational mind, all would be over with the man. But when they come so far as to
seem to themselves to have taken that city by storm, it is then closed, so that
good and truth no longer flow into it from heaven except as was said some little
through chinks round about. From this it is that such persons no longer have
anything of charity or anything of faith, but make good consist in evil, and
truth in falsity.
From this also it is that they are
no longer truly rational, although they seem to themselves to be so (n. 1914,
1944). And it is from this that they are called dead men, although they believe
that they are more alive than others (n. 81, 290 at the end). These things are
so because the gate of heaven is closed to them. That it is closed to them
manifestly appears and is perceived in the other life; as also on the other hand
that the gate of heaven is open to those who are in good and truth. (AC 2851)
My Commentary:
Note the scary part: “If they could get into the city, or
into the rational mind, all would be over with the man.” By “all would be over
with the man” means you and me. We are the split-brain spiritual race. Our
immortality depends on our rationality. The “infernal genii and spirits” come to
the entrance “gate” of our rational mind when they enter the corporeal, climb to
the sensuous, and are seeking to have the rational justify their presence. They
are then seeking to take the “city” by storm, the scientific sense of which is
that that our “doctrine” of life, our principles of living, our morality and
rationality, are in danger of concocting and fabricating a justification for
what is happening in our sensuous and corporeal minds.
Our natural conscience and moral principles are at stake,
and if we have religion, our spiritual conscience and salvation are at stake.
This is mental process that people need to self-witness in themselves so that
they may be prepared to undergo temptations whereby God delivers them by
removing these particular hells at our gates, containing them forever from
coming to these particular gates again. There are numerous particular hells at
our gates every day and they must be removed one by one through spiritual
self-witnessing and temptations. In this way we may go on with our spiritual
development and not be stuck before a seemingly insurmountable barrier.
What happens to us when we fail this test and go ahead and
develop rationalized justifications for actual evils in our corporeal and
sensuous minds?
In other words, what are the consequences in our mental
operations when we justify a hellish habit we witness in ourselves?
The passage above gives the answer in these terms: “But
when they come so far as to seem to themselves to have taken that city by storm,
it is then closed, so that good and truth no longer flow into it from heaven
except as was said some little through chinks round about. From this it is that
such persons no longer have anything of charity or anything of faith, but make
good consist in evil, and truth in falsity.” How devastating to discover this!
The consequence of justifying our hellish habits in thoughts and in feelings is
to stop the flow of good and truth into our celestial mind!
This is devastating to the individual. I say that it is
scary because if there is no good and truth flowing into our mind, there is
nothing to stop the hellish habits to multiply in my personality. I have no
protection from this or that desire, this or that fanciful attraction, this or
that pleasure I can experience. Without protection, I give in to them, all of
them, and my fate is sealed. I now am a devil in company of devils. The instant
I pass on and become a spirit, I precipitate myself into the hell of my mind and
there I find all my friends, all the genii and infernal spirits I had been with
in my pleasures and cupidities on earth. We embrace each other like long lost
friends. We recognize each other’s faces and emotions.
But after the delirious welcoming exchanges, conditions
change. They are much further into the insanity than I am, perhaps than I will
ever be. But now I have to live with them. So I become their victim and I suffer
endlessly to eternity, except when it’s my turn, and my desperation is so great
that I become the torturer and my they become my victims. O what pleasure and
infernal glory I then feel, -- for a little while, because soon they take over
again, which never fails. So this is the life that awaits me if I let them storm
my city, meaning, if I justify my corporeality and sensuality regardless of
their being hellish rather than heavenly.
The picture I draw above is not a fantasy created by fear.
It is the very thing Swedenborg had observed many times. It is also the very
same process of events he observed in heaven, when we are willing to undergo
character reformation by means of spiritual self-witnessing and temptations in
which we call upon the Divine-Human to fight the hells on our behalf.
Note that when we justify a hellish enjoyment or habit we
“make good consist in evil, and truth in falsity.” This is a process of thinking
that requires rational operations, though applied to an irrational goal. Some of
the sub-elements of the mental reasoning sequence are rational in themselves,
but when they are placed together with irrational sub-components, the end-goal
of the sequence will be irrational. But to us in that mental state, we ‘”make
good consist in evil, and truth in falsity.” This is Divine scientific
revelation. It becomes a key principle in theistic psychology.
Using our rational syntax to justify evil is equivalent to
introducing a virus into your mental components. It is an actual damaging
physiological operation in the spiritual neuronal fibers of the natural mind.
Popular wisdom says, Misuse it and you lose it. You can see this spiritual
principle operating in the destruction of our rational mind through its misuse.
What happens if you use a sharp knife to cut a brass handle? The knife utility
is reduced, perhaps destroyed so you need to sharpen it again. Our rational
syntax misoperates when used to justify a hellish idea because our heaven is in
our rational, the upper portion of the rational called the spiritual-rational
mind and the celestial-rational mind. These upper portions of our mind cannot
remain operational unless the natural-rational retains its integrity of
operation, without a virus.
It is like gangrene or cancer that spreads to all portions
of the physical body unless surgically or chemically removed before it starts
spreading from the point where it entered the body. In fact, the aggressive and
invasive injurious operation of gangrene and cancer possesses this property from
the invasive and injurious operations of the hells in our mind. The enter
through our lowest and weakest point—our corporeal and sensuous mind. These are
the weakest or most susceptible to the hells because the inherited traits and
tendencies are very strong in the lower portion of the natural mind.
As the passage above says, when we begin to justify evil
interests and goals we “are no longer truly rational, although we seem to
ourselves to be so.” We become inured, uninfluenciable by reason and rational
discourse. We have become a god to ourselves, recognizing ourselves as the
highest executive officer of our choices. “And it is from this that they are
called dead men, although they believe that they are more alive than others.”
This is the built-in self-destructiveness of using our intelligence to defend
the hells in us. We believe we are alive, better off, free, at the very moment
that we are chained to awful things to come.
“These things are so because the gate of heaven is closed
to them.” This means that the source of our rational syntax, which must remain
online to operate, is cut off. We pull out the plug on ourselves when we
rationalize one of our evil habits or enjoyments. It is not the evil enjoyment
that destroys us, as sometimes believed from a religious perspective. More
scientifically, we can see that it is the justification of evil enjoyment that
destroys our rational syntax, which eliminates the heaven in our mind. Yet it is
this rational heaven, or “rational faith,” that we must have to live in eternity
in conjugial bliss.
Continuing with the following portion of the selection:
[4] As regards the "gate of
enemies" in particular, which is treated of in this verse, it is with man in his
natural mind. When man is wholly natural, or not regenerate, evils and falsities
occupy the gate; or what is the same, evil genii and spirits flow into it with
cupidities of evil and persuasions of falsity (see n. 687, 697, 1692); but when
man becomes spiritual, or is being regenerated, then the evils and falsities, or
what is the same, the evil genii and spirits, are driven away from the gate, or
from the mind; then goods and truths, or charity and faith, take their place;
which things are signified by its being said, "thy seed shall inherit the gate
of thine enemies." This takes place in particular with every man when he is
being regenerated; and in like manner in the other life with those who come into
the Divine-Human's kingdom; and it also takes place in the general body, or in the
church, which is composed of many. (AC 2851)
My Commentary:
You may notice that when we are trying to give an example
of evil and hell we think of Hitler, serial killers, and terrorists. Sometimes I
think that this serves to hide from ourselves how close and ordinary hell and
evil are. For instance, when we think of evil and hell we do not think of our
playing the music too loud or tailgating somebody while driving home. We do not
think of the “f” word that constantly drips from our lips, nor of leaving our
dirty dishes in a sink used by others. Yet these are evil and hellish traits
that will provide an entrance for the entire hells. If we justify these ‘little’
hellish things because we don’t do the big ones, we are introducing a virus into
our natural-rational operations. As sure as hell, the virus will spread and
infect the entire rational mind until we are a dead man. These operations are
scientifically described in theistic psychology.
The passage above says that “When man is wholly natural, or
not regenerate, evils and falsities occupy the gate; or what is the same, evil
genii and spirits flow into it with cupidities of evil and persuasions of
falsity.” This is discussing the vertical community (see Section xx). Prior to
character reformation, or regeneration, our rational is wholly natural, which is
why it is called the natural-rational mind. We receive no input from above, that
is from the spiritual mind, because it is not yet operational in our
consciousness. We do not as yet have a spiritual organ built up within the
natural mind. Character reformation is a built in skill that every individual
can perform by means of rational principles, either from moral teachings or
directly from Sacred Scripture. When we begin this intentional and conscious
process, it becomes our goal. We are motivated to proceed with it. As a result
neuronal fibers and networks are being built up in the spiritual organ within
the natural mind. This has been discussed above.
The more this spiritual organ grows within the natural
mind, the more rational we become spiritually. Our consciousness or ability to
understand spiritual-rational ideas, is elevated and enlightened by spiritual
light from the Spiritual Sun that is within Sacred Scripture or Divine Speech.
When reading Sacred Scripture we are then given perception of its scientific
sense by applying the knowledge of correspondences and discourse analysis (see
Section xx). This scientific sense is the rational thinking we need to elevate
our consciousness into reality and truth. This is what our heaven is made of,
and hence, our salvation and eternal life in conjugial bliss.
The passage above indicates what the scientific sense is of
the verse of Sacred Scripture we’ve already referred to above, "thy seed shall
inherit the gate of thine enemies." The scientific sense applies to every human
being. “To inherit” refers to regeneration for heavenly life, not only while we
are still on earth, but also in the afterlife, and not just for individuals but
for society and civilization.
Continuing with the next selection:
[5] This was represented by the
sons of Israel expelling the nations from the land of Canaan. The latter is
meant in the literal sense where it is said, "thy seed shall inherit the gate of
thine enemies;" but in the internal sense are signified the things which have
been told. Hence in ancient times it became customary to speak thus when
blessing those who were entering into marriage; as is also manifest from the
benediction of Laban to his sister Rebekah, when she was going away betrothed to
Isaac:
Our sister, be thou thousands of
ten thousands, and let thy seed inherit the gate of those that hate thee (Gen.
24:60).
[6] That such things are signified
in the Word by the "gate of enemies" or of "those that hate," may be seen from
the following passages. In Isaiah:
I will kill thy root with famine,
and I will slay them that remain of thee. Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou art
melted away, O Philistia, all of thee, for there cometh a smoke out of the north
(Isa. 14:30-31);
to "kill the root with famine, and
to slay them that remain," denotes to take away the goods and truths which had
been stored up interiorly by the Divine-Human. (…)
[12] In David:
They that dwell in the gate plot
against me, they that drink strong drink sing songs (Ps. 69:12);
"they that dwell in the gate"
denotes evils and falsities, and also the infernals. (…)
[14] It may be seen from these
passages what is signified by the "gate of enemies," namely, that it is hell, or
infernal spirits, who are continually attacking goods and truths. Their seat
with man as before said is in his natural mind. But when a man is of such a
character as to admit goods and truths, and thus angels, the infernal spirits
are then driven away by the Divine-Human from that seat; and on their being driven away,
the gate of heaven or heaven itself is opened. This gate is also mentioned in
the Word in various places; as in Isaiah:
A song in the land of Judah. We
have a strong city, salvation will He appoint for walls and bulwarks; open ye
the gates, and the righteous nation that keepeth fidelities shall enter in (Isa.
26:1-2).
(…)
[15] From these passages it is
manifest that the "gate of heaven" is where angels are with man, that is, where
there is an influx of good and truth from the Divine-Human; and thus that as before said
there are two gates. Concerning these two gates the Divine-Human speaks thus in Matthew:
Enter ye in by the strait gate;
for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many
there be that go in thereat; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way
that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matt. 7:12-14; Luke
13:23-24).
Moreover the gates to the New
Jerusalem and the gates to the new temple are much treated of in Ezekiel, and
also by John in Revelation, by which nothing else is meant than the entrances to
heaven (see Ezek. 40:6-49; 43:1-2, 4; 44:1-3; 46:1-9, 12; 48:31-34; Rev.
21:12-13, 21, 25; 22:14; Isa. 54:11-12). Hence Jerusalem is called the "gate of
the people" (Micah 1:9; Obad. verse 13). (AC 2851)
My Commentary:
I presented these detailed selections to demonstrate that
the vastly spread out books of the Old and New Testament all share this thing in
common, namely, that they are written in a natural language that follows the
code of correspondences, even though the prophets who wrote them had absolutely
no idea of this property of the Divine Speech they were writing down. The
Divinity of the Bible is asserted and firmly believed among most Christians
today, as indicated by polls and popular commentators. This is a religious blind
faith based on sincerity and tradition. They feel this way even though they
cannot prove that the Old and New Testaments are Divine Books, and even though
they have doubts here and there about some parts that appear bizarre and
incomprehensible.
But now we have entered the Age of the Second Coming
initiated as a spiritual-rational revolution through the Writings of Swedenborg.
The laws of correspondences that govern the interconnectivity between the
natural and spiritual worlds have been revealed to the human race at a period or
age when science and rationality have entered public schools and all
institutions of society. Now we can extract the scientific sense of Divine
Speech given to humanity. There is no more need to turn away from bizarre text
in the Holy Book. Knowledge of correspondences allows us to reconstruct the
spiritual-rational message in Divine Speech. This is the level of meaning and
consciousness that we need to develop spiritually as an individual and as a
generation. This is the level of meaning we need to be willing to suffer
ourselves to undergo character reformation.
5.0.13
Universal Salvation of Everyone
Continuing with the next selection:
“In thy seed shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed.” That this signifies the salvation of all who are in
good, is evident from the signification of "being blessed," as being to be
enriched with celestial and spiritual good (see n. 981, 1096, 1420, 1422); here,
to be saved, because spoken of those who are saved (that "to be blessed" has a
comprehensive meaning is well known); from the signification of "seed," as being
the faith of charity (see n. 1025, 1447, 1610); and from the signification of
the "nations of the earth," as being those who are in good (see n. 1159,
1258-1260, 1416, 1849).
[2] Moreover in these words there
is contained the following arcanum: that through the church (which is here the
"earth," n. 662, 1066, 1067, 1262) those are saved who are out of the church;
for as just stated, "thy seed" denotes the faith of charity; and no others are
in the faith of charity than those within the church, for the faith of charity
is truth of doctrine adjoined to good of life. The case is this: The
Divine-Human's
kingdom on earth consists of all those who are in good, who though scattered
over the whole earth, are still one, and as members constitute one body.
Such is the Divine-Human's kingdom in the
heavens, where the whole heaven represents one man, which is therefore also
called the Grand Man (n. 684, 1276); and what is wonderful and hitherto unknown,
all parts of the human body correspond to societies in heaven. And therefore it
is sometimes said that some societies belong to the province of the head, some
to the province of the eye, others to that of the chest, and so on, which
correspondence will of the Divine-Human's Divine mercy be spoken of by itself. (AC
2853)
My Commentary:
The passage above answers the troublesome issue of whether
or not only those are saved who are “in the Church.” It is traditional for
religions to believe this, which shows that religions are cultural rather than
universal and cross-cultural. I saw an exchange on TV the other day that
illustrates this ingrained belief and how it creates conflict in society which
is always more diverse than one religion. Two people were being interviewed on a
news show. The topic was the current smash hit movie The Passion (of
Christ). One interviewee was a Jewish rabbi whom I have seen on several other
shows over the past couple of years. He displays an aggressive style and
frequently interrupts others while they are talking, not letting them go on,
talking over them, raising his voice. I found him annoying every time I’ve seen
him. The other interviewee was a woman Christian activist who had started a Web
site promoting the idea that Christians should go see the movie because it
strengthens their faith.
The rabbi was arguing that the movie was anti-Semitic
because it presents Jews in a negative light and because it inflames bigots to
hate the Jews. The woman was arguing that it is an accurate portrayal of the New
Testament’s descriptions of the Crucifixion. The rabbi was incensed that society
is forced to be exposed to the New Testament which is prejudicial to him and to
Jews and other religions. The woman said she cannot back off the Gospels which
declare that Jesus is the way, the truth and eternal life for all humanity. The
rabbi screamed that she is forcing her heaven on him and taking away his heaven.
He confronted her: Yes or No, are you saying I cannot have my heaven without
Jesus? She repeated that she cannot back away from what the Gospels declare. The
host then put an end to the debate.
The revelation of the scientific sense within the Old and
New Testaments puts an end to this kind of religious warfare. From the
perspective of religion, the rabbi can keep his ideas from the Old Testament and
the Christian woman can keep her ideas from the New Testament. But both can now
investigate and learn that the Old and New Testaments contain the same
scientific meaning, which is for both of them, and for all religions. In the
passage above, and many others in the Writings, it is revealed that “through the
church those are saved who are out of the church.” The scientific sense of the
word “church” in Sacred Scripture is the rational mind that is to be regenerated
from being merely natural to being spiritual-natural. Hence the church is the
method of character reformation in all religions through the commandments that
the members are to follow in daily life.
“Those within the church” refers to the state of mind we
are in when undergoing character reformation through Sacred Scripture or
morality based on it. This is referred to as those who “are in faith and
charity” which means when we are rejecting some evil habit for the sake of our
spiritual development or the heaven of our eternity. Those who are outside the
church refers to our state of rebellion when we are justifying our evil traits
so that we can continue to practice them. The passage asserts that our
rebellious mental states during regeneration (“out of the church’) are overcome
by our states of obedience (“within the church”).
But in addition, the passage applies to the meaning of
Church as an institution of religion. When read from a religious perspective,
those who are “within the Church” designate practicing Christians while those
“out of the Church” designates non-Christians. That everyone is saved means that
we can give up religious conflict. The Christian woman on the news show
discussed above could free herself from social conflict if she could have
answered the rabbi that he too is saved by Jesus, even if he doesn’t wish to
acknowledge the New Testament as Divine.
Of course he has to be a man of sincerity and conscience
because even Christians are not saved if they are not sincere and do not live
like their religion dictates. But anyone anywhere is saved if they arrive into
the afterlife and are willing to receive instruction about the scientific sense
of the Sacred Scripture they had been worshipping. If they were sincere in their
religion and conscience, they gladly receive the new scientific truths that are
universal and apply to all. If they are not willing to let go of their sectarian
views, and if they reject the scientific sense which they are taught, they
remain in the state of mind they came with and cannot become rational, cannot
enter the rational heavens of eternity. These universal laws apply equally to
Christians and all others. No one enters heaven by declarations of faith of any
kind.
Swedenborg witnessed numerous heavens, each adjusted to the
peculiar genius of the inhabitants there. Once in heaven there are no Christians
vs. non-Christians and there are no religions in the natural sense they exist on
earth. Everyone in all the heavens know and study the scientific sense the
Sacred Scripture of their recognition. Divine revelations have been given
various times to various peoples in the history of earth, a history that is
traced and explained in the Writings.
5.1
Anatomy of the Mind and Levels of Consciousness
It was stated above (see
Section xx) that theistic psychology
is based on the fundamental principle expressed by this equation:
the geography of the spiritual world = the anatomy of the
mind
Here is a diagram that portrays this equation. It is based on Hugo Lj.
Odhner's book The Spiritual World which summarizes many details from the
Writings of Swedenborg regarding the spiritual world (pp.204-208).
5.1.1 External Mind and the Internal Mind
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing4.htm )
5.1.2
Structural and
Functional Relations in the Mind or Spiritual Body
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s98/shintani/logos.html )
5.1.3
Relationship Between Mind and Culture
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s98/shintani/logos.html )
5.1.4 Rational Mind Mediates Natural and Spiritual
Information
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html )
5.1.5
Rational and Sensuous Consciousness
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html )
5.2
The Two Forces Acting on
Every Object
Quoting from the Writings:
On this subject I have been instructed by much experience, and indeed that
not only the things pertaining to the human mind, namely to its thought and
affection, correspond to things spiritual and celestial which are of heaven
from the Divine-Human, but also the whole man in general, and in particular whatever
is in man; insomuch that there is not the smallest part, nor even the smallest
constituent of a part, which does not correspond; also that man exists and
continually subsists therefrom; and further, that unless there were such a
correspondence of man with heaven, and through heaven with the Divine-Human, thus with
what is prior to himself, and through prior things with the First, he would
not subsist even a moment, but would dissolve into nothing.
[2] There are always two forces which, as before said, keep everything in
its connection and in its form, namely, a force acting from without, and a
force acting from within, in the midst of which forces is that which is kept
in connection and form; thus is it with man as to every part of him, even the
most minute. That the atmospheres are that which from without keep the whole
body in connection, by their continual pressure or incumbence and the
consequent acting force, is known; and also that the aerial atmosphere by its
inflow keeps the lungs in their connection and form, and likewise its organ
which is the ear, with its forms constructed therein according to the
modifications of the air. It is also known that the ethereal atmosphere in
like manner maintains the interior connections; for this atmosphere flows in
freely through all the pores, and keeps the interior viscera of the whole body
inseparable in their forms, by nearly the same pressure or incumbence, and the
consequent acting force; also that the same atmosphere keeps in connection and
form its organ which is the eye, with its forms therein constructed to the
modifications of the ether. Unless there were internal forces correspondent to
these which should react against the external forces and thus keep the
intermediate forms in connection and equilibrium, they would not subsist a
moment.
[3] From this it is evident that in order that anything may exist and
subsist there must needs be two forces. The forces which flow in and act from
within are from heaven and through heaven from the Divine-Human, and have in
themselves life. This is very clearly manifest from the organ of hearing:
unless there were interior modifications, which are of life, and to which
correspond the exterior modifications which are of the air, there would be no
hearing. The same is also evident from the organ of sight: unless there were
interior light which is of life, and to which corresponds the exterior light
which is of the sun, no vision would be possible. The case is the same with
all the other organs and members in the human body: there are forces acting
from without, which are natural and in themselves not living, and there are
forces acting from within, in themselves living, which keep every organ in its
connection, and cause it to live, and this according to the form such as has
been given them for use. (AC 3628)
5.3 Ethical Issues in Theistic
Psychology
The official Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of
the American Psychological Association (2002) may be found online at:
www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html
The purpose of the Ethics Statement is to guide psychologists in the standards
they should apply as professional psychologists. This includes all job settings
where an individual delivers services or activities as a psychologist. For
instance, psychotherapists, counselors, health professionals, supervisors,
public service settings, researchers using human subjects, and
instructors.
This Ethics Code applies only to psychologists' activities that are part of
their scientific, educational, or professional roles as psychologists. Areas
covered include but are not limited to the clinical, counseling, and school
practice of psychology; research; teaching; supervision of trainees; public
service; policy development; social intervention; development of assessment
instruments; conducting assessments; educational counseling; organizational
consulting; forensic activities; program design and evaluation; and
administration. This Ethics Code applies to these activities across a variety of
contexts, such as in person, postal, telephone, internet, and other electronic
transmissions. These activities shall be distinguished from the purely private
conduct of psychologists, which is not within the purview of the Ethics Code.
(APA, Ethics Statement, 2002).
www.apa.org/ethics/code2002.html
Atheistic psychology and theistic psychology share the same behavioral code of
ethics but from an entirely different perspective and rationale. This makes
sense since atheistic psychology does not make use of the concept of God while
theistic psychology is based on God's Speech or Sacred Scripture. Everything in
theistic psychology relates to God from beginning to end for every concept. So
the ethics of theistic psychologists will be overtly similar in ideal intent as
the ethics of atheistic psychology. But when atheistic psychologists justify the
ethical standards they naturally use a different rationale that has nothing to
do with God or heaven and hell. In contrast, theistic psychologists justify the
same ethical standards using the concepts of theistic psychology, namely in
terms of heaven and hell.
To see the particulars of this difference, we can examine the opening paragraph
of the Preamble which summarizes the overall view of the entire Ethics
Statement.
Psychologists are committed to increasing scientific and professional
knowledge of behavior and people's understanding of themselves and others and
to the use of such knowledge to improve the condition of individuals,
organizations, and society. Psychologists respect and protect civil and human
rights and the central importance of freedom of inquiry and expression in
research, teaching, and publication. They strive to help the public in
developing informed judgments and choices concerning human behavior. In doing
so, they perform many roles, such as researcher, educator, diagnostician,
therapist, supervisor, consultant, administrator, social interventionist, and
expert witness. This Ethics Code provides a common set of principles and
standards upon which psychologists build their professional and scientific
work.
We can ask why are theistic psychologists committed to
i) increasing scientific and professional knowledge of behavior
II) and people's understanding of themselves and others
iii) and to the use of such knowledge to improve the condition of individuals,
organizations, and society
Increasing people's knowledge of human behavior is vital for regeneration from
two aspects--(a) from the perspective of our efforts at character building, and
(b) from the perspective of assisting others in their efforts of character
building.
Regeneration is a process of spiritual development whose goal is to prepare the
mind for eternal life in conjugial love in heaven. God, our Divine Psychologist,
is effecting regeneration in us but our progress is proportional to our
cooperation. The fact is that people are born with inherited tendencies that
resist and oppose character rebuilding. We have an enormous inertia in giving
our consent to the Divine Psychologist to do the work of regeneration in our
mind, in our habits of feelings and thinking. For almost anyone, to change is to
experience negative feelings and suffering, even anguish. If it were left up to
everyone how many could actually compel themselves to cooperate despite our
strong inner resistance? It makes good sense therefore to teach people the
psychology of cooperation. Theistic psychology has very useful knowledge about
techniques people can use to increase their willingness and ability to cooperate
with the Divine Psychologist.
One central technique is called the self-witnessing method. It consists of
systematic and cumulative self-monitoring activities in chosen areas of daily
living or in recurrent mental operations. Self-witnessing has three areas of
focus called the "threefold self"--affective self, cognitive self, and
sensorimotor self. This type of self-witnessing collects data on our feelings,
thoughts, sensations, and motor movements. For example, people who want to
introduce improvements or changes in their food behavior typically experience
difficulty making the changes permanent. There is frequently a relapse into the
former food behavior, nullifying the gain. The motive to change the diet is
spiritual. People in the positive bias (see Chapter 1) understand that there is
a connection between choices we make now and spiritual consequences later, when
we pass into the afterlife.
An unhealthy diet originates from inherited enjoyments that are evil. This means
that our mind is tied to some spiritual society in the hells (see Section xx).
These connections are inborn in the affective and cognitive organs of the mind.
The connections with the hells is in the form of a non-conscious mental
communication or influence from a distance. These interconnections vary with
culture, religion, and generation or historical era. They derive from the fact
that mental connections between people are physiological structures in the
spiritual world (see Section xx). The specific content of the inherited traits
determines which spirit society from hell will have the influencing agency. This
can be observed in family traits, as well as in the similarity of co-patriots
when they meet in a foreign land.
Self-witnessing gives us the details of what we think and how we feel in various
situations during our daily activities. The thoughts, reactions, emotions, and
feelings--all private behaviors unseen by others, are indices or signs of the
hell society that is influencing us. For example, feeling angry to the point of
fantasizing torturing someone. Or, feeling so turned on that we fantasize having
sex with another man's wife. Every inherited tie to some hellish society puts us
under the influence of others who dwell in their hells. God creates and
maintains these interconnections which I call the "vertical community" to
distinguish it from our horizontal community like the city we live in or the
people we know (see Section xx).
We also inherit heavenly traits, hence connections in the vertical community
with people who are in the heavens of their mind. Swedenborg discovered that
people who are in the heavens o their mind are in company with others who are
also in the heavens of their mind. As well, people who are in the hells of their
mind are in company with others who are also in the hells of their mind. In
theistic psychology this leads to a basic formula: the objective geography
of the spiritual world = the subjective anatomy of the mind. What an astonishing
revelation!
5.3.1
Ethics of Science and Religion
There is a clear separation between science and religion that should also be
maintained by theistic psychologists. Science is universal and applies to all
human beings equally. Religion is localized to history, culture, and ethnic
group. There are therefore diverse religions as there are different cultures.
Since every cultural group chooses its own religion it would be an ethical
interference for science to promote one religion over another. But this doesn't
mean that religion is not a legitimate area of research for science. Religious
behavior and belief are prominent aspects of all cultures and communities
spilling over into social morality and political agenda. Especially for theistic
psychologists religious behavior is an important focus. This focus includes
atheistic and secular humanists who define themselves in relation to God, but in
opposition or denial.
An issue arises with respect to religion and science because theistic psychology
is based on Sacred Scripture that is historically identified with Western
Judaeo-Christian religions, namely, the Old Testament (in Hebrew), the New
Testament (in Greek), and the Writings (in Latin). As pointed out elsewhere (see
Section xx), the literal meaning of this threefold Sacred Scripture is
historical and relates to Western culture in the past three thousand years. But
theistic psychology is based on the scientific meaning of the Threefold
Scripture, not on its literal meaning. The literal meaning of the Old Testament
is strongly ethnic and appears to be addressed to one nation. The literal
meaning of the New Testament is more general, being able to be applied on a
global basis. The literal meaning of the Writings is rational and therefore
universal. The scientific meaning of the Writings is evident in the literal
sense, less evident in the New Testament, and obscure in the Old Testament.
To derive the scientific meaning of the Old and New Testaments Swedenborg had to
painstakingly define the psychological correspondences of historical events, of
places and numbers, of allegories and prophecies rendered in poetic language,
sometimes incomprehensible without knowledge of their correspondences. Since the
Writings are written for the modern mind, its literal meaning is scientific in
many parts. But there are parts that discuss particular religions and nations.
If the literal meaning of these discussions were also the scientific meaning,
then those parts of the Writings would not be suitable for theistic psychology
since it is unethical for theistic psychologists to promote one religion over
another.
But it is not feasible to divide the Writings up into portions suitable and
portions not suitable for theistic psychology. The Writings are expressions of
Divine Speech in a natural language, just like the Old and New Testaments. In
fact, the three are connected into a solid unit whose coherence would be
destroyed where one to omit portions from any of the three sets of Divine
Speech. Remember that Divine Speech is universal. It is given by God to humanity
and there is only one God. But when Divine Speech filters down from the
celestial language, to the spiritual language, then to the natural language, it
undergoes transformations governed by the laws of correspondences (see Section
xx). By the time Divine Speech reaches the bottom of the line in a natural
language, it necessarily contains historical and national references.
But only those references occur in this way that have a scientific meaning that
applies to all of humanity. It is not possible for Divine Speech to be addressed
to only some of humanity, to one nation or historical era. But when Divine
Speech is transformed into a natural language, it becomes Sacred Scripture that
appears to be given to one nation or culture. By applying the method of
correspondences theistic psychologists can reconstruct Divine Speech through the
various layers it has gone through on the way down to the natural world and
natural mind. This is especially true of names, places, and numbers. For
instance, the city "Jerusalem" which is the nation of Israel in the Middle East,
disappears when we apply correspondences, to derive its scientific meaning as
"spiritual doctrine" or the mental operations at the spiritual-rational level of
the human mind. Similarly with all the cities mentioned in the Old Testament,
the New Testament, and the Writings. They disappear from focus when you
translate them into their psychological meaning.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph disappear as historical and ethnic individuals
when you recover their psychological meaning, which refers to the successive
steps of development in our regeneration. Similarly in the Writings, when it
says something about "Jews" the historical reference disappears when you recover
its psychological meaning as the external state of mind relative to the
internal. Similarly, Egypt, Assyria, and Israel actually refer to the anatomy of
the human mind in hierarchical sequence--Egypt refers to thinking about God with
natural correspondences, Assyria refers to thinking about God with spiritual
correspondences, and Israel refers to thinking about God with celestial
correspondences (see Section xx).
The Writings mention European nationals--French, Dutch, British, Swedish, etc.
It is true that Swedenborg met people from these nations when he was in the
world of spirits. Obviously when he interviewed people who had just passed on he
sometimes discovered which country they were from, or even, which planet other
than ours. But the more important issue is to understand that only those details
are recorded in Sacred Scripture which correspond to the psychological meaning
of universal Divine Speech. By focusing attention on their scientific
correspondences the literal historical reference disappears. They are merely
carriers of the universal meaning.
There is therefore no actual favoritism or promotion of one religion over
another when we recover the universal meaning of Divine Speech. Theistic
psychology is extracted from the literal sense of Sacred Scripture by
reconstructing the universal meaning of Divine Speech which is embodied in the
literal meaning of Sacred Scripture.
This extraction process for the sake of universal science is not in any way
threatening to religions based on Sacred Scripture. The Writings reveal that all
Sacred Scripture contain historical parts and they are true and correct in
detail. This is obvious when you consider that Divine Speech is given with the
intent of it being recovered from Sacred Scripture. But Sacred Scripture does
not lie for this would be sacrilegious or blasphemous. Therefore the literal
sense upon which religion is based remains accurate and holy, suitable for
worship.
5.3.2
Theistic Psychologists and Good vs. Evil
Practitioners of atheistic psychology take a natural stand regarding moral
issues of what's right or wrong, and regarding spiritual issues of what's good
and evil. In contrast, theistic psychologists focus in on what's right and
what's good and evil as fundamental issues people face in the lifelong struggle
of regeneration, whose outcome determines their eternal future. The sharp
difference between the two types of psychology is that there is no scientific
basis for good and evil in atheistic psychology, while in theistic psychology we
have the good and evil defined by Divine Speech, which is the source of
scientific revelations.
Knowledge of theistic psychology gives people an understanding of how mental
habits we practice today will be determining influences on our mental habits in
the afterlife, and how they determine the quality of our future life in
eternity. Teaching theistic psychology involves presenting the facts and
explanations that give people an understanding of how our present life
determines our future life in the spiritual world. Theistic psychology is the
science of immortality, hence the focus is on the built in connection there is
between this life and the afterlife.
In public institutions like the one I'm teaching in, students in a classroom
have diverse backgrounds in religion, ethnic identification, or secular beliefs
like atheism or materialism. High ethical standards must be maintained in
teaching to avoid putting persuasive pressure on students own belief systems
about the spiritual issue of right vs. wrong or good vs. evil. Theistic
psychology clearly proves that persuasive belief systems are injurious to people
in the afterlife. This is because the process of persuasion diminishes one's
freedom of choice in choosing between truth and falsity, and between good and
evil. Swedenborg observed that people in the world of spirits undergo a rapid
personality change shortly after the resuscitation process (see Section xx). In
this phase, the internal, deep seated, dominant motives and loves come out into
the fore of our personality, and they lead us to abandon all pretenses of
personality, all belief systems we hold without rational understanding and
approval.
When we emerge from this process no beliefs or attitudes are left that we
acquired by persuasive belief or mystical faith. The individual is now left
defenseless against all sorts of spiritual assault and victimization perpetrated
by those who prey upon intellectually defenseless individuals. One is then
misled, and led around, and ultimately dropped into the hells of our mind with
little rational consciousness left to willingly get ourselves out of there.
Those who teach theistic psychology must be fully aware of the damage done when
pressure is placed on students to adopt ideas and principles of theistic
psychology without understanding them rationally.
Teaching rational understanding is an ethical imperative for theistic
psychologists.
Students who have read a significant portion of this book have told me that I am
repetitious and talk about the same topic in many places repeating the same
information. I've read other people complain that the Writings of Swedenborg are
very repetitious and even boring in its meticulous rational style. The reason
that repetition is needed in the presentation of theistic psychology is that
there is a constant requirement to be fully clear and rational. When a new
concept is introduced, readers can sometimes be told to recall or check back on
certain earlier segments that connect to the new concept. But how realistic is
this with most readers? People don't recall the prior segment, nor do they
interrupt the flow of reading by reading some prior sections again. Therefore it
is ethically necessary to connect the new concept to earlier ones so as to
maintain the path of understanding.
Rational understanding has to do with integrating separate concepts into a
higher entity called "doctrine," principle, or explanation. You cannot integrate
a new concept unless you repeat what prior concepts are and how they fit
together. The new concept must be fully justified and explained as to its parts
and functions. For instance, if you teach anatomy and physiology, and you are
introducing the new concept of the "heart," you need to use prior concepts like
circulatory system and the lungs. If the details are numerous, students will not
understand the body's physiology without going back to the earlier concepts.
Repeating facts and principles already discussed elsewhere, is done in such a
way that the prior portions are re-integrated into the new portions. Compare the
discussion of the "same topic" in several places and you will note differences.
The perspective is slightly different, the content range is slightly different,
and the application context is different. I would predict that when readers feel
that this kind of repetition is boring, it is because they are not noticing the
contextual differences and what is new about it when viewed in connection with
the new topic. The solution to that is to reread over and over again until
crystal clear understanding is reached. And sometimes it is advisable to reread
prior sections, which is why I make it into a habit to cite other sections that
deal with a topic more extensively.
5.3.3
Theistic Psychology and Media Content
Atheistic psychology does not take an ethical stand on the spiritual harm caused
by television and movie content. It does take a stand on the negative effects of
violence upon many children. These negative effects are defined in terms of
behaving violently as a result of seeing violence portrayed in the media. But
theistic psychologists have more knowledge and research about the spiritual
effects of media content and therefore it becomes an ethical issue whether they
condone it or promote it. The appropriate behavior as a theistic psychologist is
to warn people of their harmful effects on themselves. This is similar to a
doctor having an ethical obligation to warn someone not to drink contaminated
water when the individual is unaware of the potential medical harm.
In theistic psychology is known that a determinative relationship exists between
accepting one's evil enjoyments in this life and the life of eternal hell.
Anyone may have evil thoughts and evil enjoyments since it is a strong
hereditary tendency in the entire human race. It is a fact that children and
adults enjoy violence on TV and all sorts of lewd entertainment. People enjoy
watching other people being deceptive and nasty, cruel and very gross. This is
natural and it may be universal. But now every person has a reaction to
observing that we enjoy these bad and gross things. One reaction is to skip over
it and not to think about it, and if someone mentions it, not to get too
involved in the topic, or to violently disagree in order to end further
discussion. This reaction is not helpful to the individual who is going to
undergo spiritual regeneration, and theistic psychologists are committed to the
universal necessity of undergoing spiritual regeneration. No one can live a life
of immortality in heaven without undergoing spiritual regeneration, either in
this life or in the world of spirits. But it is far better and safer to do it in
this life for reasons known in theistic psychology (see Section xx).
The other reaction is a good one: We are shocked at ourselves.
This is a self-witnessing act of spiritual significance.
Being shocked at ourselves that we enjoy watching other people being abused,
victimized, deceived, treated without dignity, is the result of our conscious
awareness of conscience within us. This is a critical moment for the individual.
Conscience is a sub-conscious receptor of heavenly Divine truths. Divine truths
are the sole means by which we can resist the inherited connections we have to
the hells. The hells act into our affective organ in the natural mind. We
experience this influencing agency by being aware of a strong impulse, urge, or
preference. We are propelled and attracted, like being pulled on a chain. This
chain ends in hell. The people who insist on remaining in the hells of their
mind can be destroyed by God or need to be fed. God feeds them in such a way
that only good results are achieved by their participation in our mental life on
earth.
There is a strong sub-conscious mental connection we have here on earth with
those who are in the hells of their mind in the spiritual world. This connection
is maintained by God moment by moment with much dynamic involvement. We are
connected and disconnected to different societies or communities of people in
the hells, depending on the psychological need we have at each moment of our
living. For instance, my cat Minsky is here in the room and for the past few
minutes he has been agitating to get me to stop typing and walk with him to the
dish. My first reaction of annoyance could not have occurred unless the Divine
Psychologist had connected me to the community in hell that needs the emotion of
annoyance to feel alive. My feeling of annoyance at Minsky was their hellish
manna God feeds them out of Mercy so they can have some life left to their
delusional minds.
A similar instance happened with my cat Manna yesterday afternoon. He came into
the room where I was typing and started agitating in his special way, one being
to step on the keyboard. I walked him to the dish, opened it, gave him a new
scoop, and walked back to my keyboard. I was suddenly struck by my
heartlessness. Manna had just gotten up and he wants some human contact to bring
his consciousness back into the real world. But I just walked away and did not
even speak to him, did not even pet him or touch him. I felt overwhelmed with
guilt and walked back to his dish, talked to him, petted him, then I walked
away. A few minutes later he came back so I stopped typing. I combed him and
carried him to his resting chair. This is the how the Divine Psychologist is
working to reform my loves from selfish to altruistic.
By connecting me to the hells of annoyances God accomplishes two good things.
First, the people who are stuck in an evil mental state are kept alive and
active. Second, the annoyance I feel, which is not from myself but from them, is
an opportunity for a spiritual temptation (or celestial) that faces me with the
fact that I am still connected the hells of annoyances. If I do my normal
self-witnessing, to which I'm committed, I cannot avoid making a choice that has
incalculable spiritual significance for my entire future. I can see it as my
selfishness, or my cruelty, or my rigidity, or my excessive task involvement, or
a nudge from the Divine Psychologist--which are all good perceptions because
they uncover the deep network of interconnections between the hells in my mind.
Theistic psychologists are committed to teaching self-witnessing skills to every
individual. It is as important as other forms of literacy skills such as
reading, writings, arithmetic, critical reasoning, art, and physical
disciplines. It's not practical to merely advise parents to control what their
children are watching or what songs they are listening to. Instead, parents and
teachers can instruct children on how to practice self-witnessing techniques
while they are watching entertainment or listening to it (see Section xx).
Instructing self-witnessing involves parents in the detail's of the mental world
of their growing children.
The instruction of self-witnessing skills is a practical context for discussing
how God's truths can give us the inner power tools we need for character
building. The main motive for character building is religious. Unless we rebuild
our inherited character we become wild people wallowing in the hells of our
minds forever. Rebuilding our character by using the spiritual weapons of Divine
truths insures that our immortal mind spends its eternity in the heavens our
mind where we live with others in peace, in bliss, in the excitement of daily
new discovery and adventure that never ends.
This is the constant choice that parents and teachers must bring to their
children. This will equip them with the mental or spiritual tools that an
immortal individual should have for safety and success.
5.3.4
Censorship and Theistic Psychologists
In general the profession of psychology in my generation has not favored forms
of censorship as a social technique for managing information in society.
Theistic psychologists are ethically dedicated to the principle that we ought to
do everything we can to enhance people's rational consciousness for the sake of
their spiritual development. This involves self-witnessing within the context of
religious doctrine or understanding. For Divine truths to be actual and have
actual power in our mind we must understand them rationally. This is obvious
since truths are rational by definition. We can know Divine truths yet not
understand them rationally. This dimities their battle effectiveness in fighting
the hells in our mind.
Censorship is a form of external compulsion and therefore when we comply with it
we do so for an external motive. It has nothing to do with our agreement or
understanding. We are given no choice. The spiritual choice we must have to grow
is taken away from us. Therefore all forms external authority must be infused
with rational understanding, and if not, authority becomes coercive and
persuasive. Theistic psychologists know that persuasive obedience to a principle
or belief system is useless in the world of spirits where we awaken within a few
hours after the death of the physical body. They are useless in terms of
fighting the attractions of hell because we are not as attached to the
persuasive truths as we are to the falsities that justify our hellish
attractions. Hence censorship is harmful.
Instead, theistic psychologists see the need for parents and teachers to teach
critical thinking skills which are basic to spiritual growth. Since spiritual
growth depends on rational consciousness it is necessary to develop the thinking
skills of every individual. The existence of public education in all countries,
and its mandate from the United Nations, is a result of people being led by God
to see rational thinking as a human good to which every human being is entitled
to by birth.
As a practical matter, parents and teachers cannot prevent children from
exposure to information about evils they can't even imagine. And so this a clear
potential for being spiritually harmed. It's the remains of innocence that are
harmed (see Section xx). Innocence is absolutely required to live in one's
heaven because our heaven is made of innocence. Innocence is defined as the
willingness to obey and abide in God's truths. God's truths make the heaven of
our innocence, hence our eternal life in that state of mind.
The critical need in parenting and education is therefore the protection of
spiritual innocence by which every individual is willing to accept and obey
God's truths. The best way to do this protection is for research to tell us. In
the meantime we must teach children where evil enjoyments come from and why they
need to give them up. Children need to be encouraged to practice critical
thinking while watching television, listening to their favorite lyrics, or
surfing the Web. They should be taught not to give themselves over to enjoyment
of entertainment and that this is a life thy will have to give up soon anyway
for something they would enjoy far more and with no trouble.
5.3.5
Theistic Psychologists View on War, Death Penalty, Abortion
Theistic psychologists view war and the death penalty as necessary techniques
for society in controlling people who are going along with their evil
tendencies. The vast majority of people in this country are ready to die for it
to protect the nation and its people. They are willing to go into battle in
defense of their country which they acknowledge as a "fatherland" or
"motherland." This is rightly so and rational. One's country is what supports
and protects what we have, our life and our possessions and our basic human
rights. Too many countries are taken over by dragons who mislead and deceive and
torture their hapless people--until by Divine Providence the wicked leaders are
removed. Soon in the spiritual world they are going to encounter bigger devils
than they are and they shall deserve our pity for great is there eternal
suffering.
They suffer not because they are being punished by God since God never punishes
anyone. But God has a built in system as to what happens when people found the
Divine order and act against it in full premeditated intent and awareness. Such
are cruel tyrants and all individuals who abuse others as a way of life for
themselves. They love their willful rebellion so much, so deeply, that they are
unwilling to give it up even as they are being tortured endlessly to eternity,
and still they refuse to give it up. It is this refusal to give it up that keeps
them in hell, not God's punishment.
Killing attackers in self-defense is seen as a reasonable behavior by people who
think rationally about it. The Commandment not to kill or murder applies to
wrongful killing. More research is needed in theistic psychology to determine
the precise limits of what is rightful and wrongful killing. People have done
much work on this regarding the law of the land and the science of jurisprudence
and international law. It is reasonable for theistic psychologists to abide by
the results of this body of rational knowledge.
It is similar with the death penalty. Personal philosophies and creeds may vary
and disagree but in relation to theistic psychology the treatment of criminally
convicted individuals may be left up to the law of the land and the experts who
think these matters through and debate them with each other. Theistic
psychologists can throw useful light on many aspects of these issues, but in
general, they will abide by the reasonable conclusions of the specialists.
Obviously, it's different when an injustice is being practiced by a society and
encoded in the law. All reasonable people who have a strong sense of charity and
decency will want to work for change through all the reasonable means available.
Can they resort to terrorism?
The answer is, No.
One cannot rationally justify terrorism because it is an outward expression of
an inner evil.
No evil may be justified by rationally thinking people, or else if they do, they
become irrational and spiritually insane. They are preparing themselves for an
eternal tie to sordid and cruel hells within which they will be imprisoned
forever by their own lust for insanity, never wanting to let go no matter how
much they have to suffer from the torture of bigger devils than they are.
War, terrorism, killing, and destruction are possible only from intentions and
desires that are in the deep hells of the human race. The people who are in that
state of mind are so deep that they are unwilling to ever emerge into rational
consciousness and good. From that place in the human mind they are conjoined by
God into a community of hell. They see each other, they interact, they live
together, they suffer harsh conditions and worse of all, each others insane
tortures. All those who lust for a particular kind of depravity or injustice or
fantasy are gathered together by God into a community of their own. In this way
the human hells are organized geographically to correspond with the human
heavens but in corrupted or distorted form.
The heavens are also organized in this way by God so that each heavenly
community is composed of people who are alike in their ruling loves. For every
heavenly community there is a corresponding hellish community because everything
good and true from God has been distorted and corrupted in the history of the
human race. Each good and truth has its heavenly community in the human mind and
likewise each hellish community has its corrupted good and distorted truth.
Killing someone can therefore come from either an evil or a good motive.
Sometimes people take it upon themselves to kill for supposedly a good motive.
Just because they think or claim that their motive is good is no reason to
accept it as good since people with an evil motive can easily claim that they
have a good one. They may believe the motive is good when it is evil. This is
typical. When we are not listening to conscience or acting according to moral
principles we call good what is evil and evil what is good. Hence it is
necessary to maintain full contact with a rational understanding of Sacred
Scripture and a deep interest in studying the revelations in Divine Speech. This
is God talking to us and teaching us how to get to heaven. Without Divine truths
to pave our way and create our journey, we stay immersed in falsities that
justify our love for evil from which we then cannot ever be separated.
Abortion is also considered by many as a form of killing and everyone in this
country knows that abortion has been one of the most controversial, divisive,
and violent of all political disagreements this generation. Such is the passion
people feel for both sides. One side sees the inherent right of a woman to
choose whether or not she wants to proceed with the pregnancy. Another side sees
the inherent right of an unborn child to be protected from being deliberately
killed.
Theistic psychologists have some facts not available to others that are relevant
to this conflict. It is known that the human soul is immortal once created. It
is also known that moment of creation of a human soul by God is at conception,
prior to birth. God manages the growth process of the body through the soul.
Clearly, the soul has to be created at conception so that God has the
mechanism for making the fetus grow. When a woman decides to submit to an
abortion she agrees to putting an end to the particular soul she carries in the
fetus. But the soul is immortal. However the fetus doesn't have a mind of its
own before it is born and the lungs are opened. It then takes its first breath
and a mind is activated or born. From then on, second by second, the child's
body is bombarded by incoming sensory stimuli of which it is aware. The mind
organizes and feeds upon the order and property of this sensory input from the
physical world. This experience is what creates the conscious human mind that
can live in heaven to eternity. But without a mind, there is no personality,
there is no awareness, motivation or a single thought.
Hence the mother and doctor and legislator who approve of abortions agree to
putting an end to an immortal soul's right to a personality and consciousness.
The Writings tell us that the souls of unborn fetuses, once dead, are gathered
by God into a place of the human mind that is above individual consciousness,
thus above the highest heaven in our mind. In that highest state, souls are not
conscious individual human beings so that they can absorb the intense heat and
light of the Spiritual Sun where the Divine-Human abides in relation to the
human mind. This gathering place near the Spiritual Sun is called the heaven of
Human Internals. Just below this heaven is the Third Heaven of celestial angels
where we are in our mind when we elevate ourselves to the highest potential of
rational consciousness possible for human beings.
Many women, doctors, and legislators agree to abortion because they are unaware
of these facts revealed by God to humankind in the Writings of Swedenborg.
People who are unaware of appropriate rational information and believe false
things and do evils, are not spiritually responsible for what they think or do.
It's different in natural law for we cannot claim ignorance of the law as a
defense when reasonable people could have known about it. Spiritually only that
which we know can hurt us. Of course, if we ignore conscience, or ignore
religion, or ignore rational considerations, or Divine truths we know of, then
we are responsible for not knowing spiritual truths that reasonable people could
know.
To be spiritually responsible means that we will suffer bad consequences from
that act or from that irresponsible ignorance of truths. Such an attitude of
willfulness is a love from hell to which we are deeply connected. It is this
hellish love that will emerge from within once we hit the freedom roads in the
world of spirits and begin our eternal life in the loves we've brought with us
from our earthly life.
5.4
Spiritual Self-Witnessing
I first started using the self-witnessing methodology in 1971
while teaching social psychology (see here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonarticles.html ). Students were able to understand the threefold
self in terms of their affective, their cognitive, and their sensorimotor mind
or self. Several generations of student reports show that self-witnessing the
threefold self is an ordinary skill every normal person has acquired in the
course of growing up. Even children are capable of this to some extent. It
consists of self-monitoring one's feelings, thoughts, and sensations, i.e., the
threefold self. People are able to write down what they are feeling, what they
are thinking, and what they are sensing.
There might be a tendency to think that self-witnessing is
introspective, subjective, and non-behavioral. Actually self-witnessing is
observational, objective, empirical, and behavioral.
The method of self-witnessing is empirical and objective
because the individual has the anatomical and functional ability to observe the
lower part of the mind with the higher part. Just as we can observe in a mirror
how we stand and how we walk, and give an objective report of it, in the same
way we can observe from our rational mind what the sensory mind is doing,
thinking, sensing. The objective report we give of our self-witnessing is the
same objective report independent observers would give if they had access to our
feelings, thoughts, and sensations. But since this is not possible here on earth
we must rely on self-witnessing for objective data on the mind. And since we
observe ourselves as others would observe us, and as we would observe them,
self-witnessing is objective, not subjective. The subject matter or content is
subjective, or in the mind of one individual, but the observation method is
objective.
Self-witnessing yields objective and valid data by sampling
of one's feelings, thoughts, and sensations. All other methods available to
psychology are indirect and inferential, hence only partially accurate and valid
such as personality tests, self-reports, interviews, and videotaping.
Self-witnessing is the only method available for gathering objective data on
samples of one's feelings, thoughts, and sensations. Several years ago I have
introduced self-witnessing as a method that drivers can use to improve their
driving habits.
In theistic psychology this self-monitoring methodology of
the threefold self is called "spiritual self-witnessing." It is described in the
Writings of Swedenborg as "self-examination for regeneration." Self-witnessing
becomes "spiritual" when our purpose for doing it is character reformation that
is motivated by heavenly preparation (or "regeneration"). In other words,
we are trying to unlearn selfish traits and learn altruistic traits so that we
may develop a character that can live in the heavenly regions of the spiritual
world. This is called a spiritual motive because it has to do with a goal in the
spiritual world.
Spiritual self-witnessing is the self-monitoring of one's
threefold self in the daily events of life in order to discover
objectively when we are feeling selfishly and thinking irrationally.
The sequence
affective--->cognitive--->sensorimotor
is found everywhere in Swedenborg's Writings
|
AFFECTIVE---->COGNITIVE----->SENSORIMOTOR |
| Love |
Wisdom |
Use |
| Good |
Truth |
Appearance |
| Will |
Understanding |
Action |
| Intention |
Plan |
Execution |
| Source |
Cause |
Effect |
| Desire |
Belief |
Conduct |
| Spiritual |
Intellectual |
Sensual |
| Feeling |
Thinking |
Sensing |
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/already.html )
While it's fairly easy to monitor one's feelings and
thoughts, it is more difficult to recognize which ones are selfish and
irrational. This kind of critical thinking about oneself must be learned and
taught.
Psychology as a science has two research foundations. One is
physical measurement or description; the other is verbal responses. Personality
theory relies heavily on paper-and-pencil inventories, tests, and self-ratings.
If you took away these self-reports by subjects there would be very little left
of personality theory and research. In theistic psychology there is a heavy
reliance on self-witnessing methodology because no other technique is available
when we want to know what feelings, thoughts, and sensations are in the mind.
Behavioral psychology does maintain a focus on people's thoughts and feelings
and has not favored methods like self-witnessing. Cognitive science has had an
interest in thought processes, especially in computers and programming. They use
a technique called "think aloud protocols" which are transcripts of audio
recordings of an individual engaged in an expert task and speaking the thoughts
out loud. This approach has led Herbert Simon to create the first intelligent
computer operation -- playing chess, by translating into programming language
the thought protocols he obtained from chess players. There is also the
technique of "thought sampling" that is done clinical psychology.
Spiritual self-witnessing is specialized in that its purpose
is specifically to examine our thoughts and feelings all day long in order to
evaluate them within the context of our efforts at character reformation. The
term "character reformation" is often associated with correctional systems or
religious schools. In other words it applies to a situation where someone is
maladaptive and irrational, the focus being on correction or reformation. In
theistic psychology character reformation is used because of the recognition
that the human race today has evolved a character that is socially and
spiritually maladaptive. The scientific revelations in the Writings of
Swedenborg present both evidence and a rational account of how this negative
development has occurred in the human race. When this is recognized, the focus
necessarily becomes restorative and regenerative. Knowing the eternal
consequences of a maladaptive character intensifies the motive for providing
people with effective psychological techniques to reform or restore the
individual's character to a state of integrity and spiritual adaptiveness.
There is nothing 'preachy,' intolerant, or dogmatic about the
idea of character reformation as a central focus for theistic psychology. This
is a rational and responsible thing to do, assuming one adopts the positive bias
towards the scientific revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg. If one remains
in the negative bias one retains the impression that "character reformation" is
'preachy' or prescriptive. But it is actually strictly objective, given the
actual consequences of arriving in the spiritual world without having reformed
one's character. In that new state of life called being a "spirit" living in
rational ether the power of thoughts and feelings is far greater than anything
we can do in a physical body. An analogy might be the necessity for changing
one's thoughts and emotions when going to sleep, if you're having nightmares.
The experience can be so awful and scary and disturbing that we gladly apply
techniques we know to altering those thoughts and feelings, so the nightmares
can go away. In the spiritual world the mind is just as powerful as in
dreams.
Living in rational ether as rational minds, our thoughts and
feelings instantaneously produce changes in the immediate environment around us.
We can turn a beautiful garden into an inhospitable desert in the flick of a
thought. We need character integrity and stability to resist all the influences
around us that other spirits create. Character integrity is an affective state
but it requires an accompanying cognitive operation in order for the affective
state to be stable and to last. In the spiritual world this cognitive content is
supplied through instruction received by every "novitiate spirit." The capacity
to accept this instruction depends on the rationality our mind possesses.
Self-witnessing as a daily practice is a new way of living.
Through it, conscious awareness develops of all the things that otherwise would
remain sub-conscious, unattended. Without self-witnessing as a consistent
activity, how would it be possible to know the content of thoughts and the
quality and directionality of feelings? Self-witnessing is different from
self-monitoring and self-observation -- two terms used in psychology today.
Self-witnessing is more lie "self-examination," which the term used in the
Writings.
Self-examination is focused on evaluation by means of
"doctrine of life." This expression refers to an individual's principles by
which one lives and makes decisions in daily life. The doctrine of life is
learned from sacred scripture or instruction based on it. It requires rational
understanding of Divine revelation. The purpose of Divine revelation is always
to assist people in preparing for life in eternity, which means, undergoing the
effort and suffering involved in character reformation.
The suffering and pain of character reformation comes from
the action of giving up something cherished. This is why we resist character
reformation. We don't want to face that suffering. We want to hold on to what
gives us satisfaction, pleasure, and apparent self-sufficiency. These mechanisms
are inborn and inherited. Whatever they love to do, people call good, even when
it is bad. The alcoholic taking another drink before driving home knows it's
illegal and morally wrong, but the contentment and satisfaction involved in
being drunk supersedes all other principles of morality and decency that the
alcoholic possesses. This mechanisms is similar for all addictions.
Self-witnessing methodology of the threefold self involves
one's feelings or emotions, one's thoughts or reasonings, and one's sensory or
motor actions. It is within these three domains of behavior that the entire
human drama takes place, both here and the hereafter. Hindu writers of old had
access to sacred scripture that was transmitted to them by ancient civilizations
prior to character degradation in the human race. Hindu religious writings take
the point of view that the universe is like a dream. We are the dreamers, and if
we progress in character up building, we can awaken from the dream of life into
the discovery that we are Divine. Thus everyone is an illusion and there is only
one Divine. This perspective is different from theistic psychology where there
is an absolute duality maintained between God and creation, including human
beings. But it does recognize the idea that thoughts are more powerful than any
physical energy.
The awesome power of thoughts and feelings is not to be taken
lightly. Self-witnessing allows us to examine our thoughts and feelings in the
evaluative context of our principles of living or doctrine of life. As our
doctrine becomes more and more spiritual and rational, we can apply our latest
understanding to our willing and thinking all day long. The self-examination
goes deeper and deeper as we progress in character reformation. There are
specific spiritual laws which govern the developmental steps of character
reformation. Knowing these steps from scientific revelations, allows us to
cooperate with the built in mechanism and further our character reformation
until we are adequately prepared for facing eternity.
5.4.1
Self-Witnessing Literacy Skills
(based on the Daily Round Archives by Diane Nahl)
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s2000/banaag/file59.html
5.4.2
Cognitive Atlas: Keeping Track of Our Social Life
Part A: -Personal Demographic Information
Part B: Employment, Work, & Skills
Part C: Living Conditions
Part D: Student Role Behaviors
Part E: Schedule of Activities
Part F: Community Standing
Part C: Interaction Style
Part H: Registry Information
Part I: Informed Consent Statement
Part J: Your comments and recommendations on this Form
Part A:
Personal Demographic Information
Specify your "favorites"
in each of the following category:
|
1. Breakfast |
9. Cars |
17. Games |
|
2. Lunch |
10. Clothing Stores |
18. Local Public
Figures |
|
3. Dinner |
11. Beaches |
19. First Name For
Boy |
|
4. Drinks |
12. TV Programs |
20. First Name For
Girl |
|
5. Snacks |
13. Entertainers |
21. Tim of the Day |
|
6. Secret Snacks |
14. Movies |
22. Proverb,
Saying, or Quotations |
|
7. Music |
15. Books |
23. Other? Please
specify |
|
8. Authors |
16. Magazines |
|
Part B:
Employment, Work, & Skills
24. How many hours per
week do you work at a job?
25. What wages do you
earn?
26. What type of work is
it: Where, and what you do, or: what you’re expected to know how to do.
27. How long in this
job, and how long you expect to be in it.
28. List other work
you’ve done (paid or as a volunteer). Give title or describe duties and
indicate whether voluntary or paid.
29. List the skills
you’ve acquired over the years as a result of jobs you’ve had.
30. List the skills
you’ve acquired as a result of hobbies or interests.
31. List the skills you
intend to acquire and hopefully will.
32. List other skills or
talents you have.
Part C:
Living Conditions
33. Who do you live
with? (e.g., with a roommate in dorm; with spouse or friend or alone in own
apartment; etc.).
34. How do you get to
campus?
35. How long does it
take from door to door?
36-41. Rate your living
conditions in each of the following categories, giving a “1” for “top rank –
fully satisfactory” and a “5” for “lowest rank – fully unsatisfactory”:
36. Noise level: give
rating and an explanation.
37. Cleanliness and
appearance: give rating and explanation
38. Amount of personal
space available: give rating and explanation.
3
39. Facilities and
services: give rating and explanation.
40. Neighborhood: give
rating and explanation.
41. Other? Describe,
give rating and explanation.
Part D. Student Role
Behaviors
42-48. Take a minute to
figure out how many people you’ve talked to more than five times this
semester on campus, in each of the following categories:
42. Other students.
43. Faculty.
44. Graduate T.A.’s
45. Office staff.
46. University
administrators (deans, program directors)
47. Maintenance staff
(custodians, security, gardeners)
48. Other?
49-57.
Rate your experiences with each of the following items giving each a
score of “1” for “tops” and “5” for “the bottom”:
49. My overall behavior
in my best course this semester: name course and give rating.
50. My overall
interaction with faculty this semester: give rating and explanation.
51. My overall
interaction with university officials: give rating and explanation.
52. My overall
interaction with student administrators: give rating and explanation.
53. My overall
interaction with office staff: give rating and explanation.
54. My overall
interaction with the people I work with presently: explain.
55. My overall
interaction with my immediate family: rating and explanation.
56. My overall
interaction with my extended family: rate and explain.
57. Others you’d like to
mention?
58-68. Do any of the
following observations definitely apply to you? Answer Yes or No and add
explanation:
58. Often feeling too
sleepy to pay good attention to lecture in class.
59. Often feeling too
tired to study.
60. Often feeling too
tired to go to work, but going anyway.
61. Often feeling too
sick or unwell to enjoy life thoroughly.
62. Often feeling
frustrated and confused in a course to the extent that you
think you’re getting nothing out of
it.
63. Often feeling lucky
and privileged to be a college student.
64. Often having
difficulty getting up in the morning.
65. Often feeling too
hungry on campus to have enthusiasm and zest.
66. Often feeling
excited and stimulated by the contents of the course or
assigned readings.
67. Often feeling too
preoccupied with personal matters to be able to function well.
68. Please specify any
others you’d like to mention.
69-73.
Under what conditions do you do your schoolwork? List the proportion of
time for each category and add
explanation. Proportions in
69-73 should add up to 100%.
69. With someone else
present in your room.
70. Alone in a room.
71. In the library or
reading room.
72. Outdoors (on and off
campus).
73. Other?
74-92.
The following table will help you figure out how you spend your time.
First, fill in this table, then transfer the results, one by one, on cards 74
–92,
adding an explanation on each.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACTIVITY
NUMBER OF HOURS SPENT LAST WEEK DURING
------------------------
|
|
WEEKDAYS |
2 WEEK END DAYS |
|
74. Sleeping and
resting |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
75. Eating snacks |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
76. Preparing food |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
77. Shopping for
food |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
78. All other
shopping |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
79. Doing school
work |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
80. Being in
classes and labs |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
81. Getting to and
from places |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
82. Gong out and
dating |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
83. Cleaning and
fixing things |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
84. Socializing on
the phone |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
85. Watching TV |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
86. Face-to-face
socializing |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
87. Being on the
job |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
88. Sports and
physical activity |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
89. Reading
Newspapers |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
90. Doing nothing |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
91. Others you’d
like to mention |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
|
92. Everything else
left over |
-------------------- |
-------------------- |
Note: YOUR TOTAL FOR
74-92 should add up to approximately 120 for the 5 week days and 48 for the 2
week end days.
Part F: Community Standing
93-95. List your
recommendations for each of the following categories:
93. What eating places
would you recommend to visiting friends or family of your parents?
94. What eating places
would your parents recommend to them?
95. Which bank would you
recommend to them? And why?
96-99. Who would you
recommend for each of the following category of services:
|
96. Physician |
100. Masseuse |
104. Insurance agent |
|
97. Dentist |
101. Auto mechanic |
105. Accountant |
|
98. Chiropractor |
102. Real estate
agent |
106. Baby sitter |
|
99. Acupuncturist |
103. Lawyer |
107. Hair dresser |
|
108. Religious
advisor |
109. Any others
you’d like to mention |
|
110. When is the last
time you participated in a political campaign? Explain
the extent of your involvement.
111. Did anyone else you
know participate? Explain.
112. Have you ever
served as an officer of an organization, club, etc.? Explain.
113. Have you ever been
awarded any prizes, honors, etc. by any group? Describe.
114. Who would you ask
for a reference for a job? Names persons and their occupations.
Part G: Interaction
Style
115-123.Please think
back to an episode or event that occurred within the last hour from this
moment. The event may be something you did, thought, realized, or noticed,
either perfectly ordinary or not.
115. Describe the event
(i.e. what you did, saw, and noticed).
116. Date today and day
of the week.
117. Time.
118. Place.
119. Participants.
120. Circumstances
leading up to the event.
121. Sensations,
emotions, physical reactions.
122. Interior Dialog
(what you said to yourself; use quotations you can remember).
123. Annotations (your
comments on this now that you’ve reported it and see it
in perspective).
124-127.Now take stock
of yourself and answer according to your current observations.
124. Mention a few
things that are on your mind right now.
125. How do you feel?
Describe your physical state: mention details about your aches and pains, etc.
126. Name 5 things you’d
like to have more of.
127. Name 5 things you’d
like to be free of.
128. List some
activities you regularly do with another person. Describe the activities and
relationship of person to you.
129. Now list some other
persons and describe the activities you regularly do with them.
130. List what
activities you’ve done for others in the past two weeks. Describe activities
and relationship of persons to you.
131-139. Think back over
the past two weeks and indicate which of the following have been daily
activities or occurrences for
you.
131. Praying: when,
what, to whom, and how often?
132. Wishing: what for?
133. Suffering: when,
and what you do about it?
134. Sinning: what do
you do after?
135. Regretting
something: what?
136. Getting mad: who
did you blame it on?
137. Curiosity: what
about?
138. Other?
139. Talking to yourself
about what you said to someone or what someone said
to you: what did you resolve to
do?
140-141. Think of the last time someone
said each of the following to you. Report: (i) relationship of person to you;
(ii) setting;
(iii)
your approximate reply.
140. What did you do
today?
141. What’re you doing
these days?
142. Other?
143-145. Think of the last time you said
each of the following to someone. Report: (i) relationship of person to you;
(ii) setting;
(iii)
what did happen?
143. “Guess what
happened today?”
144. “Good for you.”
145. Other?
146-150. Think of the
last time you had a really good….
146. Laugh. (what
happened?)
147. Cry. (why?)
148. Scare. (what did
you imagine?)
149. Time. (describe)
150. Other?
Part H: Registry
Information
151. Name, permanent
address, and telephone number.
152. Age.
153. Sex.
154. Ethnic background.
155. Year.
156. Semester.
157. Major.
158. How many semesters
at UH?
159. Courses you’ve
taken this semester.
160. Schools you’ve
attended.
16l. Places on Oahu
you’ve visited (include dates and length of time).
162. Previous residences
not on Oahu (place and date).
|
|
|
|
PART
|
|
|
|
|
A.
Demographic Information
(Questions 1-23) |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
B. Employment, Work, and Skills
(Questions 24-32) |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
C. Living Conditions
(Questions 33-41) |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
D. Student Role Behavior
(Questions 42-73) |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
E. Schedule of Activities
(Questions 74-92) |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
F. Community Standing
(Questions 93-114) |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
G. Interaction Style
(Questions 115-150) |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
H. Registry Information
(Questions 151-162 |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
I. Your Comments
(Questions 163-164 |
-------------- |
-------------- |
-------------- |
| |
|
|
|
|
5.4.3
Self-description Profile
Circle the number that is most accurate of you:
o = the statement is never true of me
1 = the statement is rarely true of me
2 = the statement is regularly true of me
3 = the statement is particularly true of me
1. If you want to lose weight you have to eat everything only moderately.
0 1 2 3
2. Some people get me really upset and I feel so angry that I want to do
something but I have learned to control my temper
0 1 2 3
3. If I see someone that I don’t want to see or someone that is really nosy,
I avoid them by going through another path.
0 1 2 3
4. I carry kleenex around me all the time because my nose is always runny.
0 1 2 3
5. My umbrella is very important to me because the rain here in Honolulu
especially in Manoa is so unpredictable
that you need to be prepared all the time.
0 1 2 3
6. I wear my sun glasses a lot so I carry t around with me all the time.
0 1 2 3
7. I always carry my checkbook because I’m one person that can go through
checks like water.
0 1 2 3
8. I usually do not give much thought to my inner dialogs and various daily
activities, which occur throughout each
day’s event.
0 1 2 3
9. I often say to myself “Hurry up stupid!” when I am taking longer to
complete a task than I had originally expected to.
0 1 2 3
10. I love to go to the beach to bask in the sunlight and read a good book or
magazine, go for a swim, and to watch
people.
0 1 2 3
11. I fel uncomfortable in an elevator being with so many strangers in such a
limited area of space.
0 1 2 3
12. My boyfrield (or: girlfriend) and I love to go to the movies and eat
popcorn when there is an especially good
movie playing.
0 1 2 3
13. I love to window-shop and see what’s new in the fashion world
0 1 2 3
14. My family and I enjoy dining out at least once a week--it breaks the
monotony of the week.
0 1 2 3
15. I enjoy small gatherings with just a few close friends, rather than
really large parties.
0 1 2 3
16. Some mornings when I get up I look horrible.
0 1 2 3
17. I often worry too much or think too hard about my problems in this way I
enlarge the problems.
0 1 2 3
18. Like everyone else, I want to help and get involved with whatever
concerns me, but I try not to get too involved
unless I am asked to do so.
0 1 2 3
19. I believe it is necessary to confide in others and to have others confide
in you.
0 1 2 3
20. I personally feel that the less things a person feels that he has to hide
about himself, the better off he is.
0 1 2 3
21. I see my friends only occasionally so that when we do meet we try ot
catch upo on news about each other in
short period of time.
0 1 2 3
22. Feelings such as happiness change as a person’s goals and outlook on life
change, so I wish I had more time
to really know my friends again.
0 1 2 3
23. Night time is always the time of loneliness but as long as I study I will
be fine.
0 1 2 3
24. I love to dream. It’s like at night I go to bed to go home and dream
about my friends and family back home.
0 1 2 3
25. When I feel I’ve eaten too much and haven’t exercise in awhile, I say to
myself, “I ought to exercise. My
stomach is protruding.’
0 1 2 3
26. Whenever I wuld worry about something I say to myself, ‘I’m just not
going to worry about it’ in order to ease
my mind.
0 1 2 3
27. I feel heavy and chubby and my chin feels double.
0 1 2 3
28. I am very outgoing on a one-to-one basis with people.
0 1 2 3
29. In situations where I must speak in front of large groups, I freeze up
and become insecure and shy.
0 1 2 3
30. I enjoy listening and talking to people.
0 1 2 3
31. People seem to come to me for advice or comforting in troubled times
0 1 2 3
32. I have a good sense of humor and smile and laugh readily and often.
0 1 2 3
33. In social situations, especially with people I am comfortable with, I
talk a lot and joke around all the time.
0 1 2 3
34. I think of myself as honest, responsible, reliable, and casual.
0 1 2 3
35. I hope to acquire a degree in elementary education B.A.
0 1 2 3
36. I hope to become a teacher of an elementary school, own my own
house,maybe get married.
0 1 2 3
37. I don’t believe in any one religion but I do believe in God.
0 1 2 3
38. I think everyone was put on this earth for a certain purpose or reason
and it’s everyone’s goal to seek his/her purpose for living.
0 1 2 3
39. I like to go to different beaches all the time, with friends and just by
myself.
0 1 2 3
40. Even if it takes me 10 years, someday I will get a degree.
0 1 2 3
41. One thing that I have noticed as I have grown older, I have less duties
and responsibilities put upon me.
0 1 2 3
42. I hate yogurt.
0 1 2 3
43. I hate mushrooms
0 1 2 3
44. One of my ambitions is to be a pro-baseball player.
0 1 2 3
45. I always get depressed cause I always somehow make my problems bigger
than they are and dwell upon
them for long periods of time.
0 1 2 3
46. One of my accomplishments is learning to play the violin.
0 1 2 3
47. I see almost everyone doing the same thing as me.
0 1 2 3
48. I know I can get an A in this class if I really try hard.
0 1 2 3
49. I get off my bed and discover that all my bed sheets are lying on the
floor.
0 1 2 3
50. I hate getting up in the morning.
0 1 2 3
51. I won’t answer the phone.
0 1 2 3
52. I usually keep my hair rather short and I notice that it’s pst my
neckline.
0 1 2 3
53. In the morning, it always takes me a long time to decide what to wear
because I have so much clothes.
0 1 2 3
54. I think I’m the happiest person in the world.
0 1 2 3
55. I cannot live without these rollers.
0 1 2 3
56. In the morning, when I brush my teeth it really refreshes me and makes me
feel good.
0 1 2 3
57. I have to get rid of some of my clothes.
0 1 2 3
58. Whenever I wear something, I like to have the colors coordinated and
match so that it will look nice.
0 1 2 3
59. My skin is quite smooth but occasionally I’ll get a pimple and I really
worry about that because I don’t like to
have pimples.
0 1 2 3
60. My friends and I usually go down to Hotel Street on weekends or after a
hard night of studying to have fun.
0 1 2 3
5.4.4 Origin and
Analysis of Dreams
This night I also observed that there were spirits who represented dreams,
and that this was their life whilst man is asleep; and that when many persons
are dreamed of, each of those spirits took the role of one person. I
manifestly discovered this when I awoke, for I then spoke for quite a time
with those who acted the part of this or that person. The phantasies of evil
spirits are dire and cruel, the spirits taking delight in cruelly treating
men; in order that I might perceive this, their savagery was continued for
some time after I awoke, nor could they desist. (SE 180)
5.4.4.1
Swedenborg's Journal of Dreams
5.5 The Substitution Technique
Self-witnessing
generates sampling data of one's mental operations moment by moment. This method
of data gathering on oneself is essential for character reformation, as
discussed in other sections. But by itself it would not be enough for theistic
psychology which must be based on Divinely revealed facts about what we cannot
observe about ourselves. These scientific revelations are embedded or hidden
within the literal-historical-poetic meaning of sacred scripture. The attempt to
have science accept "Creationism" as equivalent scientifically to evolution
theory, illustrates the confusion that results when the literal meaning of
sacred scripture is taken as historical and scientifically descriptive. As shown
in the later revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg (18th century), sacred
scripture is Divine Speech and this language is spiritual as well as natural.
The literal meaning is natural and intended for religion, but the hidden
spiritual meaning is scientific and intended for theistic science and
psychology.
When the code of correspondences is applied to Divine Speech
in the natural level, we are able to identify and describe the spiritual meaning
within it. This systematic extraction process allows theistic psychology
research the result of which is the gradual, orderly, and cumulative knowledge
of the mental world, its growth and its conscious rational effective management.
For instance if we apply this extraction technique to the Genesis "creation"
story, we discover that the 11 Chapters involved in the Old Testament describe
the creation of the new mind, the regenerated mind which is a heavenly mind that
can live in heaven. In other words the creation story in Genesis is not a
historical account in the literal sense but a figurative account of the mental
development for character reformation, also called "salvation" (see Section on
Religious Behaviorism below). The Writings give a word
by word and verse by verse analysis of Genesis, Exodus, the
Book of Revelations, and major parts of the Psalms, the Books of
the Prophets, and the remaining Books of Moses.
(to be continued)
(based on Chapters 1 and 2 of Volume 2 of another book--see:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v2ch1-nonduality.html
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v2ch2-nonduality.html
5.5.1
The Parallelism Technique
5.6 Extracting
Dualist Concepts From Swedenborg's Writings
Here is a table showing some of the dualist
concepts for psychology and biology that I extracted from Swedenborg's
12-volume work called Arcana Coelestia
(AC) and from Divine Providence
(DP). Similar extractions are possible from Swedenborg's other works.
Arcana Coelestia Numbers
(AC)
|
Divine Providence Numbers
(DP)
|
Cognitive
science |
1460; 1636;
1725; 3035; 3128; 3224; 3512;5075; 6199; 8885 |
Abortion |
324 |
| Dream Analysis |
6319 |
Classical
conditioning |
118 |
| Scientific dualism |
8882; 8904 |
Darwinism |
183; 206; 232; 233; 298 |
Ethno-
methodology |
3092; 3167 |
Emotional
contagion |
296; 327 |
| Gender differences |
1468; 1469; 1484 |
Gestalt
psychology |
279; 314 |
| Genetic culture |
6323; 6344 |
Humanism |
117 |
| Genetics |
3469; 8042 |
Individual
differences |
298; 327 |
| Interior memory |
1504; 2256; 2474; 2492;
3223; 9683 |
Laws of learning |
227; 326 |
Neuro-
physiology |
2252; 2786; 2796; 4325;
4410; 4326; 6200 |
Mental health |
2; 265 |
| Pedagogy |
1255; 1495; 1542; 1895;
2533; 5126; 6368; 10057; 10076 |
Neuro-
physiology |
195; 220; 297; 314; 319;
379 |
| Phenomenology |
1526; 1532; 1542; 2994 |
Psycho-
biology |
181; 195; 196; 227; 279;
308; 314; 319; 326 |
| Pragmatism |
1163; 2475 |
Spiritual psychology
& empiricism |
153; 156; 168; 181; 196;
197; 209; 265; 278; 279; 298; 299 |
| Psychobiology |
1533; 2016; 2025; 2796;
3161 |
Psychology
& religion |
254; 299; 300; 326; 327 |
| Psychotherapy |
1440; 1504; 1584; 1585;
1947; 2260; 2474; 2733; 2892; 3223; 3509; 4063; 5044; 6225; 6324; 5044;
8478 |
Unconscious |
168; 184; 206; 251; 296 |
| Synechdoche |
2209 |
|
|
| Vertical community |
2556; 3110; 3131; 4067;
5861; 6193 |
|
|
This listing represents a conceptual
identification I was able to make between dualist science in Swedenborg and
contemporary concepts in psychology and social science. In the future, I
intend to develop the theoretical rationales that justify these
identifications so that it may be confirmed by consensus.
The next segment is a quote from:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v1ch1-nonduality.html
How was
Swedenborg’s understanding to be enlightened so that he could rationally and
scientifically describe reality and God in relation to the human race?
The
answer is surprisingly simple: Swedenborg had to be given access to a
spiritual laboratory so that he may conduct his experimental and empirical
observations by which he might discover the rational truths of reality and God
in relation to human beings.
These
laboratory facilities were given him as part of the Divine mission, which is
why Swedenborg wrote that the Writings represent the greatest miracle and
wonder ever bestowed upon the human race by God’s Love. Swedenborg’s
experiments with spirit subjects and geographical explorations in the
spiritual world were effected through the intermediary of many people in the
spiritual world. The people who inhabit the celestial regions in their mind
are called angels and have many powers that Swedenborg did not have, being
still a man on earth. These angels intervened of his behalf, protected him
from harm, and arranged for conditions Swedenborg needed to make his
observations and to write them down in a natural language (Neo-Latin and
Swedish). He not only wrote down what happened but was also given the capacity
to provide a scientific and theological context for his observations and
reports. Thus, nothing is wanting in the Writings for fulfilling its role as
the greatest intellectual boon the human race has ever received, or will ever
receive again.
Within a
matter of a few weeks since the Divine-Human’s appearance to Swedenborg, he began to
experience new perceptions as he was reading the Bible. His practiced genius
was able to make detailed indexes of the Holy Book which he read in the
original Hebrew and Greek. To his amazement he discovered that within the
literal meaning of the Old and New Testaments there lay hidden a spiritual
meaning that was not apparent to the reader until each word and phrase was
taken as a correspondence for some deeper spiritual meaning. For example, by
collating many corresponding passages from both Testaments, Swedenborg showed
how any rational and educated person could discover the spiritual message in
each verse. The content of these spiritual meanings hidden within the
literal had to do with the rational exposition of reality and God in relation
to the human race.
This
systematic work of discovery was most important and impressive, and will be a
benefit to humankind for all the ages to come. And yet, this work would not
have been sufficient to constitute the final, total, and thus last, Divine
Revelation by which everything the human race can know and understand. There
also had to be a science to it. Where was the science of it? Extracting a
rational system from historical Divine works in the Bible is admirable, but it
is not a scientific work. The only way Swedenborg could produce a
scientific report of the spiritual world was to be there when he describes it!
This was
granted to him by Divine intervention as the greatest miracle in human
history, according to Swedenborg's own estimation. Quoting from the Writings:
As regards spirits and angels in general, all of whom
are the souls of people living on after the death of the body, they possess
far more perfect sensory powers than men, that is, the powers of sight,
hearing, smell, and touch, but not of taste. Spirits however are not able,
and angels are even less able, to see anything whatever in the world with
their sight, that is, with the sight of the spirit. For the light of the
world, or of the sun, is to them as pitch darkness, just as man cannot with
his sight, that is, with the sight of the body, see anything whatever in the
next life; for to him the light of heaven, or the Divine-Human's heavenly light, is
as pitch darkness.
[2] Nevertheless, when it pleases the Divine-Human, spirits
and angels are able to see the things that exist in the world through the
eyes of one in the world, though the Divine-Human does not allow such a thing to
happen with anyone except someone for whom the Divine-Human makes it possible to
converse with spirits and angels, and to be together with them. Through my
own eyes they have been allowed to see the things that are in the world, and
to see them as plainly as I myself saw them, and also to hear the people
talking to me. On occasions it has come about that through me some have seen
their friends whom they had had during their lifetime, as present then as
formerly; and at this they have been dumbfounded. They have also seen their
married partners and their children, and have wished me to tell them that
they were present and could see them, and to report about their state in the
next life. But I was forbidden to tell this to them and to reveal to them
that they were seen as described, the reason for this being that they would
have said I was insane or would have thought that such reports were
delirious wanderings of the mind. For I knew very well that although they
would say with their lips that spirits exist and that the dead have risen,
they would still not believe it in their hearts.
[3] When my interior sight was first opened and
through my eyes they saw the world and what was in it, spirits and angels
were so astonished that they said it was the greatest miracle of all time,
and a new found joy entered into them that in this way a communication now
existed of earth with heaven, and of heaven with earth. This delight lasted
for several months, but after that it became commonplace, and now they do
not wonder at it at all. I have been informed that spirits and angels
present with other people do not see anything at all of things in the world,
but merely perceive the thoughts and affections of those with whom they are
present.
[4] From these considerations it has become clear that
man was created in such a way that while living on earth among men he might
live at the same time in heaven among angels, and vice versa. He was so
created that heaven and earth might co-exist and act as one, with men
knowing what was going on in heaven and angels what was going on in the
world. And when they departed the earthly life men might accordingly pass
from the Divine-Human's kingdom on earth into the Divine-Human's kingdom in the heavens,
passing not as into a different kingdom, but as into the same one in which
they had been when they lived in the body. But because man has become so
bodily-minded he has closed heaven against himself. (AC 1880)
5.6.1
Full Text Searching of the Writings Online
The Writings of Swedenborg are on the Web and on CD with full text Boolean
searching provided:
theheavenlydoctrines.org/dtSearch.html
Searching the Writings is a convenient and effective method for extractive
research in theistic psychology, as discussed at the beginning of Chapter 5. I
use keyword searching to find Numbers in the Writings that discuss a particular
topic I'm thinking or writing about. Boolean operators are very useful to limit
the search by specifying what aspects of the topic I'm interested in at the
time. For instance, suppose I want to know what the Writings say about zzzx
5.6.2 Indexical Concordance Technique: The
Writings vs. the Web
Prior work on this topic may be consulted for an expanded view:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/updates/lee/Section%207.2.html
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s2000/banaag/file53.html (by Diane Nahl)
Table showing the frequency of occurrence of certain concepts in the Writings
and on the Web in April 2004:
| |
Numbers in the Writings in thousands |
The Writings
Top 20 Ranks |
The Web
Top 20 Ranks |
Number of Web Pages in millions |
| Lord |
22 |
1st |
7th |
33 |
| Love |
13 |
2nd |
2nd |
124 |
| Divine |
12 |
3rd |
14th |
14 |
| Church |
12 |
4th |
6th |
44 |
| God |
10 |
5th |
5th |
61 |
| Human |
7 |
6th |
4th |
85 |
| Hell |
6 |
7th |
10th |
17 |
| Wisdom |
5 |
8th |
13th |
10 |
| Doctrine |
4 |
9th |
15th |
4 |
| Marriage |
2 |
10th |
9th |
20 |
| Wife |
2 |
11th |
8th |
31 |
| Heaven |
1 |
12th |
11th |
16 |
| Husband |
1 |
13th |
12th |
14 |
| Sex |
1/2 |
14th |
1st |
227 |
| Money |
1/10 |
15th |
3rd |
107 |
There is a good agreement between the Writings and the Web on the top 6
most frequently occurring concepts: Lord, Love, Divine, Church, God, and
Human. In other words God tends to be the most frequently discussed idea in
both the Writings and The Web today. Quite remarkable! There is a marked
disagreement regarding the concepts of Sex and Money: they are the least
discussed among the top 15 in the Writings but the most discussed on the Web.
This also makes sense! There is also good agreement regarding the concepts of
Heaven, Hell, Marriage, wife, and Husband, which are among the popular topics.
5.7 The Scientific Meaning of the Ten
Commandments
The Ten Commandments are significant in human history because they were
communicated to the human race by God Himself rather than through the
intermediary of a prophet. Swedenborg points out that most of the Commandments
were known to various nations in Asia and the Middle East and often formed part
of their legal code. Swedenborg points out that no society or kingdom could have
survived for any length of time had there not been legal prohibitions against
murder, theft, adultery, and false witness. The fact that these prohibitions are
mentioned later as part of the Divinely Spoken Ten Commandments indicates to the
world that these are not merely human laws but Divine as well. In other words,
when you break these prohibitions you're not only accountable to secular
government but to God and the afterlife.
It is part of the religious belief system that if you break God's Commandments
you are sinning and sin always leads to spiritual death or eternal hell.
This sounds like a very harsh Divine retribution that needs to be interpreted
rationally in order to keep it harmonious with the idea of God as Divine Love
for whom it is impossible to feel angry or the desire to punish. Even mere human
justice recognizes that stealing is not like murder, and adultery does not
deserve life in prison, and even less, eternity in hell. The way to create this
rational harmony is by investigating the scientific sense of the Ten
Commandments. When this is done it becomes very clear that God does not do any
punishing but that the punishment is an automatic consequence of the behavior of
breaking the prohibitions in the Commandments.
We need to understand the exact mechanism of this automatic built-in negative
consequence system of Divine management. We will examine the scientific sense of
the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. Since these verse are Divine Speech
we already know that it will have several layers of meaning as the Divine Speech
filters down from the highest heaven in our mind to the natural mind which is
the locus of our conscious awareness while we are tied to the physical body on
earth. When we read the literal text of the Ten Commandments we are focusing on
the natural and historical meaning, which is similar to the laws of all
civilized societies. In this sense there is no Divinity in the Ten Commandments
and the Old Testament version and the legal statutes of countries appear
similar.
In order therefore to see where the Divinity lies in the Ten Commandments, we
need to acknowledge it, first, as Sacred Scripture and Divine Speech, which is
adopting the positive bias. Second, we then need to apply what has been revealed
in the Wirings of Swedenborg about the code of correspondences in which all
Sacred Scripture is written. By doing this we are slowly and gradually climbing
up the influx ladder and reconstructing the scientific meaning of each
Commandment. As a result we discover what God says about the scientific
mechanism He uses to oversee and manage our spiritual development in preparation
for heavenly life. The scientific sense of each Commandment will tell us how the
mind is influenced by obeying or disobeying it. These consequences determine the
physiology of our mind and therefore the conditions of life our mind can support
in the afterlife. Such as our mind is, such is our destiny in eternity, whether
in heaven or in hell. Hell is not a punishment for sin but a way of life
determined by people's loves, or lusts and cupidities. These affective
operations make the mind such as it is.
Quoting the Writings:
The reason why the Ten Commandments in their spiritual and celestial senses
contain in universal form all the commandments relating to doctrine and life,
and so the whole of faith and charity, is that the literal sense of the Word
in every single detail, both generally and in every part, conceals two inner
senses, one called spiritual, the other celestial. And these senses contain
Divine truth with its own light and Divine goodness with its own heat. Now
since the Word is like this both generally and in every part, each of the Ten
Commandments must be explained in those three senses, the natural, the
spiritual and the celestial. The nature of the Word has already been shown to
be like this by the demonstrations given in the chapter on the Sacred
Scripture or the Word (193-208 above). (TCR 289)
In other words, the Ten Commandments, being Divine Speech as Sacred Scripture,
contain layers of meaning, or "inner senses," that can be reconstructed. In the
Writings the layers of meaning of Sacred Scripture are categorized into three
distinct degrees called natural, spiritual, and celestial. These three degrees
correspond to three levels of thinking about spirituality (see the explanations
in my
Moses book). These three degrees of meaning correspond to the three heavens
in every person's mind, each heaven containing its own meaning. Divine Speech
filters down through these three heavens, and those who are in each heaven
understand only that meaning which corresponds to that level of mentality. We
can gain some understanding of each of these levels of meaning because our
natural mind is capable of interior perception through higher correspondences
(see xx).
Quoting the next Number in the Writings:
No one who is ignorant of the nature of the Word can have the slightest
idea that infinity is contained in its details, that is to say, that its
contents are countless, so that not even the angels can exhaust them. Anything
found there can be compared to a seed, which planted in the ground can grow
into a great tree, and produce an abundance of seeds; these again produce
similar trees to form a garden, and their seeds in turn form other gardens,
and so on to infinity. The Word of the Divine-Human is like this in its details, and
such above all are the Ten Commandments. For since they teach love to the
Divine-Human
and love towards the neighbor, they are a short summary of the whole Word.
The Divine-Human also shows that the Word is like this by a comparison:
The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted
in his land. This seed is smaller than all other seeds; but when it has
grown up, it is larger than any plant, and it becomes a tree, so that the
birds of the sky come and nest in its branches. Matt. 13:31, 32; Mark 4:31,
32; Luke 13:18, 19; cf. also Ezek. 17:2-8.
The fact that such an infinity of spiritual seeds or truths lies in the
Word, can be established from the wisdom of the angels, the whole of which is
derived from the Word, In their case wisdom goes on growing for ever. The
wiser they become, the more clearly do they see that wisdom has no end; and
they perceive that they are merely at its entrance, and they cannot reach even
the minutest part of the Divine-Human's Divine wisdom. They call this bottomless. Now
since this is the source of the Word, coming as it does from the Divine-Human, it is
plain that all its details contain a sort of infinity. (TCR 290)
We are given some fascinating details here about the construction of the human
mind. "Angels" refers to the level of our feeling and thinking in the celestial
portion of our mind. It is said above that the source of our rationality and
intelligence at this highest level of human potential, is "the Word" or Divine
Speech in the form of written Sacred Scripture. Divine Speech is the source of
all truths which form our rationality and intelligence. Our ability to think
rationally and with wisdom comes from appropriating for ourselves truths or
meanings we pick up from reading Sacred Scripture. But since there are three
distinct degrees of meaning in Sacred Scripture, the level of rationality we
form through it depends on which layer of meaning we focus on and understand.
Each word of each Commandment contains infinite truths for building our
intelligence and rationality endlessly to eternity.
5.7.1
First Commandment: God is the Source of
Everything
Continuing with the next Number from the Writings:
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
"There is not to be any other God before my face'"
These are the words of the first commandment (Exod. 20:3; Deut. 5:7). Their
ordinary meaning in the natural or literal sense is that idols are not to be
worshipped (...) (TCR 291)
This commandment 'There is not to be any other God before my face' also
means in the natural sense that no human being, alive or dead, is to be
worshipped as a god, another practice found in Asia and various surrounding
countries. (...) (TCR 292)
In the natural or literal sense this commandment also means that no one is
to be loved above all except God, nor anything except what comes from God.
This too agrees with the Divine-Human's words (Matt. 22:37-39; Luke 10:25-28). Anyone
or anything which is loved above all is, to the lover, God and divine. For
instance, if anyone loves himself or the world above all else, then he or the
world is his own god. This is why such people do not in their hearts
acknowledge any God. They are therefore linked with like minds in hell, where
all are gathered who have loved themselves or the world above all. (TCR 293)
The literal sense of the First Commandment tells us that we are not love
things of this world above the things of the spiritual world. When we think of
the scientific sense as to why we should feel this way it becomes clear that
loving natural things above spiritual things involves tying ourselves down to
lower forms of mental states. For instance, when our love for eating is greater
than our love for staying healthy, we are in trouble. I heard on the news the
other day that there are 40 million overweight people in the U.S. and there is a
rising incidence of killer diseases associated with being overweight--high
cholesterol, heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, as well as
lowered functioning and productivity.
Another example is the rising incidence of the spread of sexually transmitted
diseases when people's promiscuous or addictive love for sex is greater than their love for prudence
or their love for one of the sex (monogamy--see Section xx).
It's not that promiscuous and unsafe sex is a sin that God punishes, as some
religious people believe, but that having unsafe sex as part of a promiscuous
sub-culture is elevating the love of sex above the love of prudence and
monogamy (love of one of the sex).
When we place the love of God to the highest rank in our motivational system,
we still love and enjoy food and sex, possibly more than others, but we moderate
the love of sex and food by means of the love of God. To love God means to obey
God's Commandments. By doing this we are rearranging our motivational hierarchy
to agree with the highest intelligence and truth that our mind is capable of.
When we subordinate all our loves to the love of God, we exercise prudence,
wisdom, rationality, and compassion in all our behaviors every day--food
behavior, sexual behavior, business, relationships, entertainment.
From a scientific perspective we can see that God doesn't desire that we love
Him out of Divine pride or glory. Commandments are for our sake, not His. God is
not only our Creator but also our Manager, Therapist, and Co-participant in our
thinking, feeling, and acting, arranging all things in the environment for the
benefit of our regeneration or spiritual development. God's purpose is to
elevate our mind into our heaven where we can live in happiness and protection
forever. What happens when we disregard professional rules and follow our own
ideas when mixing hazardous chemicals or explosives? Boom! We know this, so we
follow correct procedures and live. It is the same with the Commandments.
Quoting the next Number:
The spiritual sense of this commandment is that no other God is to be
worshipped except the Divine-Human Jesus Christ, because He is Jehovah, who came into
the world and carried out the redemption, without which no man, nor any angel,
could have been saved. The following passages in the Word show that there is
no other God beside Him.
On that day it will be said, Behold, He is our God, whom we have awaited
to free us. He is Jehovah, whom we have awaited; let us exult and rejoice in
His salvation. Isa. 25:9. (...)
Am I not Jehovah, and there is no other God beside me? There is no
righteous God and Savior beside me. Isa. 45:21, 22.
I am Jehovah, and there is no Savior beside me. Isa. 43:11; Hosea 13:4.
(...)
A child is born for us, a son is given to us, whose name is Wonderful,
Counselor, God, Hero, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace. Isa.
9:6. (...)
We are in truth, in Jesus Christ. He is the true God and everlasting
life. My sons, beware of idols. 1 John 5:20, 21.
These passages plainly show that the Divine-Human our Savior is Jehovah Himself,
who is at once the Creator, the Redeemer and the Regenerator. This is the
spiritual sense of this commandment. (TCR 294)
This passages identifies the "spiritual sense" of the First Commandment in terms
of the literal historical meaning of the Old and New Testaments. The literal
meaning of Sacred Scripture serves for religion (see Section xx). This is a
necessary consequence of the filtering of Divine Speech down to the natural mind
dealing with the conditions and events of this world. It is called here the
"spiritual sense" of the First Commandment because it depends on putting
together various passages in the Old and New Testaments where the historical
identity of the Incarnate God is specified. God's Incarnation is His entering
the natural world in time and culture. This necessitates His appearance in a
particular religion and nation. But we can reconstruct the higher scientific
sense by reconstructing the rational meaning of God as the Divine-Human. If you
think of references to "Jehovah" and "Jesus Christ" as the universal God in the
Form of the Divine-Human, all religion, history, and culture disappear from
focus, and there emerges the scientific message. In then next Number it is called
the "celestial sense":
The celestial sense of this commandment is that the Divine-Human Jehovah is
infinite, measureless and eternal; He is omnipotent, omniscient and
omnipresent. He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, who was
and who is and who shall be. He is love itself and wisdom itself, or good
itself and truth itself, and consequently life itself, Thus He is the sole
source of everything. (TCR 295)
Note the assertion that God is "the sole source of everything." To love God
more than anything means to recognize God as the source of everything--our
thoughts, our feelings, our sensations, our actions, our environment and its
events. I call this the scientific sense of the First Commandment because it is
a scientific statement to identify the source of everything. For instance, if we
want to identify the source of mercury in our drinking water, we need to follow
scientific procedures such as testing samples of the water at various times and
in various places. We would then discover where is the highest concentration of
mercury and we can investigate what entry mechanisms are in place for getting
the mercury into the water system, such as leaks from hazardous wastes or
illegal dumping of chemicals from a factory.
Similarly, to inquire what is the source of everything is a scientific
investigation. The scientific meaning of the First Commandment is that God is
the source of everything. This in itself is not sufficient as a scientific
inquiry, but it is the beginning, and further inquiry into God's Speech will
give us more details.
5.7.2
Second Commandment: Do Not Take the Name of God
in Vain
Continuing with the next Number:
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT
"You are not to take the name of Jehovah your God in vain, for Jehovah
will not hold anyone guiltless, who takes His name in vain."
Taking the name of Jehovah God in vain means in the natural or literal
sense the misuse of the name itself in all sorts of conversation, especially
false statements or lies, and in swearing without good cause, or in order to
avoid being blamed, in evil intentions, which are curses, and in witchcraft
and spells. On the other hand, swearing by God and His holiness, the Word and
the Gospel, at coronations, ordination into the priesthood, or inauguration
into offices of trust, is not taking the name of God in vain, unless the one
who takes the oath subsequently rejects his promises as worthless. The name of
God, being holiness itself, is to be constantly employed in the sacred
business of the church, as in prayers, hymns and all forms of worship, as well
as in sermons and writings on religious subjects. This is because God is
present in everything to do with religion, and when He is duly invoked, His
presence is summoned by His name, and He listens. In these ways the name of
God is hallowed. (TCR 297)
The literal sense of the Second Commandment refers, as in the other cases, to
religious behavior--worship, sacraments, priesthood, and Church. God's Name
represents God and therefore speaking against God or saying things that are
irreverent or disrespectful of God, is to violate the prohibition of taking
God's Name "in vain." The scientific sense of "holiness" and the "sacred,"
refers to our attitude of respect for God as the Supreme Being. "Jehovah God" is
the religious name of God as known to Jews and Christians. The scientific sense
of "Jehovah God" is the Divine-Human, which is the Name of God as it is known to
the entire human race in the spiritual world.
When we swear,
curse, or engage in jokes or levity regarding the religious things of God, we
are downgrading the quality of the source of our mental input in thinking and feeling. All
thinking and feeling originates and is managed by God on our behalf. If we deny
God or disdain His religious Name, we are cutting off the source of our
intelligence and rationality, inverting what we receive from God into its
opposite. Thus we become irrational and insane in spiritual things, not knowing
what is good or evil, true or false. God forbids us to disrespect Him because
such an attitude is extremely harmful to us and prevents our spiritual
development. When this is halted, we cannot prepare our mind for eternal life in
heaven.
In order to understand this process rationally it is necessary to know the
anatomy of the mind and how "influx" takes place through the various layers of
the mind's organic structure (see Section xx). Acknowledgement of God and
respectful worship of God is physiological process that begins in the upper
portions of the organic mind called celestial, then filters down through the
spiritual by correspondence, and at last comes into our consciousness in the
natural mind. In this conscious form or content, worship and respect of God
appear as religious behavior.
But be aware that this external behavior and thinking is the bottom of the
process, and that it results from inward influx through the layers of the
unconscious mind. Denying God or ridiculing religion is the process of inversion
during the descent of influx into our mind. God maintains our reasoning
capacity in operating order moment by moment. It is therefore from God's
management of our mind that we are able either to worship God or to ridicule. In
both instances it is God's management operation, not our own, for we have no
power to operate any part of our mind on our own. This is a rational consequence
of the definition of God as omnipotent. If we were able to operate any part of
our mind or body by ourselves, from ourselves, then God would not be omnipotent.
This is a logical conclusion.
Having realized this, we must immediately answer the pressing problem that
presents itself to the rational mind: Then we are robots and have no
responsibility. And therefore putting people into hell is a cruel joke.
Obviously, if we're going to argue rationally, hell could not be a cruel joke if
God is omnipotent and good with nothing bad in Him. Hell is therefore not a joke
and not cruel. It is a mental operation that God manages, just as He
manages heaven. to understand this rationally we need to know more about the
mechanisms God uses to manage everything in our mind and body, and especially we
must understand the concept of as-of self (see Section xx). We are not conscious
that it is God who is managing our mental operations. God prevents us from
perceiving His operational Presence because if He didn't, and we would be able
to perceive His operation, we would lose all desire or motive to do anything. We
would lose the ability to plan things and to intend things that are either
heavenly or hellish. Since we would do nothing, we would not do evil since God
would not. We would therefore be in heaven being human robots, but not human
beings. We would have no motive to choose this or that, we would have no feeling
of trying and winning, no feeling of loving and enjoying, no reason to think, no
reason to talk.
You can see that it is not possible for God to turn us into such angelic robots
because it is contrary to God's rationality and Love. God's Love desires only to
make us supremely happy to eternity. To accomplish this He has to manage to
raise every individual's mind into heaven. Heaven is a rational consciousness of
God's truth, by which we can receive God's love. Being filled with God's truth
and love, we live happily as human beings to eternity. We have an identity and a
uniqueness. We can form relationships with other unique human beings. We can
form a conjugial couple and a heavenly society. All this that God desires would
be lost and impossible were He to (a) let us perceive His operation in our
conscious mind, or (b) stop managing the entire process from beginning to end
and from first to last.
God created a wonderful solution: the as-of self. First He hides His
operational Presence. Second, He creates in us the feeling of freedom of choice
from self. This is what's called the "as-of self" in the Writings. Note
that it contrasts with the idea of "the self" that we are familiar with. Until
the Writings revealed it was not known by anyone that we have an as-of self.
Some people said that we have a self, others that we don't really have a self,
but no one said that we have an as-of self. And if someone had said it, it would
have been seen as equivalent to the self. But the concept of "self" is natural
and does not take into account how we can have a self if God is omnipotent. Some
people thought that God just removed Himself from nature and mind, so that we
did have a self. But this is obviously illogical since God is omnipresent and
cannot remove Himself from anywhere.
The as-of self concept solves the logical conundrum. We have an as-of self not
from any power of our own but from God's power. An analogy from the Writings is
to think of two teams of strong men in a contest pulling a rope on either side
of a dividing line. Suppose they are perfectly matched in strength. No team can
win. Then a little child comes along and pulls the rope in one direction and the
strong men are pulled over and fall. It's as-if the little child is very strong,
stronger than ten muscle men. But this is an appearance and in reality the child
is much weaker than one man.
This analogy reflects the model God is using to create the as-of self feeling.
We have much less power to operate the mind than the child has to pull the men
over. God manages the mental operations on either side of any choice we are
making. God balances perfectly the power to go one way or the other. We don't
need any power to make the choice but only the indication of which way we want
to go. The moment we choose, it is done for us by God. The situation (which God
also manages) then determines what are the consequences of the choice. Sometimes
nothing happens, nothing moves. Sometimes what we expected happens. Sometimes
the opposite or something unexpected. Whatever God manages to occur, that we
attribute to our choice. this works only so long as we cannot perceive God's
actual operations in us.
Hence it is that we feel that we are our own agent of action and choice.
Whatever choices we make cumulate to create our environment and personality. God
is in charge at all times and with every detail. The process is infinitely
complex when you consider the endless choices we make from birth to eternity,
and how they must fit together with the endless choices of endless numbers of
humanity. Only God who is infinite can take care of any part of it and of all of
it.
The choice to deny God and ridicule religion takes us down a mental path filled
with wrong choices and produce awful experiences that God continues to manage
and operate, but not to control or reverse. Our as-of self would be instantly
shattered and destroyed if God prevented us from sliding into cumulative hell.
God does prevent many things that we are unconscious of. This He can do and does
endless times as He operates to influence our choices up to the line of
compulsion or coercion, but never crossing that line. Therefore God gives us the
power to defeat God's desire for us for heaven, and allows us to live in hell.
Even then, the Writings reveal that God moderates every evil and only allows the
evil that He cannot prevent, given the necessity to maintain the as-of self.
For instance God manages our memory process so that what we remember or forget
is used to manage what happens without arousing our perception of His
operations. God prevent some bad choices by blocking our memory, keeping us
ignorant of something, or keeping occasions and opportunities form presenting
themselves. Yet all this management activity still cannot prevent people from
making bad choices without visible interference. Swedenborg reports that no one
in hell is allowed to do more than the evil that keeps them living. Also, that
events on earth are controlled so that worse things don't happen in many
situations.
"Taking the Name of God in vain" is therefore an expression that refers to the
evil consequences God cannot prevent and allows to happen to people who are
asserting their as-of self in a direction of irrationality or disorder, thus
opposite to God's rational order that leads to heavenly states of mind. The
people in hell still maintain their as-of self for this the basis of their
living. If God were to override the as-of self so that the people hell could
feel themselves being taken to heaven, they would perceive God's operational
presence, which would destroy their as-of self. Now they might in heaven,
but they lack an as-of self. They are worse off than in hell because they have
no as-of self, hence no motive, identity, or happiness.
Continuing with the next Number:
In the spiritual sense the name of God means the whole of the church's
teaching taken from the Word, and through which the Divine-Human is invoked and
worshipped. All of this is summed up in the name of God. Therefore taking the
name of God in vain means using anything from this source in idle talk, false
statements, lies, curses, witchcraft and spells; for this too is slandering
and blaspheming God, and so His name. The following passages will show that
the Word and all the church takes from it, and so all worship, is the name of
God.
From the rising of the sun men shall call upon my name. Isa. 41:25.
From the rising of the sun to its setting, great is my name among the
nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name. (...) Mal. 1:11-13.
All peoples walk in the name of their God, and we shall walk in the name of
Jehovah our God. Micah 4:5. (...)
Jesus said, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I
in their midst. Matt. 18:20. (...)
Those who believe will have life in His name. John 20:31.
The Divine-Human said, You have a few names in Sardis. Rev. 3:4.
There are many other passages in which, as in these, the name of God means
the Divine which goes forth from God, and through which He is worshipped. The
name of Jesus Christ, however, means the whole of redemption, and the whole of
His teaching, and so the whole of salvation. Jesus means the whole of
salvation by means of redemption; Christ the whole of salvation by means of
His teaching. (TCR 298)
The names of God in Sacred Scripture are associated with religious, historical,
and cultural events. But when we focus on the scientific meaning of each of
God's names, the historical-religious reference vanishes and what's left behind
is a specific scientific concept about human development, the anatomy of the
mind, and the operational laws by which God manages the details of our thinking
and feeling. In this passage it is revealed that the name "Jesus Christ" refers
in its scientific sense to "redemption." This refers to character reformation or
regeneration. In other words the sentence quoted above "Jesus said, Where two or
three are gathered together in my name, there am I in their midst. Matt. 18:20"
means that redemption ("Jesus," "my name," "there am I") or character
reformation becomes effective when we acknowledge ("gather together") that it is
God or the Divine-Human who puts up the power we need to reject inherited traits
that bind us to hell. "Redemption" is like "deliverance" since to redeem means
to buy back from bondage. It is the bondage of sin that are freed from when we
acknowledge the Divine-Human and act from this rational faith.
"Jesus Christ" refers to the universal Divine-Human who is worshipped in every
religion as God. In cultural context, only Christians acknowledge this name as
Divine, while other religions acknowledge the Divine-Human under another name,
each according to their own ethnic history. Nevertheless, it is clear that they
all worship the same Divine-Human since there is only one infinite God, by
definition and by rational necessity. The name of God refers not only to the
Person of the Divine-Human but to "the whole of His teaching." Thus, Divine
Speech or Sacred Scripture is part of the Name of God. Therefore to ridicule
Sacred Scripture or to deny that it is Divine in every part, constitutes taking
the Name of God in vain.
The expression "Divine-Human" is used in the New Testament only once (I believe)
(Rev. 3:4) but it is used thousands of times in the Writings of Swedenborg. I
think this means that the Divine-Human was not universally revealed in the New
Testament, which has remained associated exclusively with the Christian
religion. But the new age of the Second Coming ushered through the Writings of
Swedenborg (1688-1772), God's name as the Divine-Human is being introduced for
science and thus universally and not solely associated with Christianity.
Quoting from Swedenborg:
The names used in the spiritual world make it plain that someone's name
does not mean just his name, but his whole character. In that world no one
keeps the name he received at baptism and from his father or family in the
world, but everyone there is named to suit his character, and angels have
names to suit their moral and spiritual lives. (...)
Even in the natural world a name does not mean just the name, but at the
same time a person's whole character, since this is inseparable from the name.
In ordinary speech we say, 'He is doing this for the sake of his name', or
'for the sake of the reputation of his name'; or 'this man has a famous name.'
We mean by this that he is famous for qualities he possesses, such as
ingenuity, learning, achievements, and so on. Everyone knows that if anyone
insults and slanders someone by name, he is also insulting and slandering the
way he lives. The ideas are linked, so that the reputation of his name is
destroyed. In much the same way, if anyone utters the name of a king, duke or
high dignitary in an insulting fashion, he heaps abuse also on their majesty
and dignity. Equally, if anyone pronounces a person's name in a contemptuous
tone, he at the same time shows his contempt for the way he lives. It is the
same with every person; the laws of all kingdoms forbid a person's name to be
slandered or insulted, because the name is equivalent to his character and
reputation. (TCR 300)
In the United States libel laws prohibit people from slandering the name or
reputation of someone else or some business or institution. Heavy fines and
prison terms are assigned to people convicted of this crime. There also laws
against expressing threats against the President. We sometimes read in the news
about people arrested and put in jail for expressing threats against government
officials. It is clear that laws against slander and libel are necessary in
society and without them society would fall into chaos and self-destruct. The
same holds true for the Ten Commandments, and without them, people would remain
ignorant of their hellish behaviors, and the human race would perish thereby,
everyone ending up in their eternal hells. The primary purpose of the Ten
Commandments is thus to make us aware of our hellish traits, and thus choose to
remain in them, or to reject them.
Note the explicit acknowledgement in the Old Testament regarding God being
worshiped under many Names: "From the rising of the sun men shall call upon my
name." (Isa. 41:25) "From the rising of the sun to its setting, great is
my name among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name."
(Mal. 1:11). "All peoples walk in the name of their God, and we shall walk in
the name of Jehovah our God." (Micah 4:5.).
Both the Old and New Testaments acknowledge that God is worshiped by all
nations. In the fundamentalist idea of some Jews and Christians, they are the
only ones who worship the one true God. But this dogma is contradicted by Sacred
Scripture in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings of
Swedenborg. In general, fundamentalist beliefs in other religions like Islam and
Hinduism, also hold the dogma that they are the only ones who worship the one
true God. However this does not represent the majority perspective in all the
major religions.
Note in the passage above (TCR 298) the list of eight behaviors that constitute
taking the name of God in vain: idle talk, false statements, lies, curses,
witchcraft, spells, slandering, and blaspheming God. When we do one of these
behaviors we usually do most of them or are prone to doing all of them. When we
guard ourselves from doing one of them we also tend not to do any of them. What
happens when we do one or more of these behaviors? Why are they prohibited by
God?
Because acknowledgement of God reflects the rational reality of the world while
rejection of God reflects the irrational delusions of insanity. Denial of God
leads to forms of thinking that are irrational and hurtful while acknowledgment
of God leads to forms of thinking that are rational and beneficial. If God
exists and operates our mind and the environment (the positive bias in science),
then to think the opposite is clearly contrary to our reality, and leads us into
irrational and hurtful behaviors and choices. Each one of the Ten Commandments
is designed by God to assist us in keeping our thinking in the rational mode.
The Ten Commandments in their whole, both literal and scientific meaning,
constitute a complete system of effective control over inherited and acquired
hellish traits.
When we try to obey each of the Commandments, our natural mind reacts in
opposition. We feel a strong resistance, a deep annoyance and reluctance. We
don't want to give up what is delightful and seemingly harmless. Most people can
give up murder, many can give up stealing, few can give up lying and adultery,
and almost no one is willing to give up slander, innuendo, character
assassination, cursing, gossip, exaggeration, idle talk, or obscene jokes. By
holding on firmly to the Ten Commandments in their whole, keeping them in
constant focus all day long, we are able to self-witness our resistances and
reluctances and rebellions.
Observing these inner reactions when facing a Commandment gives us a free choice
as to whether we obey it and reject our hellish behavior, or whether we reject
the Commandment and continue in our hellish behavior. Having the freedom of this
choice is what is called "redemption" and "salvation" of the human race. Each of
us can still choose the hells and reject the heavens in our mind. Those who make
this choice are not redeemed and are not saved from their hellish traits. Those
who make the choice of rejecting the hellish trait and adopting the heavenly,
are redeemed and saved for life in their heavens.
This free choice of redemption and salvation was not available to the human race
prior to the Incarnation Event when the Divine-Human entered the natural world
in history and culture. Until then people on this earth knew of the Ten
Commandments and of Sacred Scripture but were incapable of free choice. The
inherited tendencies of the hellish traits held a lock on rational thinking and
people's minds were filled with false idols, distorted dogmas, and intellectual
rationalizations that allowed them to neutralize the clear and simple teachings
of Sacred Scripture. God's Incarnation as the Divine-Human person was a mechanism
for defeating the stronghold of false beliefs on the human race. It restored
free choice between obeying and disobeying the Ten Commandments in their
complex. How this was done is discussed elsewhere (see Section xx).
5.7.3
Third Commandment: Keep the Sabbath Day Holy
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
THE THIRD COMMANDMENT
Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy; for six days you are to labor and do
all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath for Jehovah your God.
For this third commandment, see Exod. 20:8-10; Deut. 5:12, 13. In the
natural or literal sense this means that six days are for man and his work,
and the seventh is for the Lord, and for Him to give man rest.
Sabbath in the language of the original means rest. Among the Children of
Israel the Sabbath was the holiest of observances, because it represented the
Lord. The six days represented the Lord's toils and battles against the hells,
the seventh His victory over them, and so rest. Since that day represented the
completion of the Lord's whole act of redemption, it was for that reason the
height of holiness.
When, however, the Lord came into the world, so that representations of Him
ceased, that day became a day for instruction in Divine matters, and also a
day of rest from work, for meditation about matters conducive to salvation and
everlasting life, and a day for love towards the neighbor. (...) (TCR 301)
In the historical-religious sense, to keep the Sabbath appears like an
ethnic-cultural ritual that is not universally applicable to other religions.
But in in its universal scientific meaning "Sabbath" refers to the mental state
following temptation or our struggle against a hellish trait in ourselves that
comes to our attention. God uses the mechanism of temptation to give us the
awareness of a particular hellish trait or habit we have. Once we become aware
of it in the face of a Commandment, we are set up for the free choice to remain
in it or to reject it. When we reject it, God weakens the habit or tendency, and
if we reject it consistently, God removes the habit. In this way all our hellish
traits can be removed.
The process of temptation is painful and disturbing, sometimes in the extreme.
It is always unpleasant. To some it feels like punishment form God, but in
reality, God doesn't punish but works to bring us to victory in temptations.
This experience of victory over temptations feels as-if our own victory, though
we must acknowledge rationally that it is God's victory over the hells to which
we are chained by birth. The state following victory over a temptation is called
"Sabbath," a Hebrew word meaning "rest from struggles." This state of Sabbath in
our mind is sweet and peaceful. After a victory in temptation we feel the close
presence of God, and we bask in a mental state of freedom from slavishness to
our emotions and obsessions.
The Commandment to keep the Sabbath refers therefore to the absolute requirement
that we acknowledge God's operational presence in our thoughts and feelings as
we struggle to obey God's Commandments in our efforts at character reformation
or regeneration. To disobey this Commandment is to reject the idea in our mind
that God is operating our mental activity, and to adopt instead the point of
view that we alone are operating our mental activity. This rejection is death or
eternal hell because the denial of God in our mental operations neutralizes
God's efforts to save us. It is like driving a car without wearing seat belts.
We thereby neutralize the safety feature that will save us from injury and death
in case of a collision.
Quoting from the Next Number (TCR 302):
In the spiritual sense this commandment means man's reformation and
regeneration by the Lord. 'Six days of work' means the fight against the flesh
and its lusts, and at the same time against the evils and falsities which are
implanted in one by hell. The seventh day means his being linked with the
Lord, and his consequent regeneration. It will be shown later on, in the
chapter on reformation and regeneration, that, so long as that fight
continues, a person is engaged in spiritual labor; but when he is regenerated,
he has rest. The important points made there are these:
(i) Regeneration is an exact replica of a person's conception, gestation in
the womb, birth and training.
(ii) The first act of a new birth is called the reformation of the
understanding, its second act is the regeneration of the will and hence of the
understanding.
(iii) The internal man must first be reformed, and the external man by
means of the internal.
(iv) At that time a struggle takes place between the internal and external
man; the one who wins becomes master over the other.
(v) A person's regeneration is having a new will and a new understanding,
etc.
The reason why this commandment in the spiritual sense means a person's
reformation and regeneration is that it parallels the Lord's toils and battles
with the hells, and His victory over them, followed by rest. For the way in
which the Lord glorified His Human and made it Divine is the same as the way
in which He reforms man and regenerates him, making him spiritual. This is
what is meant by 'following Him'. It is plain from Isaiah chapters 53 and 63
that the Lord engaged in battles and these are called toils; and similar
events with men are called toils (Isa. 65:23; Rev. 2:2, 3). (TCR 302)
The above passage specifies several key details about the use of the Ten
Commandments for character reformation. Regeneration is the process of applying
the Ten Commandments to one's daily activities--affective, cognitive, and
sensorimotor--what our motives are, what our thinking is, and what are overt
actions are. Regeneration is an organic process of the physiology of the mind.
It is revealed here that regeneration of the mind has three phases, like the
generation of a birth--conception, gestation, birth, and socialization
("training"). The phase of conception in spiritual rebirth is cognitive
reformation ("understanding"), which refers to rearranging the meanings and
content of our thinking to agree with the Ten Commandments in their complex
whole. For instance, moving from the materialistic negative bias to the dualism
of positive bias, constitutes conception in the regeneration process.
The second phase of gestation in regeneration consists of affective modification
attempts ("regeneration of the will"). It is not enough of course to be reformed
by filling our intellect with the scientific revelations in the Ten
Commandments. To stop at reformation would be like a miscarriage in
gestation--no baby will be formed and born. Reformation of the intellect through
the positive bias and through knowledge of the Ten Commandments in their
complex, is the beginning that needs to be followed up by applying the
reformation of the intellect to the choices and action of the will. It is the
will, or the affective organ, that determines whether we shall obey the
Commandments we know, or whether we shall disobey them. Once this mental
gestation process is matured, a new understanding develops from the new will.
This new consciousness of truth is higher than before because it is now actual,
whereas before it was theoretical. When we obey a Commandment God gives us a new
insight into its meaning so that we are prepared to continue obeying that
Commandment at a deeper level. This permits us to be regenerated in our deeper
loves or hidden character traits.
Note the statement that the "internal man must first be reformed, and the
external man by means of the internal." This is referring to the sensuous
portion of the natural mind vs. the rational portion of the natural mind. The
sensuous portion is called the "external man" because it is formed by the
experiences we have in the world through our physical senses. The sensuous mind
contains the sensations and delights of our physical life, and the concepts that
are based on them. These are time-bound and space-bound concepts like the
concepts of materialistic science in the negative bias mode. But the "internal
man" refers to our rational reasoning process and our rational emotions based on
them. We are able to operate mentally above the sensuous mind by abstracting the
sensuous data as they come in and re-ordering them into a rational system of
understanding. Science is the organized and cumulative activity of creating
these abstracted theories or doctrines. These scientific theories need a context
of the positive bias so that we may be informed from Divine scientific
revelations. This is the "internal man" -- scientific revelations in the
positive bias.
We are told here that in regeneration there is a struggle going on between the
"external man" and the "internal man." In other words, the sensuous-rational
operation in the natural mind are opposed to the spiritual-rational operation in
the highest portions of our natural mind. Unless the higher rational wins over
the lower rational, our consciousness will remain lodged in the natural concepts
of the sensuous mind. The higher rational refers to our scientific understanding
of the Ten Commandments, while the lower rational refers to our religious
understanding. These two forms of understanding oppose each other because the
religious understanding is mystical and cultural, while the scientific
understanding is universal and eternal. The cultural and earthly is distorted
while the spiritual and heavenly is rational and true.
The internal man must first be reformed because the external man is compelled to
reform by the internal man. In other words, our lower rational thinking cannot
reform from itself but only from something higher than itself. This is the
general law in mental operations, that the higher controls the lower and never
the reverse.
The Sabbath rest is relief we feel when we have struggled and won between our
lower and higher nature. God gives us this rest by inducing upon our mind
quietude, contentment, security, and peace. These heavenly states of mind become
possible when we choose a heavenly love to become the ruling love. Quoting from
Swedenborg:
Heavenly peace, which prevents evils and falsities rising up from the hells
and assaulting us, can be compared with natural peace in many respects. For
instance, the peace which follows wars, when everyone lives protected from
enemies, safe in his town and in his house, his estates and gardens; as the
prophet said speaking in natural fashion about heavenly peace:
They will sit each man under his vine and under his fig-tree, unafraid.
Micah 4:4; Isa. 65:21-23.
It can also be compared with mental relaxation and rest after hard work; or
with the solace mothers experience after childbirth, when their maternal love
affords its delights. Another comparison might be with fine weather after
storms, black clouds and thunder; and with spring at the end of a severe
winter, and the flourishing of new crops in the fields, and the gardens,
meadows and woods bursting into flower. It can equally be compared with the
state of mind of those who after storms and dangers on the sea reach harbor,
and set foot on the land they hoped for. (TCR 304)
Reading the above in its scientific meaning we can see some of the details
of this mental state called the Sabbath rest. "The end of a severe winter"
refers to our negative mental states during the struggles of temptation, when we
have won victory by choosing to obey the Commandments. "Black clouds and
thunder" refers to the pain and suffering, the anxiety and agony when we are on
the edge of free choice between what we desire and enjoy sensuously, and what we
desire and enjoy rationally or spiritually. This is a thunderous stormy battle
in our experience, agonizingly unpleasant. "Childbirth" refers to rebirth or
spiritual development, as discussed just above (conception, gestation, birth,
socialization).
The "fine weather" and "spring" refer to the mental states of the Sabbath rest.
"Flourishing of new crops in the fields" refers to the semantic enrichment of
our understanding which is afforded us through the activation of higher mental
processes--a new state called enlightenment. Victory over temptations brings
both peace and enlightenment. "Gardens, meadows and woods bursting into flower"
refers to the informational enrichment of our intellect. We have a deeper
understanding after victory than before. We see with a clearer vision, higher
consciousness, deeper insight into truth, reality, eternity. We read Sacred
Scripture and we realize it is Divine Speech. Our rational understanding expands
to new content and meaning, more universal and integrative, but also more
particular and singular to one's unique situation and position.
It is said above that "Heavenly peace prevents evils and falsities rising up
from the hells and assaulting us." When we are in the state of mind called the
Sabbath rest, we are in heavenly peace on earth, that is, we are experiencing a
correspondence of our true heaven. In this mental state, there is rational
consciousness of the celestial kind, and this is called eternity. When we are in
this mental state we are segregated and protected from being "assaulted by evils
and falsities rising up from the hells." The hells in our mind rise by means of
false concepts and beliefs. When we allow them in by acquiescing uncritically,
the hellish traits receive a boost and enter into higher rational processes such
as our moral reasoning. Suddenly we begin to be confused about what's right or
wrong in a situation. The Ten Commandments no longer seem so clear about it.
This is the action of the false beliefs upon the reasoning process. They make it
easier for evil motives to be justified and pursued.
But in our heavenly operations we are completely isolated from any falsity and
any evil. The Divine-Human struggling for us in our temptation will not permit
the hellish influences to spread into our moral and rational mind--as long as we
choose the Commandments over self-intelligence or the intelligence of a friend,
book, or philosophy.
5.7.4
Fourth Commandment: Honor Your Father and
Mother
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT
Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long and you may
prosper upon earth.
This commandment is found in Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16. Honoring
your father and mother means in the natural or literal sense honoring one's
parents, obeying them, being attached to them, and showing gratitude for the
kindnesses they do. These include feeding and clothing their children, and
bringing them into the world, so that there they may live civilized and
respectable lives; also bringing them into heaven by teaching them the rules
of religion. In this way they provide for their temporal prosperity as well as
their eternal happiness. They do all this because of the love they have from
the Lord, in whose place they act. It also means, in appropriate cases, the
honoring of guardians by their wards, if the parents are dead.
In a wider sense this commandment means that one should honor one's king
and magistrates, since these provide all with the necessities of life in
general, just as parents do in particular cases. In the widest sense the
commandment means that one should love one's country, since it feeds and
protects one; hence it is called one's fatherland. Honor should be shown by
parents to both one's country and its rulers, and they should implant this
idea in their children. (TCR 305)
It's obvious that this Commandment is universal since no society can exist or
survive unless people obey the government and family norms. "To honor father and
mother" refers to all relationship of dependency that a human being must have to
survive on earth and in eternity. It includes teachers, baby sitters, neighbors,
police officers, judges, civil servants, the military, legislators, insurance
agents, sanitary engineers, cleaning ladies, and truck drivers. No service
profession can be excluded. God is commanding us that we honor all of them. Why?
Because without honoring them we cannot enter our heaven. This is exactly the
same answer for every Commandment. Heaven in eternity is inside you rational
consciousness which is built up from Sacred Scripture. Rational consciousness is
the key to eternal life in happiness. False beliefs corrupt and sicken our
rational consciousness like a virus from an email attachment corrupts and
spreads throughout your computer, and the computer of others who open the email
attachment you inadvertently forwarded. False beliefs are mental operations with
defective rationality. If you love these false beliefs they are able through
your love, to invade like a virus, higher mental operations until your rational
and moral judgment is defective. You are then at the mercy of your illusions and
insanities. You cannot free yourself from your hells.
Hence to obey this Commandment protects your mental operations from losing
rationality. If you honor your doctor, you comply with the medication regimen.
If you forget, you don't honor your medical professional because you don't obey
the professional advice (see Section xx on Health Behaviors). If you honor your
government, you respect the laws enacted by the elected legislators. You don't
try to cheat or get around. If you get a traffic ticket and lie to the judge to
get off, you are not honoring the judge or the country's court system and
constitution. If you cheat on your tax forms, you are not honoring the
government, its laws, and the whole of society. This Commandment really protects
us from the endless temptations we experience in daily life, at work, shopping,
driving, or paying your bills and voting.
Even if you don't cheat at your taxes but feel resentful for having to pay, you
are not honoring the system, the country, the professionals, the legislators.
Paying taxes is a rational necessity for any society or community. Honoring the
system is part of the attitude of people who have integrity. Honesty, sincerity,
integrity, fair-mindedness, caring are all heavenly traits that we can perform
when we elevate this Commandment to our immediate focus in daily life. Paying
taxes cheerfully and with gratitude is an expression of obedience of this
Commandment, especially if this Commandment is your motivation for paying your
taxes cheerfully. We can think of the use our money will be put. We can think of
taxes as sharing money with others who are needy since the government
distributes the income to pay for public roads and law and order.
Whatever we do when we are motivated by obedience to the Ten Commandments, we
are regenerating and being born with a new character that can live in heaven to
eternity. People who are not explicitly aware of the Ten Commandments as Sacred
Scripture nevertheless are aware of similar injunctions of life from parents and
school. Everyone has an inborn conscience that informs us of the Commandments in
some form. If we behave with the explicit motive to obey conscience, we are
regenerating and developing spiritually a character that can live in heaven to
eternity.
Cynicism and pessimism are obviously not from our heavenly inventory. When we
are immersed in false belief systems that oppose this Commandment, our mental
operations take a lower level of consciousness, where cynicism and pessimism
appear logical and justifiable positions or perspectives. In this state of mind
we have rejected the Commandment of honoring God and society. Cynicism is a type
of reasoning that is blind to some evidence as it strives to distort the
evidence for positivity and innocence. When we are in a cynical state we fall
into negative conclusions about government leaders, making it impossible for us
to see their innocence or sincerity. When we are in a pessimistic state we
reject the truth that God is in charge. Cynicism and pessimism are subjective
states; they are different from prudence and objective assessment.
Quoting from the next Number:
In the spiritual sense honoring one's father and mother means reverencing
and loving God and the church. In this sense father means God, who is the
Father of all, and mother means the church. Children and angels in the heavens
know of no other father or mother, since the Lord causes them to be born anew
there by means of the church. This is why the Lord says:
Do not call anyone on earth your father, for you have one Father, who is
in the heavens. Matt. 23:9.
This is said for the benefit of children and angels in heaven, not for
children and people on earth. The Lord teaches the same lesson in the prayer
shared by all Christian churches: 'Our Father in the heavens, may your name be
hallowed.'
The reason why mother in the spiritual sense means the church, is that just
as a mother on earth feeds her children with natural food, so the church does
with spiritual food. This too is why in the Word the church is frequently
called mother. For instance, in Hosea:
Strive with your mother; she is not my wife, and I am not her husband.
Hosea 2:2, 5.
(...) And in the Gospels:
Jesus, stretching out his hand to the disciples, said, My mother and my
brothers are those who hear the Word of God, and do it. Matt. 12:49, 50;
Mark 3:33-35; Luke 8:21; John 19: 25-27.
(TCR 306)
In the passage above, when focusing on the scientific meaning, "the church"
refers to the integrated action of the affective and cognitive operations in the
mind. The cognitive is called "the faith in the church," while the affective is
called "the charity in the church." "Father" refers to God and "mother" refers
to the church. In other words, the operation of the affective and cognitive mind
is called "the church," while God who is managing the operation is called
"Father." Hence to "honor father and mother" refers to honoring religion and the
work of religion, which is regeneration and spiritual development.
Honoring the church in its literal sense means to be respectful of all religion,
our own and that of others who worship God.
Quoting from the next Number:
It must be grasped that there proceeds constantly from the Lord a Divine
sphere of heavenly love towards all who embrace the teaching of His church,
and who, just as children in the world obey their father and mother, obey Him,
are attached to Him, and seek food, that is, instruction from Him. This
heavenly sphere is the origin of the natural sphere of love towards infants
and children. This is extremely universal, affecting not only human beings but
also birds and beasts, even down to snakes; and not only animate creatures,
but even inanimate objects.
But the Lord, in order to work on these as He does on spiritual things,
created the sun to be a sort of father in the natural world, and the earth to
be a sort of mother. For the sun is so to speak the common father, and the
earth the common mother, from whose marriage spring all the products of
germination which adorn the earth's surface. The action of that heavenly
sphere on the natural world produces those wonderful developments of plants
from seed to fruit and to new seeds. That too is why there are many kinds of
plants which by day turn their faces, so to speak, towards the sun, and turn
them away when the sun sets. That too is why there are flowers which open as
the sun rises and close as it sets. That too is why song birds sing sweetly in
the early morning, and likewise when they have been fed by mother earth.
So it is that all these things honor their father and their mother. All of
these occurrences are evidence that the Lord, by means of the sun and the
earth in the natural world, provides all necessities for living creatures and
for inanimate matter. That is why we read in the Psalms of David:
Praise Jehovah from the heavens. Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him
from the earth, whales and deeps. Praise Him, fruit tree and all cedars;
wild beast and every animal, reptile and birds with wings; the kings of the
earth and all peoples, young men and maidens. Ps. 148:1-12.
(TCR 308)
As we are penetrating the meaning of this Commandment in its scientific sense we
can see that it has universal application. Even animals and plants represent
this Commandment because they are activated by the sun as a kind of father, and
the earth as a kind of mother, to produce the offspring of this marriage in the
form of flowers and fruits. The heavenly sphere of honoring God and His
Commandments, spreads to society and nature. If human beings would stop honoring
God altogether, no animal or plant could survive since their operations are
correspondential expressions produced from the Divine Commandments in our mind
being honored and obeyed. God has created the natural world to be nothing but a
reflection of the mental world. The mental world is the initiating cause of all
natural events. Hence if human beings stop honoring the Commandments, the
mechanism for the operation of animal and plant life ceases. As well for the
geological order of things on earth--their physical operations are also
dependent on the appropriate mental activity of human beings.
5.7.5
Fifth Commandment: Do not murder
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
You are not to commit murder.
This commandment, 'You are not to commit murder', means in the natural
sense that it is forbidden to kill a human being or inflict upon him any wound
that might prove fatal; also to mutilate his body. It also means not doing any
drastic injury to his name or reputation, since to many people their
reputation is as precious as their life. In a wider natural sense murder
includes feelings of enmity, hatred and revenge which are murderous in intent.
For these have the idea of murder lurking in them, like fire in wood beneath
ashes; and the fire of hell is precisely this. This is why we talk of burning
with hatred and being hot for vengeance. These are murders in intention, but
not in deed. If fear of the law, of retaliation and being punished in the same
way were removed, such people would break out into actions, especially if the
intention contains an element of deceit or savagery. These words of the Lord
prove that hatred is a kind of murder:
You have heard that it was said by the men of old, You are not to commit
murder, and anyone who kills will be subject to judgment. But I tell you
that anyone who is angry with his brother unjustifiably will be subject to
the hell of fire. Matt. 5:21, 22.
The reason is that everything intentional is an act of the will, and thus
is essentially a deed. (TCR 309)
The New Testament two thousand years ago introduced the idea that mentally
breaking the Ten Commandments is as hurtful to the individual as physically
breaking them. To intend harm to others is a hellish trait and if we make it
allowable in our mind, we cannot get rid of it in the afterlife. Hence Sacred
Scripture warns us not to break the Commandments either overtly or mentally.
This New Testament concept ushered in a new evolutionary step for the human race
everywhere. A related idea is contained in the contrast between obeying the
letter of the law but not obeying its spirit. To disobey the law in spirit
refers to thinking and feeling in a way contrary to the Commandments, and
allowing it. If we are regenerating we cannot allow it. If we are mentally
unchaste in marriage, or if we allow ourselves to fantasize or seek out
pornographic entertainment, we are breaking the Commandment against adultery. If
we are resentful and fantasize revenge, we are breaking the Commandment against
murder. If we are envious and desire to take away the possessions of others, we
are violating the Commandment against stealing. And so on.
I call this a new evolutionary step for humanity because it elevates us to
higher states of rational consciousness. It makes good sense. The internal and
the external man, as discussed above, battle each other until the rational
mind subdues the sensuous mind. The passage above tells us that when we allow a
crime or sin in our mind without disapproving of it, we are only held back from
committing it by external sanction and fear of getting caught. In the world of
spirits we have no such external fears any more. So whatever is in our desire
and thinking cannot be kept inside, and is expressed. In the spiritual world our
state depends on the character we bring with us from our life on earth. Our
character is what we love, desire, and choose when we are completely free.
We need therefore to train our mind not to break the Commandments in thinking,
desiring, and expecting. We do this by disapproving and rejecting the thoughts
and feelings we are aware of that are contrary to the Commandments that we know
of, or to the dictates of conscience that we feel.
Continuing with the next Number:
The nature of the human internal, if not reformed by the Lord, has been
made plain to me by seeing the devils and satans in hell. For these are
constantly minded to kill the Lord, and because they cannot do this, they keep
trying to kill those who are devoted to the Lord. Because they cannot do this,
as they can kill people in the world, they make every effort to attack them in
order to destroy their souls, that is, to destroy the faith and charity they
possess. Thoughts of hatred and revenge actually appear in their vicinity like
fires, either smoky or white-hot ones; hatred looks like a smoky fire, revenge
like a white-hot one. But they are not real fires, only appearances. Sometimes
the savage thoughts in their hearts are made visible in the air above them as
battles with angels, in which the angels are killed and slaughtered; it is
their anger and hatred for heaven, which causes such horrible scenes to be
staged.
Moreover the same spirits look from a distance like wild animals of every
kind, such as tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, dogs, crocodiles and snakes of
all kinds. When they see peaceful animals, which are representative forms,
they imagine they are attacking them and trying to butcher them. They came
into my view looking like dragons, standing next to women who had babies,
which they were trying to swallow, exactly like what is described in
Revelation, chapter 12.
These visions are simply representations of their hatred for the Lord and
His new church. It is not apparent to their companions that the people in the
world who want to destroy the Lord's church are like this. The reason is that
their bodies allow them to behave properly, thus absorbing and hiding these
appearances. But in the sight of the angels, who do not look at their bodies
but their spirits, they appear in similar shapes to the devils described
above.
How could anyone know such facts, if the Lord had not opened his
sight and given him the ability to gaze into the spiritual world? But for this
these facts, along with many others equally memorable, would have remained
hidden from human beings for ever. (TCR 312)
Swedenborg reminds us in the last paragraph that had he not been given by God
the opportunity to observe and report on the spiritual world, humanity would not
have known what conditions of life we are to expect in hell if we do not
regenerate. Those who enter the afterlife with hatred and murder in their
motivational system, are unwilling to stop their constant desire and passion to
kill God, to kill people in heaven, to kill anyone who supports religion, God,
and obedience to Commandments. Their hatred of the good makes them appear like
wild animals. Their murderous and violent passions create "smoky" and
"white-hot" fires around them. Their violent and vile emotions are projected
outward into visionary scenes around them that depict the evils they are
imagining and enjoying. While we are attached to the physical body on earth,
these hellish mental events are hidden from others, absorbed by the physical
body so nothing shows on the outside. But once they arrive into the afterlife,
everything comes out and everything is visible to others. Hence they are
segregated in their hells so that they cannot harm others, but only each other,
taking turns at torturer and victim.
5.7.6
Sixth Commandment: Do not Commit Adultery
Quoting from the Writings:
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
You are not to commit adultery.
In the natural sense, this commandment forbids not only committing
adultery, but also having obscene desires and realizing them, and so indulging
in lascivious thoughts and talk. It is clear from these words of the Lord that
even lusting is committing adultery:
You have heard that it was said by the men of old, You are not to commit
adultery. But I say to you, that if anyone looks at another man's wife so as
to lust after her, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matt. 5:27, 28.
The reason is that when lust is in the will, it becomes like a deed; for
the enticement only enters the understanding, but the intention enters the
will, and a lustful intention is a deed. More on this subject can be found in
my book CONJUGIAL LOVE AND SCORTATORY LOVE, published at Amsterdam in 1768.
This contains sections on he opposition of [scortatory and] conjugial love
(423-443); fornication (444a-460); types and degrees of adultery (478-499);
the lust for deflowering (501-505); the lust for variety (506-510); the lust
for rape (5-11, 512); the lust for seducing the innocent (513, 514); the
imputation of either love, both scortatory and conjugial (523-531). All these
ideas are meant by this commandment in the natural sense. (TCR 313)
Once again it is being emphasized that the mental act is as serious as the
physical when it comes to breaking a Commandment. In the section on Sexuality
(see Section xx) it is indicated that love of sex is indiscriminate and
non-exclusive while love of one of the sex is chaste and monogamous. Adultery
refers to love of sex in its many forms, though some forms are more weighty or
serious than other forms because of the motive that we have and the
justification that we fabricate for making the behavior allowable in our mind.
Sex therapy in the medical and psychological professions often recommend
fantasizing different partners or perusing pornographic movies to "spice up" the
marital sex and reintroduce some of the passion that is lost after the initial
years together. But we see from this Commandment that such mental adultery is
harmful to the conjugial love in the marriage.
Continuing with the next Number:
In the spiritual sense committing adultery means adulterating the
various kinds of good in the Word and falsifying its truths. These meanings of
committing adultery have until now been unknown, because the spiritual sense
of the Word has until now been hidden. It is perfectly plain from the
following passages that this and nothing else is meant in the Word by
'committing fornication, committing adultery, and whoring.'
Run up and down the streets of Jerusalem, and seek to find a man who acts
righteously and seeks the truth; when I gave them plenty, they went after
whores. Jer. 5:1, 7. (...)
They acted foolishly in Israel, they went after whores, and spoke my Word
untruthfully. Jer. 29:23.
They went after whores, because they have abandoned Jehovah. Hosea 4:10.
(...)
Babylon has given all nations to drink from the wine of anger of her
whoring. Rev. 14:8. (...)
(TCR 314).
The word "adultery" in Sacred Scripture has two references, one relating to
sexual behavior, the other to religious behavior. "Whoring" is often a reference
to "adulterating the Word," which means falsifying the truths in Sacred
Scripture, for the purpose of justifying a lifestyle that is contrary to the
Commandments. Sometimes this is called "profaning the Word," "falsifying the
truth," and "adulterating the good."
Continuing with the next Number:
There are a number of reasons why a person may appear chaste, not only to
others, but even to himself, when in fact he is utterly unchaste. For he is
unaware that when lust is present in the will it constitutes a deed, and this
lust can only be removed by the Lord after the person has repented. It is not
abstaining from the act which makes a person chaste, but abstaining from
willing it, when the opportunity is there, because it is a sin.
Suppose for example someone abstains from adultery and fornication simply
out of fear of the civil law and its penalties; from fear of losing his
reputation and respectability; from fear of catching diseases by this means;
from fear of quarrelling with his wife at home and thus upsetting his life;
from fear of a husband or relatives taking revenge, and of being beaten by
their servants; or from greed; or from weakness due to disease, abuse or age,
or impotence for any other reason; even if he abstains from these actions as
the result of any natural or moral law, and not at the same time as the result
of spiritual law, yet that person is inwardly an adulterer and fornicator. For
in spite of this he believes these actions not to be sins, and so in his
spirit does not treat them as unlawful in the sight of God. Consequently he
commits them in spirit, even if he does not do so bodily in the sight of the
world. After death therefore, when he becomes a spirit, he openly speaks in
favor of them.
Moreover, adulterers can be compared with the forsworn, who break their
promises, or with the satyrs and priapi of the ancients, who roamed the woods
shouting, 'Where are the girls, the brides and wives for us to have fun with?'
Adulterers actually look like satyrs and priapi in the spiritual world. They
can also be likened to stinking he-goats; or to dogs which run about the
streets, looking around to sniff out bitches with whom to wanton, and so
forth. Their virility, when they become husbands, can be likened to the
flowering of tulips in spring-time, which within a month wither and droop.
(TCR 316)
This remarkable passage puts illicit sex in a spiritual context. Many people
today would see nothing but dogmatic preaching in this Number of Sacred
Scripture. It doesn't fit the modern mentality and sexual morality of our
generation in the Western world. But in fact the details being revealed above
are not Swedenborg's dogma but scientific observations similar to a medical
researcher who traces heart failure to cholesterol clogged arteries. In the
world of spirits he was able to observe the behavior and character of those who
had developed a taste for illicit sex and exploitative sex while in the life of
the physical body on earth. When he says that "Adulterers actually look like
satyrs and priapi in the spiritual world" he is not discussing his religious
sexual attitudes but reporting a fact visible and verifiable to anyone in the
world of spirits, including each of us, when we enter into that state of
rational immortality, just a few earth hours after the physical body is detached
from our mind. Swedenborg's observations are easily verifiable by anyone who is
conscious in the spiritual world.
This Number makes it clear that abstinence from illicit sexual behavior is not
in itself an indication that the individual abstains mentally. From the
socio-legal perspective in our society it makes a world of difference whether
someone fantasizes a rape or committing one. There are no laws in the United
States that address what one does mentally in one's own private mind. Society
leaves the individual in total internal freedom. Only physical actions are
addressed by laws. No one can go to jail in the U.S. for thinking something or
enjoying something in fantasy no matter what it is. This is true of our
horizontal community--it is external only. But our vertical community is
internal (see Section xx). We are in mental communication with the entire human
race, and we are not conscious of the various levels of connectivity we actually
have with the inhabitants of the spiritual world, both in heaven and in hell. No
mental operation can take place in one mind without the influx or
co-participation of many other minds, some of whom are semantically close,
others more distant in terms of influencing agents. Swedenborg was able to
observe this Grant Integration of all human minds in various ways (see Section
xx).
When we are fantasizing illicit sex or enjoying pornographic entertainment in
the privacy of our mind, we are not alone. Many individuals in their hells are
closely connected to us in that moment. In a real sense, we descend to their
hells where we experience the enjoyments and delights they feel as a result of
our fantasy. The amazing thing is that we feel their enjoyment as our own!
They are not aware of us just as we are not aware of them, and yet we are
connected in this way: their enjoyment enters our fantasy and we then experience
their enjoyment as our own. We attribute our enjoyment to the fantasy of which
we are of course aware. I don't think they are conscious of the content of our
fantasy, but they supply their own fantasy, of which we are not conscious. So
only the enjoyment or delight is held in common, though neither is aware of
this.
Now the consequences to us.
We become attached by love to those delights that are theirs but feel like ours.
In other words, we become spiritually attached to one another since love is a
bonding agent that never gives up once sealed. The enjoyment of mentally
engaging in illicit sex does not in itself create the unbreakable bond with
those hells. All we need to do is to reject those enjoyments as not our own but
from hell. This is a free choice from rational doctrine based on Sacred
Scripture or on conscience. When we take this position of choice, God can
immediately remove the connection we have with those hells. Now when they return
to us through new fantasies of a similar kind, we can disapprove of them and
refuse to go on with them. This becomes easier with repetition since God removes
the masses of disorderly people that are connected to us through our various
fantasies, daydreams, desires, or longings.
Now you can see why adultery and all illicit sex and pornography is solemnly
forbidden by Divine Commandment. It's not just a religious "thing." It's a
scientific fact that evil spirits from hell bond with us when we engage in these
behaviors, physical or mental. These bonds are incalculably dangerous to us, for
if they remain permanent, we will be unwilling to remove ourselves from these
fantasies and longings, no matter how dreadful our lives become in eternal hell.
The enjoyment of illicit sex destroys the enjoyment of married sex. Those who
are in the hell of their mind are not willing to rise up from that mental state.
Swedenborg has proven this over and over again with various groups of people and
individuals who were raised to the heaven of their mind by rendering their hell
temporarily unavailable to their consciousness. As soon as they were in the
heaven of their mind they were in company with others in their heavenly states.
They could not stand it for very long. There was nothing in their heaven they
could enjoy. They felt lifeless and dying, so that they had to be removed and
allowed back into their hells, where Swedenborg saw them revive into the
insanity of their life.
This is then the danger of breaking the Commandment against physical and mental
illicit sex. Again, it is not the occurrence of these thoughts that constitute
the danger, nor the enjoyment of them when they occur. For this merely
represents the inherited bonds we have with those hells. These bonds become
permanent only of we confirm them by love. If we go along with our enjoyment of
illicit fantasies and thoughts, we love them, and we accept the love even though
we know it is against conscience, against Divine Commandment, and against our
rational understanding. By going along we are making the choice of acceptance,
love, and permanent bonding. By refusing to go along we are weakening the
inherited bond.
To refuse to go along is to stop the fantasy or thought or image because it is
against the Commandment, or because it is against our future in eternity. If
this is the motive, God then weakens the inherited connection until it has been
completely neutralized. At some point we will no longer feel the delight as our
own. Instead we will feel disgust at the idea that we could enjoy such hurtful
activities. The more we weaken our connection to illicit sex the more we are
able to strengthen our connection to married sex and conjugial love. When
Swedenborg talked to those in the heavens of their mind he was told that their
sexual passion and enjoyment in the context of conjugial love is immeasurably
greater than what they knew in their life in the physical body.
Illicit sex, adultery, or pornography are expressions of the love of sex which
is inherited, and is especially strong for men. It is a natural love that we
share with birds and bees, elephants and porcupines. Sex becomes human when it
descends from the rational mind into the sensuous mind and into the corporeal
mind. When sex descends in this orderly fashion it springs from conjugial love
which is celestial from the Spiritual Sun. Then the sex in the body is merely an
expression of the love in the heart, and this love is celestial and spiritual,
not natural. When the celestial and spiritual are within the natural, then sex
is orderly, and according to creation, far more satisfying and pleasurable than
the sex in the body that is disorderly and from another source.
5.7.7
Seventh Commandment: Do Not Steal
Quoting from the Writings
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT
You are not to steal.
In the natural sense this commandment means literally not stealing,
engaging in brigandage or piracy in peacetime; and in general not depriving
anyone of his goods secretly or on any pretext. It also extends to all
imposture and unlawful gain, usury and extortion, as well as fraud in payment
of dues and taxes and in repaying debts. Workers who do not work in good faith
and without deceit offend against this commandment; so do merchants who cheat
over their wares, weights, measures and calculations; so do officers who
withhold their troops' pay; and judges who are influenced in their judgments
by friendship, bribery, nepotism or other reasons, so perverting laws or legal
processes, and depriving others of the lawful possession of their goods. (TCR
317)
Fraud through deceit obviously violates this Commandment. But so does cheating
the government or loafing on the job. Using your influence to obtain a favor for
someone may be sometimes be legitimate, but often it is not, if it means that
someone else unfairly loses something thereby. If you find something on the
street knowing who it belongs to, not returning it, breaks this Commandment. You
may get away with charging too much for a service, but your spiritual future may
be placed in jeopardy. A Divine Commandment is not something to be ignored since
it is given to us by God as a protection from ending up in hell.
Continuing with the next Number:
In the spiritual sense stealing means depriving others of the truths they
get from their faith; this is the effect of falsities and heretical beliefs.
Priests, whose ministry is conducted solely for the sake of profit or to seek
honors, and who teach the sort of things which they see, or could see, from
the Word not to be true, are spiritual thieves, since they take away from the
people their means of salvation, the truths of faith. Such people are called
thieves in the following passages of the Word:
He who does not enter into the sheepfold through the gate, but climbs in
somewhere else, is a thief and a robber. A thief does not come except to
steal, to slaughter and destroy. John 10:1, 10.
Lay up your treasures not upon earth, but in heaven, where thieves do not
come and steal. Matt. 6:19, 20. (...)
They will run about the city, they will run on the wall, they will climb
into houses, they will enter through windows like a thief. Joel 2:9.
(TCR 318)
Stealing someone's chances of being successful or a good person hurts you
because it ties you to those who enjoy this evil activity. Corrupt clergy who
sexually abuse children in their congregation hurt themselves more than their
depravity brings them pleasure. As well, clergy who use their position for power
or gain, hurt themselves by bonding with those in their hells who delight in
this kind of exploitation and deceit. Ministers and teachers who make up false
doctrine and dogma to control the believers, hurt themselves by becoming
associated with those in their hells who obsess with such things.
In the celestial sense thieves mean those who strip the Lord of His Divine
power, and those who claim for themselves His merit and righteousness. Although
these people worship God, yet it is not in Him they trust, but in themselves;
and they do not either believe in God, but in themselves. (TCR 319)
This deeper meaning of stealing is perhaps the most hurtful and dangerous in
terms of the eternal consequences. It has to do with a falsification in one's
mind of revelations about God in Sacred Scripture. One form of this evil is to
separate God's Divine from God's Human. Another form is to attribute to oneself
the "merit of righteousness" which refers to the fantasy that we are good
because of our own effort and power. For instance, we attribute success to our
talent and intelligence rather than to God's operation of our mental and
physical activity, along with managing the events of our success or skill. This
is stealing because it takes away the role of God which is primary while our
role is as nothing in comparison.
5.7.8
Eighth Commandment: Do Not Lie
Quoting from the Writings:
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT
You are not to bear false witness against your neighbor.
Appearing as a false witness against one's neighbor or giving false
evidence means in the strictest natural sense not being a false witness before
a judge, or before other people out of court, against someone who is wrongly
accused of some crime, and asserting this in God's name, or swearing by
anything else holy, or by oneself, or by such things as affect the reputation
of one's name. In a wider natural sense this commandment forbids all kinds of
lying and hypocrisy in public life with evil intent; also, criticizing and
slandering one's neighbor so as to undermine his honor, name and reputation,
on which the whole of a person's character depends. In the widest natural
sense it includes using trickery, guile and deliberate wrong-dealing against
someone for various causes, such as enmity, hatred, revenge, envy, rivalry,
etc. These evil actions contain bearing false witness hidden within them. (TCR
321)
What is more common than deception in our generation? We begin to lie as
children and we continue lying as adults. The paragraph above sets out three
levels of deception that we perform in terms of how direct or wily we are in our
lying. The first level covers overt behaviors of lying and deception. These are
the first we must stop and give up if we are to undergo spiritual development
and preparation for life in heaven in eternity. This level may be called the
overt socio-legal level of lying or swearing. This covers both oral and written
forms of deception, as for instance lying to an investigator for the purpose of
hurting someone else.
It's important to attach the purpose of why we do something to the assessment of
some deceptive behavior. For instance, if you are a detective or spy in the
lawful protection of your country, your purpose is a legitimate one, not a
selfish one to benefit yourself in some scheme you're involved in. The purpose
of the deception makes it a hellish or a heavenly behavior. This principle
applies to all the Commandments. For instance, the prohibition against killing
is addressed to killing for a hellish purpose, not killing for a heavenly
purpose such as the defense of your country by an attacker or self-defense when
attacked by a stranger.
The second level of deception and lying involves slandering or gossiping about
someone with the purpose of hurting their reputation or business. Spreading a
false rumor would also fall in this category of deception, as also hypocrisy and
pretending to agree while planning to disagree in some business deal--all this
for personal gain and for gaining an unfair advantage. The third level of
deception and lying involves trickery, guile, treachery, and conspiracy done for
the purpose of injuring someone out of a desire for revenge or hatred.
Continuing with the next Number:
In the spiritual sense, "bearing false witness" means to persuade
that falsity of belief is true belief and evil of life is good of life, and
the reverse, doing this from purpose, not from ignorance; that is, doing this
after one has learned what is true and good, not before; for the Lord says:
If ye were blind, ye would have no sin; but now ye say, We see; therefore
your sin remaineth (John 9:41).
In the Word this kind of falsehood is called a "lie" and the intent is
called "deceit," as in the following passages: (...)
This is a rebellious people, lying sons, they will not hear the law of
Jehovah (Isa. 30:9). (...)
Thou wilt destroy them that speak a lie; Jehovah abhorreth the man of deceit
(Ps. 5:6).
Because a "lie" means what is false, the Lord says: (,,,)
That when the devil speaketh a lie, he speaketh from his own (John 8:44).
(TCR 322)
The external levels of deception are natural behaviors that are motivated by
more inward spiritual loves that are from hell. These evil loves connect us to
those who are in their hells and ties us to them so that we give up the freedom
of our own choices. Deception at the inner level involves posing as a teacher or
friend in order to entrap the other person into situations when they can be
abused and hurt. The entrapment procedure involves clever ways of persuading the
other person that you have their interest at heart. For example, a teacher,
priest, or older friend who seduces and entraps children into satisfying their
sexual depravity. Also, an author or movie director who distorts a story in
order to mislead people about something for some selfish purpose or gain. This
type of deception includes a pop singer "idol" whose message and performance
exploits and hurts some one or some group for the sake of making more money. A
boy seducing a girl by pretending he loves her, also falls into this category of
inner deception. A famous person who endorses a product knowing it's harmful to
users, is doing this kind of deception. Continuing:
In the celestial sense, bearing false witness means blaspheming the Lord
and the Word, thus banishing truth itself from the church; for the Lord is the
Truth itself, as likewise the Word. On the other hand, to bear witness in this
sense, means to speak the truth, and testimony means the truth itself. For
this reason the Decalogue is called the "testimony" (Exod. 25:16, 21, 22;
31:7, 18; 32:15, 16; 40:20; Lev. 16:13; Num. 17:4, 7, 10).(...) (TCR
323)
Every religion forbids blasphemy of God or of the religion, including its Sacred
Scripture and the holy things of their worship rituals. The desire to attack God
and worship of Him involves the deepest level of deception and lying. This is
because all truth issues from God and to attack God is the same as to attack all
truths, not just some of them. Sometimes people who attack God or religion may
not have this motive of attacking all truth. They may do it by learned habit or
imitation of style without having reflected on its meaning or significance. In
that case the behavior would be violation of the Commandment not the take the
Name of God in vain (see Second Commandment above).
5.7.9
Ninth and Tenth Commandments: Do not Covet
Continuing with the Next Number:
THE NINTH AND TENTH COMMANDMENTS.
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE; THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S
WIFE, NOR HIS MANSERVANT NOR HIS MAIDSERVANT, NOR HIS OX, NOR HIS ASS, NOR
ANYTHING THAT IS THY NEIGHBOR'S. (TCR
325)
These two commandments have relation to all the preceding ones, and teach
and enjoin not only that evils must not be done, but also that they must not
be lusted after, consequently that evils pertain not solely to the external
man, but also to the internal; since he who refrains from doing evils and yet
lusts to do them, still does them. For the Lord says:
If anyone lusts after another's wife, he has committed adultery with her
already in his heart (Matt. 5:27, 28);
and the external man becomes internal, or acts as one with the internal,
only when lusts have been removed. This also the Lord teaches, saying:
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees; for ye cleanse the outside of the
cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and platter, that
the outside may be clean also (Matt. 23:25, 26).
And the same is taught throughout that chapter. The internals which are
Pharisaical, are lusts after the things that are forbidden to be done in the
first, second, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth commandments. It is known that
when the Lord was in the world, He taught the internal things of the church,
and these internal things are not to lust after evils; and He so taught in
order that the internal and external man may make one. This is the being born
anew, of which the Lord spoke to Nicodemus in the third chapter of John; and
no man can be born anew or be regenerated, and consequently become internal,
except from the Lord. That these two commandments may have relation to all the
preceding ones, inasmuch as the things forbidden therein are not to be lusted
after, the house is first mentioned, after the wife, then the manservant,
maidservant, ox, and ass, and lastly, everything that is the neighbor's.
(...) (TCR 326)
In the passage above a crucial distinction is made between external physical
behavior and internal mental behavior. In the mentality of the human mind
represented by the Old Testament, the Commandments and Statues govern one's
external physical behavior. The next evolutionary phase of the human mind is
represented by the New Testament mentality, which is that the Commandments apply
especially to mental behavior. There is a natural tendency to assess ourselves
by listing our outward accomplishments and conduct. For example, I used to
believe that I am a good person because I don't murder, steal, or swear falsely.
A few things I used to do that I knew were wrong but was able to justify
them as not really that bad or evil, like lying to protect myself, making false
declarations about my income, gossiping about others, and cheating sexually. My
ability to justify these evil behaviors is referred to in the passage above as
"internals that are Pharisaical." A "blind Pharisee" is an expression of Sacred
Scripture referring to these mental justification procedures in which we end up
accepting our evil enjoyments and intentions.
But it is revealed in the Writings that we are required to compel ourselves to
stop mental acts of evil that justify outward behaviors. This is called "the
internal things of the church," where "church" refers to our mental
justification procedures by which we accept or reject our loves or lusts. It is
revealed above that "the external man becomes internal, or acts as one with the
internal, only when lusts have been removed." This refers to our outward
behaviors ("external man") in relation to our mental justifications of them
('internal man"). In order to live in heaven in eternity we must undergo
character reformation since we are born with inherited tendencies to evil
enjoyments ("lusts"). We enjoy breaking the Commandments; we enjoy ego trips; we
enjoy hurting others when we feel like it; we enjoy getting away with not being
fully sincere, fully honest, fully fair. These inherited enjoyments of evil
loves stand in opposition to our commitment to rebuild our character from
hellish to heavenly.
God is giving us the rational understanding of His revelations so that we may
see that we cannot enter heavenly life in our immortality unless we bring our
external behavior in conformity with our interior morality from Sacred
Scripture. This is called "being reborn" ("Nicodemus") or regenerated by God.
Only God has the power to force alignment between our external and our internal
self. The internal moral and rational self must compel the external irrational
self to obey the letter and the spirit of the Commandments. "The letter" of the
Commandments refers to our external physical behaviors, while "the spirit"
refers to our internal mental behaviors (reasoning, justifying, thinking,
enjoying, intending, desiring).
How can we compel ourselves not to enjoy something?
I love chocolate and I long to eat as much of it as I desire. I can stop putting
it in my mouth, but how can I stop enjoying it? I can stop myself from looking
at pornography, but how can I stop enjoying it?
God has revealed that if I don't stop enjoying what is bad for me, I can never
get rid of it. I can never live in my heavenly mind when I get into the
afterlife because I am then unwilling to give up the enjoyments that are bad for
me and my future. Swedenborg has observed this effect with many people after
their resuscitation in the world of spirits (see Section xx). What God warns
against, Swedenborg was able to confirm directly by observation. Between our
first death and resuscitation, and our second death a short time after, we
undergo special experiences brought to us by God, in which we are faced with all
the inner loves we brought with us in our mind. This is the process by which we
are compelled to give up the evil loves, so that we remain with only good loves,
or give up our good loves, remaining with only evil loves. No one can keep both
kinds of loves as we had been able to on earth.
If I keep my desire for eating something that is not good for me, I cannot keep
my good desires such as staying healthy and taking responsibility for it. If I
keep my enjoyment of pornography, I cannot keep my enjoyment for married love,
which is the only sexuality possible in heaven. This is why it's so critical
that I stop myself from enjoying overeating and pornography, among many other
things like that. This is the burden of character rebuilding. And indeed, we
cannot stop enjoying what we are enjoying from inherited tendencies. But God can
put an end to it--if we consent to it. God cannot put an end to it if we do not
consent (see Section xx).
The act of consenting to it is called our "cooperation in regeneration." We
cooperate with our Divine Psychologist by "washing our feet ourselves," which is
a way Sacred Scripture refers to the as-of self effort required to inhibit and
suppress external acts that we know are contrary to the Commandments. If we do
this consistently, then we give consent to God to remove the enjoyment of evil
acts and their justifications. God brings me face to face with temptations about
chocolate, pornography, and many other things in the course of a day. My job is
to make sure I don't do them in my outward behavior--my hand, my mouth, my eyes.
In my self-witnessing (see Section xx) I have observed many times that the
longer I abstain from evil acts the less I am tormented by missing out on their
enjoyments. God has revealed that eventually, my enjoyment of them will
completely die, and will be replaced by an aversion for them, and a horror at
the idea of doing them or enjoying them. All I need to do is to persevere and be
steadfast in my commitment to cooperate with God in my regeneration or spiritual
development.
Continuing with the passage:
In the spiritual sense, these two commandments forbid all lusts that
are contrary to the spirit, thus all that are contrary to the spiritual things
of the church, which relate chiefly to faith and charity; for unless lusts are
subdued, the flesh let loose would rush into every wickedness. For it is known
from Paul,
That the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the
flesh (Gal. 5:17);
and from James:
Each man is tempted by his own lust when he is enticed; then the lust,
when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and sin, when it is completed, bringeth
forth death (James 1:14, 15);
again from Peter,
That the Lord reserves the unrighteous unto the day of judgment, to be
punished; but chiefly them that walk after the flesh in lust (2 Peter 2:9,
10).
In short, these two commandments understood in the spirit sense relate to
all things that have before been presented in the spiritual sense, that they
must not be lusted after; so likewise, to all that has been before presented
in the celestial sense; but to repeat all these things is unnecessary. (TCR
327)
In the literal language of Sacred Scripture there is talk about "sin" and
punishment of it by "death." These two things refer to our mental states when we
fail to cooperate with the Divine Psychologist in regenerating us through daily
temptations. These mental states form a one with the mental states of those who
are in the hells of their mind. These evil states become our permanent
consciousness in the afterlife from which we are unwilling to exit once we are
permanently in them. Hence they are called "death" because life in hell is
devoid of all that is truly life--happiness, rationality, conjugial love,
beauty, pleasantness, peace, understanding, inventiveness, cooperation,
community, altruism, truly human. In the hells of our mind we have none of
these, and one is then called "dead"--unhappy, irrational, sexually
impotent, deformed, suffering, dull, egotistical, beastly, not human:
The lusts of the flesh, the eye, and the other senses, separated from the
lusts, that is, from the affections, the desires, and the delights of the
spirit, are wholly like the lusts of beasts, and consequently are in
themselves beastlike. But the affections of the spirit are such as angels
have, and therefore are to be called truly human. For this reason, so far as
anyone indulges the lusts of the flesh, he is a beast and a wild beast; but so
far as one satisfies the desires of the spirit, he is a man and an angel. The
lusts of the flesh may be compared to shriveled and dried up grapes and to
wild grapes; but the affections of the spirit to juicy and delicious grapes,
and also to the taste of the wine that is pressed from them.
The lusts of the flesh may be compared to stables where there are asses,
goats, and swine; but the affections of the spirit to stables where there are
noble horses, and sheep and lambs; and they differ as an ass and a horse, a
goat and a sheep, a lamb and a pig; in general, as dross and gold, as
limestone and silver, as coral and rubies, and so on. Lust and the deed are
connected like blood and flesh, or like flame and oil; for lust is within the
deed, as air from the lungs is in breathing or in speaking, or as wind in the
sail when the vessel is in motion, or as water on the wheel that gives motion
and action to machinery. (TCR 328)
The "lusts of the flesh" refers to enjoyments we derive from hurtful behaviors,
while the "desires of the spirit" refers to our rational loves for obedience,
peacefulness, and respect for God and people. One takes us to the hells of our
mind, while the other to the heavens of our mind. This is how God has created
human beings. This is the true reality that no one can escape.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE DECALOGUE CONTAIN ALL THINGS THAT BELONG TO
LOVE TO GOD, AND ALL THINGS THAT BELONG TO LOVE TOWARD THE NEIGHBOR.
In eight of the commandments of the decalogue, the first, second, fifth,
sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, there is nothing said of love to God
and love toward the neighbor; since it is not said that God should be loved,
that His name should be hallowed, that the neighbor should be loved and
consequently that he should be dealt with sincerely and uprightly. It is only
said, "Thou shalt have no other God before Me;" "Thou shalt not take the name
of God in vain;" "Thou shalt not kill;" "Thou shall not commit adultery;"
"Thou shalt not steal;" "Thou shalt not bear false witness;" "Thou shalt not
covet what belongs to thy neighbor;" that is in general, that evil, either
against God or the neighbor, is not to be cherished in will or thought, nor to
be done.
The reason why such things as relate directly to love and charity are not
commanded, but only such things as are opposed to them are forbidden, is that
so far as man shuns evils as sins, so far does he will the goods that pertain
to love and charity. That the prime thing of love to God and the neighbor is
not to do evil, and the second to do good, will be seen in the chapter on
Charity. (TCR 329)
There is an interesting psychology revealed here, namely, that in order for
people to be good, they must first stop being bad. We often hear people
justify themselves by saying that they are not as bad as some others, and that
their bad traits are balanced out by a lot of good traits they also have, so
all in all, they figure, they're good. Sometimes people try to make up for the
bad they do by giving away money to the needy, or by serving in soup kitchens
for the poor on certain days. This is certainly very useful to the people who
are being helped. But one should understand that the good we do cannot make up
for the bad we do. We must still face the bad we do on its own. The passage
above reveals that we must stop doing evils before we can start doing good, or
else the good we do is not actually good. So the Ten Commandments of God tell
us what we must not do in a complex. Only if we stop doing these things that
are forbidden, can we then do the things that are required--to love God and
neighbor more than we love ourselves.
To love the neighbor means to refrain from doing evil to any person. Doing
evil means to hurt others by injuring them or by feeling hateful towards them
or indifferent to their need and suffering.
There are two opposite loves, the love of desiring and doing good, and
the love of desiring and doing evil; this latter is infernal and the other is
heavenly; for all hell is in the love of doing evil, and all heaven in the
love of doing good. Since then, man is born into all kinds of evil, and
therefore from birth inclines to what pertains to hell, and since he cannot
enter heaven unless he is born again or regenerated, it is necessary that
evils, which belong to hell, should be removed before he can desire goods,
which are heavenly. For no one can be adopted by the Lord until he is
separated from the devil. But how evils are removed and man is brought to do
good, will be shown in the two chapters, on Repentance, and on Reformation and
Regeneration.
That evils must be put away, before the good that a man does becomes
good in the sight of God, the Lord teaches in Isaiah:
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before
mine eyes; [cease to do evil], learn to do well, then though your sins be as
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool (Isaiah. 1:16-18). (...)
(TCR 329)
Good and evil cannot exist together, and so far as evil is put away good is
regarded and felt as good, for the reason that there exhales from everyone in
the spiritual world a sphere of his love which spreads itself round about and
affects, and causes sympathies and antipathies. By these spheres the good are
separated from the evil. That evil must be put away before good can be
recognized, perceived, and loved, may be compared to many things in the
natural world; for example: one cannot visit another who keeps a leopard and a
panther shut up in his chamber (himself living safely with them because he
feeds them), until those wild beasts have been removed. (...)
Man himself ought to purify himself from evils, and not wait for the
Lord to do this without his cooperation. Otherwise he would be like a servant
going to his master, with his face and clothes befouled with soot and dung,
and saying, "Master, wash me." Would not his master say to him, "You foolish
servant, what are you saying? See, there are water, soap, and a towel; have
you not hands of your own and the power to use them? Wash yourself." So will
the Lord God say, "These means of purification are from Me, and your ability
to will and do are also from Me; therefore use these My gifts end endowments
as your own, and you will be purified;" and so on. That the external man is to
be cleansed, but by means of the internal the Lord teaches in the twenty-third
chapter of Matthew from beginning to end. (TCR 331)
5.7.10
Summary Table For the Scientific Meaning of the Ten
Commandmends
| TEN COMMANDMENTS |
SCIENTIFIC MEANING
(see Section 5.7) |
SELF-WITNESSING DATA |
First Commandment
There is not to be any other God before my face |
God is the sole source of everything. Spiritual values
must guide every one of your behaviors. |
|
Second Commandment
Do not take the Name of God in vain |
You must give up what is against God in your mind--slander,
innuendo, character assassination, cursing, gossip, exaggeration, idle talk,
obscene jokes. |
|
Third Commandment
Keep the Sabbath Day Holy |
You must acknowledge God's operational presence in your
thoughts and feelings all day long every day. |
|
Fourth Commandment
Honor your father and mother |
Obey your conscience and the rule of law. Do not be cynical,
arrogant, and unethical. Conserve the common good. |
|
Fifth Commandment
Do not murder |
Do not vent your anger or fantasize revenge. Do not violate
the human rights of anyone. |
|
Sixth Commandment
Do not commit adultery |
Do not fantasize illicit sex or enjoy pornographic
entertainment in the privacy of your mind. |
|
Seventh Commandment
Do not steal |
Do not spread false beliefs or deprive others of their truth
and rationality. Do not attribute any power to yourself, but only to God. |
|
Eight Commandment
Do not lie |
Do not deceive anyone for your personal benefit. Do not
contradict the truth of God. Do not justify in your mind, or find excuses
for, the bad things you do. |
|
Ninth and Tenth Commandments
Do not covet |
Do not focus only on cleaning up your outward behavior. You
must also clean up your private thoughts and feelings. |
|
You can use this Table for assessing yourself in relation to the Ten
Commandments--see an example in Section 6.0.5.2..
5.8
Rise Above It--The Ten Commandments in All Religions
The subtitle of the book Rise Above It is "Spiritual Development Through
the Ten Commandments" (Touchstone Seminars, Philadelphia 2001.
See also the Web site at:
newearth.org/~touchstone/main.php?content=book
In this unique book Ray and Star Silverman use the
Ten Commandments in group seminars designed to help people grow spiritually.
What's unusual is that the group members are from different religions and the
seminar has been used for this purpose in several countries besides the United
States. The book demonstrates that the Ten Commandments are pan-religious and
pan-cultural. For each Commandment they present the equivalent in five
religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the New Church (based on
the Writings of Swedenborg). Quoting from the Introduction:
In this book we will try to show how the Sacred Scriptures of the various
religions, when understood more deeply, are really one religion. This is because
they all teach the same fundamental message: There is One
God, infinitely loving and wise, Who is leading each of us , at every moment,
into all the love and wisdom we are willing to receive. As the Dalai Lama
has said, "Every major religion of the world has similar ideals of love, the
same goal benefiting humanity through spiritual practice, and the same effect of
making their followers into better human beings." In brief, every major religion
seeks to aid its adherents in finding their way to the Kingdom of God. (Ray and
Star Silverman, Rise Above It, p. 2),
The authors state their belief that "the Ten Commandments...are a Divinely given
framework that contains the totality of spiritual growth." ... We regard them as
a heavenly curriculum...intended for the spiritual development of humanity....
From the first word to the last--the Ten Commandments are a continuous stream of
Divine Truths.... It is a curriculum prepared by the "Master Teacher--the One
True God of heaven and earth." (p.5) The authors present the book not merely as
pan-religious theology but as a "book of life." "Rising above" refers to "rising
above merely natural existence and entering higher states of
consciousness--states that are closer to god--so that we may see clearly the
circumstances and situations in which find ourselves. We get a new view from a
higher vantage point." (p. 8-9).
The authors recommend that seminar participants "keep journals in which they
record their experiences of examining themselves in the light of a particular
commandment that is being studied." (p. 9). This is followed by the attempt to
put the commandment into practice. Participants share this experience with the
rest of the group. The consider it important for people to get together in
groups to share their experiences of trying to live each commandment in their
daily lives. Besides mutual support and encouragement, participants can also
provide each other with incentive to keep working at it despite conflict and
difficulties.
The First Commandment provides the occasion for identifying one's "false gods"
in life--fascinations, compulsive interests, addictions, TV, as well as
self-centered traits and character weaknesses like perfectionism, being
overcritical of others and uncritical of self, excessive conformism to friends
or trends, self-centered bragging, hopelessness, pessimism, etc. A false god is
anything that hurts your spiritual development because you are overly attached
to it or because it keeps you down.
Each Commandment is quoted in five religions. For instance the Second
Commandment about the Name of God, is rendered as follows:
-
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain (Old Testament-Jewish)
-
Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (New
Testament--Christian)
-
He is Allah and there is no other God, the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One, the
source of peace, the guardian of faith, the preserver of safety, the exalted in
might, the irresistible, the supreme...Qur'an--Islam)
-
They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, and Agni...To what is one the sages give
many names. (Rig Veda, Hinduism)
-
The name of anyone means not only his name but his whole characteristic quality
(New Church--Swedenborg)
The authors point out that taking the name of God in vain does not only refer to
swearing and cussing but also to insincerity in one's worship and religion. If
we fail to practice what we profess about God, we are taking His name in vain.
Forgetting to pray or to give thanks to God for what we are able to enjoy and
do, is also a form of taking the name of God in vain. The book advices people to
pray for qualities in themselves that they are lacking rather than ask for
worldly things they desire or covet. Some of the qualities of the One True God
are listed as love, compassion, humor, patience, order, optimism, forgiveness,
charity, gratitude, playfulness, peace, innocence, trust, understanding. These
are the qualities we ourselves must strive to acquire within ourselves if we are
sincere about honoring God's name.
Another Commandment is worded as follows:
-
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (Old Testament)
-
For this cause I was born, and for this cause have I come into the world, that I
should bear witness to the truth. (New Testament)
-
Those who fear Allah, when a thought of evil from Satan assaults them, bring
Allah to remembrance, and lo! the see aright! (Qu'ran)
-
To tell the truth is consistent with righteousness. There is nothing higher than
the truth. (Santiparva)
-
When a person abstains from false testimonies and turns away from them as sins,
the love of truth and the love of justice flow in from the Lord through
heaven... As a consequence his utterances become utterances of truth, and his
works become works of justice. (The Writings of Swedenborg)
Lying and deceit destroy meaningful connections in relationships. Muhammad is
quoted as saying: "The signs of a hypocrite are three: when he talks, he lies;
when he makes a promise he breaks it; and when he is trusted, he is disloyal."
(p.173). "Truth-telling" is the key to keeping human relationships healthy. But
telling the truth is also something we need to do with ourselves about
ourselves. "Being true to oneself" means that we don't justify ourselves when we
are wrong, that we don't try to protect what is not noble in us by using
rationalizations for our faults and denials for our weaknesses. Examining our
thought patterns is essential to assess our truth-telling or our lying. Do we
twist the truth to our advantage? Do we exaggerate details to gain an
advantage in an argument? Do we omit parts of a story to make ourselves look
good when we're not?
Discouragement is often based on lying to oneself. Hopelessness is based on
lying to ourselves about God like "God is powerless" or "God is absent" or "God
doesn't think I deserve it." One of the daily exercises the book recommends to
tell the truth: "be true to yourself and to others; live in integrity and keep
your word. Harness the power of truth to refute the false witnesses that enter
your mind and occupy your thoughts. The truth is that God is all powerful, and
that with God all things are possible." (p.187)
The book Rise Above It presents the Ten Commandments at the religious
level of thinking. It is based on the idea from the Writings that we live in
inner bondage to our false beliefs and their negative emotions about ourselves,
others, and society. We free ourselves from this inner slavishness to negativity
and pessimism by applying the Ten Commandments to our daily thoughts and
feelings. Swedenborg says that the only freedom humans have is to follow God's
laws from conscience and rational choices. It is a useful book for religious behaviorism (see
Section xx). In theistic psychology we have an interest in pan-religious ideas because
they identify the universal concepts about God that we need to explain scientifically.
Some of these concepts were presented in the prior section above titled The
Scientific Meaning of the Ten Commandments.
5.9 Color Wisdom--A Universal Method for
Tracking Spiritual Development
For an illustration of the technique see Section 11.3.7 in Volume 2.
Chapter 6
Personality Theory
6.0
Personality theory in theistic psychology has an organic
basis. Every individual is born with a unique mind or spiritual body. The mind
is a spiritual organ constructed out of the substances streaming forth from the
Spiritual Sun in the spiritual world. Swedenborg was able to see this Sun every
day for the 27 years of his unique conscious life in both worlds simultaneously.
The substances of the mind and the substances of the Spiritual Sun are the same,
though adapted to each unique mind. It is similar with the brain which is
constructed out of material elements from the natural sun, or star, that
originated the planet. Every object on the planet is made of matter from its
star. Swedenborg became very familiar with the surface appearances of the
spiritual world, just as we are very familiar with the environment around
us--trees, houses, beaches, mountains, animals, clouds, rivers. The environment
in the spiritual world is a mental or rational environment constructed from the
quality of the feelings and thoughts in the mind.
The outflow of the Spiritual Sun creates a space of
rationality or what I would like to call rational ether. An analogous idea is
the physical sun creating an energy sphere or gravitational field around itself in which the
planets are deposited by separation from the sun, and then cooling off. The
Spiritual Sun, by its efflux or outflow, creates a volume or sphere around
itself made of rational ether called the spiritual world.
When human beings are born each individual's physical body is
made of matter from the natural sun, and the individual's spiritual body is made
of substance from the rational ether. We are thus born dual citizens belonging
simultaneously to both
worlds. One body is formed and dies in the natural world; the other body is
formed in the spiritual world and never dies, since whatever is made of
spiritual substance is eternal and impossible to destroy. Every feeling, every
thought, and every sensation we ever had was an actual operation in the
spiritual fibers of the mind and thus established a spiritual synapse that is
indestructible. Swedenborg has proven that this is the case in the following
manner.
In the spiritual world people who operate in the highest
possible level of their mind are called "higher angels." They have the ability
to review the content of people's memories in the world of spirits and to effect
temporary changes. These therapeutic interventions are helpful when they
instruct new arrivals about the laws of the spiritual world which must be
understood rationally for good mental health there. These higher angels
sometimes intervened with their special mental powers in order to help
Swedenborg gather empirical observations. In this case they intervened in such a
way as to bring the individuals back into the state of consciousness they were
in when they first arrived. People from heaven and hell were temporarily brought
back into the world of spirits which is the state of mind they had when they
arrived from earth many years ago. Swedenborg then questioned them concerning
their life on earth. They had with them all their memories. Nothing was missing
or obscured proving that every operation in the mind is stored cumulatively in
the memory of the natural mind. In the spiritual world it is known as the "Book
of Life."
While we still have the physical body our natural mind is
being built up from sensory input and rational abstraction. The natural mind is
where we have our normal daily conscious awareness of self and the world. When
the natural mind is completed, the physical body disintegrates ("dies"), and we
begin a new consciousness in our spiritual body. We are then called "spirits,"
"angels," and "devils" depending on what is on our natural mind.
In order for the natural mind to develop and become prepared
for conscious
life in the spiritual world it is necessary for the spiritual mind to be operationalized
and active simultaneously. The spiritual mind does not develop, like the natural mind,
out of interaction with the physical body, but out of interaction with the spiritual body. The spiritual mind is
also built from the substances of rational ether that is created by the Spiritual Sun
around itself. The content of the
spiritual mind is organized and ordered by the continuous influx of the
Spiritual Sun. This operation is unconscious while we are tied to the physical
body, but becomes conscious when the physical body disintegrates and we begin
our immortal life as "spirits." Swedenborg was given the special ability to be
conscious in the spiritual mind while he was still tied to the physical body.
This was necessary in his unique case in order to allow him to write the
scientific reports in the Writings (27 volumes in English translation). People
would be spiritually damaged or destroyed were they allowed to be conscious
simultaneously in both worlds.
Swedenborg was protected from injury by the "higher angels"
who were always with him as guides and guards. He was able to talk to them in
his native Swedish while they talked to him in the innate spiritual language we
all have when we become spirits. Swedenborg was not yet a spirit since he still
had his physical body. The difference was observable to the spirits whom he
interacted with. They could see that he was still living on earth, to their
great surprise, this being a unique case in their experience or knowledge. But
when they interacted it was not at all apparent to them that he was speaking a
natural language while they were speaking a spiritual language. This means that
there must be a universal mental mechanism that can translate natural language
into spiritual language and vice versa.
6.0.1 The Conscious Self and Its Development
The "self" or "ego" has been the subject of much discussion in literature. Even
today "self" is a word that appears on the Web among the top 10 of all time
topics--about 65 million Web sites mention this word (April 2004). "Self" and
"God" have the same high frequency ranking, both among the top ten. The Writings
of Swedenborg present a unique and previously unknown explanation of the self.
It gives us an internal view as scientific revelation, a view that would be
impossible without Swedenborg's observations of people as they are resuscitated
immediately after the physical body turns into a corpse. In the world of spirits
were the resuscitation process takes place people are in their spiritual body,
and in this state they can see each other's mental disposition, mood, state, and
to some extent specific content.
Swedenborg was also able to monitor the rapid mental changes that occur between
resuscitation and the "second death," which refers to the final mental state we
acquire to eternity. This is a general mental state that has infinite variety,
guaranteeing the uniqueness of each human being to eternity. During these rapid
mental changes people undergo various Divinely arranged therapeutic experiences
and interventions designed to put everyone in touch with their deeper loves and
motives. The outward personality traits and put-ons dissolve like a chocolate
mask in the sun, and there emerges the real self.
The real self refers to the "ruling love" of every person.
It is known in psychology that all loves and motives are arranged in a
hierarchy, like the organization of command in the military or a large company.
In the United States the President is called "Chief Commander" who gives orders
to generals to order their troops into battle. People who maintain antisocial
ruling loves commit crimes, violence, destruction, theft, etc. Their ruling love
is constantly challenged by their conscience or their knowledge of the Ten
Commandments. God creates a conscience within every human self. The self and its
components, like conscience and self-awareness, are functions and operations
which must therefore take place in some mental organ. In fact, the mind is a
mental organ constructed out of the spiritual substances streaming out of the
Spiritual Sun, to which our mind is exposed in the world of spirits, where the
mind is born along with the physical body in earth.
People who listen and obey the voice of their conscience, or who obey the Ten
Commandments because they are from God, are given the power to inhibit and
suppress their antisocial ruling love. Since the ruling love controls all the
loves below it in the motivational hierarchy, suppressing it also inhibits the
loves below it. As the antisocial ruling love is gradually suppressed and
suffocated, a new altruistic ruling love seats itself in the command function.
The new ruling love maintains a hierarchy of loves below itself, so that the
entire motivational dynamics of the person is changed from hellish to heavenly.
This transformation process is called regeneration and involves temptations (see
Section xx). Temptations bring our ruling love out of the background command
into the foreground executor. We cannot deny it or ignore it. It's in our face
and putting tremendous pressure on us to act in accordance with its
satisfaction. This mental stress or conflict can sometimes be experienced as
extreme and devastating. The deeper the hellish love that comes out in the
temptation experience, the more we are shocked and challenged to approve or
disapprove, and to go along or to fight like hell to resist it. This is a
subjective experience. In fact, as revealed in the Writings, we have zero power
to oppose the furious hells attacking us, grabbing hold of us, wanting
desperately to make us part of them. They succeed if we give in, stop resisting,
and let ourselves enjoy the evil, and finally loving it so that we look for it
again, anticipate it, and are willing to abuse self and others in order to keep
getting it. But when we resist in the Name of God, we are given as-if our own
power to resist, and desist, and finally to hold the experience in aversion and
disgust.
God's interventions are less effective when we are unwilling to call upon God to
give us the as-if power to resist. This is a consequence, not of God's lesser
desire or love, but our free choice to deny conscious communication with God.
The conscious self is aware. This is a purely human trait and depends on the
rational ether of the world of spirits in which our mind is located. Awareness
or consciousness is a property of the rational mind. Animals do not have a
rational mind hence they lack the spiritual anatomy for conscious awareness. The
voice of our conscience, with which each of us is born, cannot be heard except
in conscious awareness. Hence animals do not have a conscience.
The conscious self is surrounded by the ruling love and its hierarchy of
motives. Each motive is a love or an affection operating in the affective organ.
All operations in the affective organ have a connection to operations in the
cognitive organ. Every motive or affection selects and maintains specific
cognitive operations that are consistent with it and assist in devising plans
and methods for carrying out what the love wants, desires, and by which it is
satisfied and lives. When a love is not satisfied one experiences sadness and
depression, alternating with anger and destructive behavior.
The Writings reveal many facts about the psychology of the self--its structure,
development, and quality.
A useful study for theistic psychology is The Doctrine of the Propirum
(1962) by George De Charms (The General Church Publication committee, Bryn
Athyn, PA), in which he summarizes in developmental context many things said in
the Writings of Swedenborg concerning the human and the Divine "proprium," a
Latin word meaning "one's very own" as in English "proprietary" rights, or one's
"proper" name, or one's "property," etc. In psychology we call the proprium the
"conscious self."
The Writings confirm the fact that mental traits are inherited as well as
learned. All inherited mental traits can be changed by self-modification. The
earliest generations on this earth inherited heavenly or altruistic traits until
aberrant individuals introduced negative loves by inverting their inherited
positive traits. When they passed into the world of spirits they were segregated
from the others in their heavenly mental states. The hells were thus created.
After many generations and succeeding civilizations the negative traits became
so predominant that a life of hell on earth was established--crimes, wars,
sicknesses, famines, abuse of women and children, deception, discrimination,
injustice, and so on, all of which are familiar to us today. Character
reformation has become essential before we can get rid of our "inherited
proprium" and acquire a heavenly proprium from God. With the cultivation
and love of heavenly traits we set up a mind that is capable of living in
conjugial love in heaven to eternity. If we arrive into the afterlife with the
old unregenerate proprium, we automatically sink into the hells of the mind
where we live forever with others in a sorry state (see Section xx).
The essence of the inversion from a heavenly to a hellish proprium is that we
are unwilling to be guided by God and prefer to be guided by self. There is
therefore an opposition between our self and God. This perspective is a turn
around from how the human race was created and lived prior to this event in
history and evolution. In Sacred Scripture it is described in the scientific
meaning of the Adam and Eve story in Genesis. As long as people were well
disposed toward God they were able to have a sane and healthy proprium. They
lived every day with the feeling of an as-of self so that they could arrange
their lives and activates as they saw fit, consistent with God's Commandments.
They knew rationally from revelation that it is God who has the power to move
their loves and thoughts, but were content to experience as-if they had that
power from themselves and in themselves.
But when people began pursuing loves and imaginations that were not consistent
with conscience and Divine Commandment, the proprium or as-of self, turned
itself away from God and good, inverting truth into falsity, and pursuing
corrupted forms of love, thus creating hell in the human mind. This is called
the Fall of the race.
Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg:
Verse 18 And Jehovah God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I
will make for him a help suitable for him. 'Alone' means that he was not content
to be guided by the Lord but desired to have self and the world as his guide. 'A
help suitable for him' means the proprium, which, further on, is also called
'the rib which was built into a woman'. (AC 138)
Countless things can be said about the proprium - about what the proprium
is like in the case of the bodily-minded and worldly man, what it is like in
the case of the spiritual man, and what in the case of the celestial man. With
the bodily-minded and worldly man the proprium is his all. He is unaware of
anything else but the proprium. And, as has been stated, if he were to lose
his proprium he would think that he was dying.
With the spiritual man the proprium takes on a similar appearance, for
although he knows that the Lord is the life of all, and that He confers wisdom
and intelligence, and consequently the ability to think and to act, it is more
a matter of something he says and not so much something he believes.
The celestial man however acknowledges that the Lord is the life of all,
who confers the ability to think and act, because he perceives that this is
so. Nor does he ever desire the proprium. Nevertheless even though he does not
desire it the Lord grants him a proprium which is joined to him with a
complete perception of what is good and true, and with complete happiness.
Angels possess a proprium such as this, and at the same time utmost peace
and tranquility, for their proprium has within it things that are the Lord's,
who is governing their proprium, that is, governing them by means of their
proprium. This proprium is utterly heavenly, whereas the proprium of the
bodily-minded man is hellish. But more about the proprium further on. (AC 141)
Here we are told that there are three levels our proprium. The lowest is called
"bodily-minded and worldly," then the spiritual proprium, and the highest, which
is the celestial proprium. When our conscious awareness is immersed in the
corporeal proprium ("bodily-minded"), we reject the idea that our self is not
real, being only an "as-of self." When we elevate our conscious awareness to the
rational or spiritual level, we know from revelation that God is omnipotent,
hence the only power, and therefore the self has no power of its own. It is only
an as-of self. But although we know and understand this at a certain level of
rationality, we are unwilling to love it and make it into a ruling love. We
prefer to forget it and continue acting as-if of our own power and struggle.
With progress in our regeneration or spiritual development, we can elevate our
rationality to the celestial proprium.
When we are in the celestial proprium of our mind we are called angels. It is
said above that angels do not desire a proprium of their own. Their happiness
comes from receiving the Proprium of the Divine-Human. Since they then act
still with the as-of self feeling, they are maximally happy, never being led
into anything negative or disturbing.
6.0.2
Woman Built From the Man's Rib
Continuing to quote from the Writings where we find the analysis by
correspondences of the Genesis story:
Verse 21 "And Jehovah God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he
fell asleep; and He took one of his ribs, and He closed up the flesh in its
place."
'A rib', which is a breast bone, is used to mean man's proprium when it
contains very little life, a proprium indeed that he cherishes. 'The flesh in
place of the rib Is used to mean the proprium when it does contain some life.
'A deep sleep' is used to mean that state into which he was brought so that he
might seem to himself to have a proprium. This state resembles sleep because a
person in that state is conscious only of living, thinking, speaking, and
acting from himself. But when he starts to realize that this is false, he is
aroused from sleep so to speak and wakes up. (AC 147)
What a remarkable revelation to discover that we are asleep in our conscious
awareness when being immersed in our inherited proprium or self. Our inherited
proprium is represented by a bony lifeless rib and we are described as being in
a "deep sleep" when in that proprium. Our consciousness is asleep to true
reality. We live a delusion thinking that we have a self separate from God's
management of it. We consciously live this delusion by being convinced that we
are acting from ourselves. We are thus persuaded of a delusion by rejecting the
revelation that we only have an as-of self in a universe where God is the only
power. When we undergo character reformation we no longer refuse to accept God's
revelations. We are then said to be "aroused from sleep" or delusion, and we
awaken to reality.
Continuing with the quotations:
The state of a person when caught up in the proprium, that is, when he
imagines that he lives from himself, is compared to a deep sleep. Indeed the
ancients actually called it 'a deep sleep' while the Word speaks of people
having 'the spirit of deep sleep poured out on them [Isaiah 29:10], and of
their sleeping a perpetual sleep [Jeremiah 51:57].
The fact that man's proprium is in itself dead, that is, that nobody
possesses any life from himself, has been demonstrated in the world of spirits
so completely that evil spirits who love nothing except the proprium, and
insist stubbornly that they do live from themselves, have been convinced by
means of living experience, and have admitted that they do not live from
themselves.
With regard to the human proprium I have for several years now been given a
unique opportunity to know about it - in particular that not a trace of my
thinking began in myself. I have also been allowed to perceive clearly that
every idea constituting my thought flowed in [from somewhere], and sometimes
how it flowed in, and where from. Consequently anyone who imagines that he
lives from himself is in error. And in believing that he does live from
himself he takes to himself everything evil and false, which he would never do
if what he believed and what is actually the case were in agreement. (AC 150)
Note that Swedenborg's description of the human unregenerate proprium is not a
theory he is proposing but demonstrated fact. As usual he presents two kinds of
proof--one from objective observation of others, and one from self-witnessing
observations on himself. In his unique dual consciousness, Swedenborg was able
to perceive directly the incoming source of his thoughts and feelings. The
delusion of the unregenerate inherited proprium is that our thoughts and
feelings originate in our self and are our own. This is certainly the conscious
experience we have here on earth. But in the afterlife, having been disconnected
from the physical world and body, we have the ability to perceive our
interactions with the vertical community (see Section xx).
Continuing:
Verse 22 And Jehovah God built the rib which He took from the man into a
woman, and brought her to the man.
'Building means reconstructing that which has fallen down, 'rib' the
proprium that has not been given life, 'woman the proprium that has been given
life by the Lord, 'bringing her to the man' that a proprium was granted to
him. Since the descendants of this Church, unlike their ancestors, did not
wish to be the celestial man, but to be their own guides and so set their
heart on the proprium, they were allowed to have one. It was however a
proprium given life by the Lord, which is why it is called 'a woman', and
after that 'a wife'. (AC 151)
Anyone paying the matter only scant attention may see that woman was not
formed out of the rib of a man, and that the arcana embodied here are deeper
than anybody has ever been aware of up to now. And that the proprium is meant
by 'the woman may be seen from the consideration that the woman was the one
who was deceived, for nothing but the proprium - or what amounts to the same,
self-love and love of the world - ever deceives a person. (AC 152)
The scientific meaning of Divine Speech is about the theistic psychology we need
to awaken from the delusion of sleep in which we consciously believe that we are
alone in our mind and we think and feel from ourselves. We are to awaken to this
spiritual reality prior to entering the spiritual world. We cannot awaken
afterwards if we do not awaken here. Swedenborg confirms by many interviews in
the world of spirits that those arrived with a denial of God's omnipotence in
all details, are unwilling no matter what, to change their mind. They continue
in their delusions, which take them to hell and keep them there forever, being
still unwilling no matter what.
The well known Genesis story in the Old Testament of Eve being built out of
Adam's rib refers in its scientific sense to the proprium, specifically, that
the proprium which is a dead delusion in itself, was enlivened by God. "Woman"
and "wife" refer to the enlivened proprium in all human beings.
Continuing:
Nothing evil or false can possibly exist that is not the proprium or
derived from the proprium. For man's proprium is evil itself, which means that
man is nothing but evil and falsity. This has become clear to me from the fact
that when the contents of the proprium are presented to view in the world of
spirits they look so ugly that nobody can paint any uglier picture. (Those
contents vary however according to the nature of the proprium.) As a result
when anyone is offered a glimpse of the contents of his proprium he is
horrified at himself and wishes to run as though from the devil.
On the other hand contents of the proprium which have been given life by
the Lord look beautiful and attractive, varying according to the life to which
a celestial quality that is the Lord's can be added. Indeed people who have
received charity, that is, been made alive by it, look like boys and girls
with very attractive faces. And people who have received innocence look like
naked small children adorned in different ways with garlands of flowers twined
around their breasts, and precious stones in their hair, living and playing in
brightest light, with a sense of happiness stemming from the depths of their
being. (AC 154)
Swedenborg reports what he saw when he looked at the unregenerate proprium of
people in the world of spirits. In that state of mind everyone can see the
proprium of others. And in Swedenborg's estimation the contents of the
unregenerate proprium "look so ugly that nobody can paint any uglier picture."
In other passages he describes it as bony and black like a burned skull upon
which no flesh is left. When someone is allowed to see their own proprium "he is
horrified at himself and wishes to run as though from the devil."
On the other hand the regenerate proprium that has been made alive by God,
called the heavenly proprium, contains thoughts and feelings that "look
beautiful and attractive." When we are in our heavenly mental state our proprium
from a distance to others looks like attractive boys and girls adorned in
flowers and precious stones with a happy expression reflecting their inner
innocence. Innocence is the willingness to be guided by God rather than self.
6.0.3
The Rebirth of the Fallen Proprium or Self
Continuing:
Verse 23 And the man said, By this change, it is bone from my bones and
flesh from my flesh; for this she will be called Wife, because she was taken
out of man (vir).
'Bone from bones and flesh from flesh' means the proprium belonging to the
external man, 'bone' the proprium that has been given not much life, 'flesh'
the proprium that has been given life. 'The man' (vir) however means the
internal man. And because, as is said in the next verse, the internal man was
so coupled to the external man, this proprium previously called 'woman' is now
called 'Wife'. 'By this change' means that it happened now, because there had
been a change of state. (AC 156)
The man (Adam) called the woman his wife (Eve). The woman was made out of his
rib. This is the style of writing of the ancients when discussing theistic
psychology. In this case they were writing about the birth and development of
the human proprium or self conscious awareness. This style of writing made sense
to them because they were celestial minds before the Fall. In other words,
people in those days still had direct perception into the spiritual world where
all things of the mind are represented outwardly in these imageries called
correspondences. The external self, or "the proprium belonging to the external
man," was referred to as "'Bone from bones and flesh from flesh." They were
thinking of the natural mind whose content and organization is from the physical
world, rather than the "internal man" or internal self, which has undergone
regeneration and is called "wise" or spiritually developed. A distinction is
introduced here between two portions of the external self--one dead ("bone"),
the other vivified ("flesh").
Continuing:
It is not easy to perceive however how these matters can be so unless the
nature of the state of the celestial man is known. The state of the celestial
man is such that the internal man is quite distinct from the external, so
distinct in fact that he perceives what belongs to the internal man and what
to the external man, and how the external man is governed by the Lord through
the internal. But because his descendants desired the proprium, which belongs
to the external man, their state became so altered that they no longer
perceived any distinction between the internal man and the external. Instead
they perceived the internal man as being one with the external, for this is
what perception comes to be once man desires the proprium. (AC 159)
Here, the phrase "the state of the celestial man" refers to the portion of the
human mind that is called heaven (see Section xx). The earliest generations on
this planet were celestial people because their celestial mind was fully
conscious on earth. They were therefore able to perceive the heavens in which
their parents and family were after departing this world. The wrote in a style
of correspondences since they were able to see directly, or visualize directly,
the mental references in natural vocabulary. But in a later stage of evolution
called the Fall, this dual consciousness was lost to protect the human race from
being taken over by the Fallen proprium, which was evil. In other words, the
thoughts and feelings that make up the external self, were evil--injurious,
selfish, irrational, cruel, destructive, etc. Just as now, our motives are
selfish and our thinking is less than rational most of the time. This mentality
creates a hell on earth in which we are unsafe and experience suffering despite
an omnipotent God who only wants our conjugial happiness in an eternal heaven.
God cannot change what our proprium has become without destroying us, which God
cannot do as it would be against His Love. By "destroying us" I mean have every
human being live in hell from now to eternity. God made a rational and loving
choice: Instead of changing our Fallen proprium He can give us a new one that
can live in heaven. In other words, we are born with the inherited Fallen
"proprial" tendencies towards evil and denial of God. This is the Fallen
proprium, ugly, bony, dead. Now God has created a mechanism by which we can
start living a new life with a new proprium that has been "vivified" or made
receptive of God and heavenly life. This is called "rebirth" and the process
goes on a lifetime and is called "regeneration." This is an active process of
character building that is very challenging and filled with suffering. This is
caused by our having to Inhibit, suppress, and loathe all the loves and
enjoyments of the Fallen proprium to which we are attached by egotistical loves.
We don't want to give them up voluntarily, one by one. It seems to us that we
are being deprived of all our enjoyments and interests. What good is heaven to
us if we cannot have our enjoyments? A neighbor to whom I was talking about
Swedenborg asked me to describe life in heaven and in hell. At the end he said
he is going to hell. Shocked, I asked why. He explained that all his friends
would be there, and all his enjoyments. While in heaven, well, he didn't see
himself living there. Later I thought about it and I realized that people don't
believe in hell when they say they rather go there. It's just a kind of bravado
talk. There must be few people who can read and accept Swedenborg's descriptions
of hell, and still say they want to go there. So most people who don't seem to
be afraid of hell don't actually believe that there is one.
The rebirth of the human proprium is called "salvation" of the human race.
Through the process of temptations we can anesthetize forever our hellish
proprium. Each temptation is timed by our Divine Psychologist to allow us to
voluntarily lay aside one proprial love. We cannot do this on our own, for our
motivation is to give in. But we can overcome this deadly built in motivation by
acknowledging God's presence and involvement in the temptation. God then
anesthetizes the proprial love, and starts the operation of a new heavenly love
in its place. Gradually, through many temptations daily over a lifetime, the
"reborn" proprium becomes our conscious awareness. Our thoughts and motives are
altruistic and loving to be obedient to God's will or the Proprium of the
Divine-Human (see next sub-section).
Continuing:
Verse 24 Therefore a man (vir) will leave his father and his mother and
will cling to his wife, and they will be one flesh.
'Leaving father and mother' is leaving the internal man, for the internal
is that which conceives and gives birth to the external. 'Clinging to his
wife' is in order that the internal man may be within the external. 'Being one
flesh' means that they are there together. Previously the internal man, and
the external man deriving from the internal, were spirit, but now they have
become flesh. In this way celestial and spiritual life was joined on to the
proprium in order that they might seemingly be one. (AC 160)
In the style of writing with correspondences "the man clinging to his wife"
refers to the heavenly self becoming active within the external self. The
thoughts and motives of the external self are transformed from hellish to
heavenly when the new reborn proprium becomes active. The lower external self
cannot do this on its own, but it can be vivified or operationalized by the
higher self acting within the lower self. The higher self which is heavenly
cannot be seen in the lower self since the lower self is natural and the natural
mind cannot see the celestial mind. The celestial mind active and influencing
the natural mind is referred to as "'Leaving father and mother."
These relationships may not be fully clear because only a sample of the overall
argument is presented. Please consult the Writings for the detailed study. But
enough is given here to demonstrate to you that Sacred Scripture in its
extracted scientific meaning is about theistic psychology, or the science of
immortality. God uses this form of communicating with the human race because it
serves primarily to elevate our rational consciousness of God and the methods by
which God manages our immortal mind and the universe.
6.0.4
Innocence and the Choice of Salvation
Continuing:
As has been stated, man's proprium is nothing but evil, and when presented
to view is terribly ugly; but when charity and innocence are instilled into
the proprium by the Lord it looks fine and attractive, as stated in 154. The
charity and innocence not only excuse the proprium, that is, a person's evil
and falsity, but also virtually do away with it, as anyone may see in the case
of young children. When they love one another and their parents, and at the
same time a childlike innocence is evident, evil and false traits at such
times not only go unnoticed but are even pleasing. From this it can be seen
that nobody is allowed into heaven unless he has some measure of innocence in
him, as the Lord said,
Let the young children come to Me and do not hinder them; of such is the
kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, Whoever has not received the kingdom of
God like a young child will not enter into it. Taking them up therefore into
His arms, He laid His hands upon them, and blessed them. Mark 10:14-16.
(AC 164)
A popular saying is that "the child is father to the man." Every child inherits
an evil proprium connected to hell. But a child also inherits heavenly traits
called "remains." The chief of the remains is called "innocence" which is the
tendency to willingly obey parents and authority figures. Without this inborn
innocence, or willingness to learn, no child could acquire a civilized
personality. AS parents and teachers know well, children oscillate between
showing their heavenly traits and their hellish traits. They are thus held in
balance by God to give them the opportunity to resist evil traits when
conscience forbids them. The trait of innocence is necessary for the new reborn
proprium since we cannot live in heaven without loving to conform all
our thoughts and motives to God's order.
Innocence, or the willingness and love to obey God, is the ruling love of all
who abide in the highest portion of their mind called heaven. Eternal happiness
in conjugial love is heaven, and its living context is innocence. It is in the
willingness to obey God in which heaven is located. This is because we elevate
our consciousness to the heavenly state of mind by willing to be led by God
rather than by self. We lay down every desire and interest we have from
ourselves, and we put on only that which belongs to the Divine-Human. In effect,
we superimpose the Proprium of the Divine-Human upon the former place where we
acted on behalf of our self. The agent that carried out our feelings, motives,
and values has been fired or anesthetized and neutralized, put into a coma and
rendered non-operational. If we still want x which is from self, we deny
ourselves. If we still think Y which is from self, we reject it. Instead, we
think thoughts that are from Sacred Scripture which is the Speech of the
Divine-Human communicating with our rational consciousness.
In this way we cooperate with the Divine-Human working on us as a Divine Loving
and All-Knowing Therapist, daily, hourly, and second by second. When we have a
conflict between self and God through conscience or doctrine of life, we
immediately know that the Divine Psychologist is bringing us to face something deep
within ourselves that is still lurking, hiding, poisoning the atmosphere around
itself, injuring our innocence, or willingness to obey God rule and order. We
experience the temptation as a deep conflict, an agony of choice. We want X
badly, but we hear God's voice, Don't do it, Don't have it. Turn away from it.
Break the cycle. I'm here to give you the power. Just make the choice now.
Wonderful Divine words coming into our mind from within where God's influx
enters through the Spiritual Sun--through its spiritual heat and spiritual light
flowing into the receptors of the mind. The spiritual light entering the top of
the mind now descends through the levels of the mind--celestial, spiritual,
natural-rational. At each descent, lower correspondences are created at that
level of mental operation. When the wave of correspondences arrives into the
natural-rational mind it has been transformed by correspondences into a natural
language in which we think and through which we are conscious and rational, able
to reason and make choices on the basis of our understanding of Sacred
Scripture.
Slowly, progressively, after many daily temptation-situations we have
experienced for years, we at last come into the "Peace of Sabbath" which is a
reference to the Genesis Creation story where God rested after His six days of
labor. The Third Commandment orders us to keep the Sabbath day holy (see Chapter
5 Section 5.7). The scientific meaning of the "Sabbath rest" refers to the
mental state we reach after every spiritual temptation. The Divine Psychologist brings to us only those temptations at the right time, and in the right form,
that we can resist. By knowing all of the future, and by holding our mental
operations in perfect control, God is able to keep from us any temptation that
we cannot resist. After the deeply disturbing conflict of the spiritual
temptation, which is called a "battle" against devils, God defeats the devils
and puts them back into hell, no longer capable of infesting this individual.
God could not have done this earlier, prior to the temptation and the voluntary
and rational choice of rejecting the cherished enticement. The purpose of the
temptation is precisely to give us the moment of choice, by which God can then
remove the evil connection.
This choice of salvation must be repeated over and over again daily for
years--because we have a multitude of evil connections, both those that we have
inherited and those we have acquired ourselves by practicing and loving them.
The critical feature of the choice of salvation is innocence or the willingness
to say No to self and Yes to the Divine-Human. There is no in between. Every
thought or motive is either from heaven or from hell, either from the
Divine-Human's Proprium or our own.
The Divine-Human's Proprium is innocence itself and is the source of all
innocence. We would never be willing to deny ourselves totally by following
self, and since the self always leads to hell because it is from hell, and is
hell, therefore we are lost in advance unless we are willing to put on
innocence, that is, the Lord's Proprium. This means wanting only what the Lord
wants, loving only what the Lord loves, thinking only what the Lord thinks,
intending only what the Lord intends, doing only what the Lord does.
When we are in this state of innocence we are in our heaven and we are called
angels. Swedenborg interviewed many angels for 27 years. The described their
happiness to him as being this innocence. They said that the instant they
hesitate going with the flow of the Divine-Human, they fall out of their heaven,
tumbling down into the lower levels of their mind where they start experiencing
conflicts and temptations. So the essence of eternal happiness in conjugial love
is the complete and total suppression of anything belonging to our own proprium
or self.
This total reliance on the Divine-Human is a permanent Sabbath rest from all
labors of temptations. No feeling or thought from the hells can reach into that
place. Nothing stops our unbounded blessedness, our unbounded love and wisdom.
We are capable of truly amazing and wonderful powers, forming an environment
within us and around us that surpasses all imagination and desire.
Theistic psychology is the knowledge brought to us by Divine Speech about how we
can suppress ourselves totally and become "children of God," that is, living
God's Proprium as-if our own, thereby having immortality and endless mental
expansion.
The Writings reveal that Proprium in the good sense exists only in the
Divine-Human. This is because all good is the spiritual heat streaming forth from the
Spiritual Sun which is the hot sphere of passion surrounding the Divine-Human in
the highest region of the created human mind. The Spiritual Sun is the source of
all good streaming into the created universe from its inmost parts.
Think about any object or all objects that exist. Each object has an external
part that struts out into the physical plane or degree. This physical external
has to have a mental or spiritual internal framework that holds the object into
existence. This internal spiritual framework is made of the spiritual heat and
light form the Spiritual Sun. It is in this sense that we can say that the
spiritual world is "within" the natural world, or that every natural event is an
effect of a prior spiritual cause.
What happens when you remove the internal framework of the object by shutting
down the influx or inflow of spiritual heat and light from the Spiritual Sun?
The object is removed from existence. Or, the operation ceases, whatever it is.
We are familiar with what happens when we unplug the electric stove, or if the
electric company has a power failure. Every electric appliance goes dead. In a
similar way, if you remove the spiritual heat and light from within an object,
the object ceases to be online in existence, it goes dead, disintegrates, and
disappears.
The human mind is an organ of reception of spiritual heat and light. We receive
spiritual heat in the affective organ and spiritual light in the cognitive organ
(see Section xx). God gives us the ability or power to make a free choice
regarding the incoming spiritual light or truth, and the incoming spiritual heat
or love. We can love them or reject them. If we reject them, they are turned
into their opposites or inversion: incoming good becomes evil in our will
(affective organ), and incoming truth becomes falsified truth in our
understanding (cognitive organ). In one case our consciousness and character is
from heaven, and in the other case, it is from hell. There is no in between.
Our own self or proprium is therefore an inversion or opposition of God's
Proprium. Our own self takes us to eternal hell while adopting as-if our own the
Proprium of the Divine-Human takes us to eternal heaven. It's our choice. We
need therefore to inquire into how our inverted proprium develops and how we can
arrest its development and put it to sleep forever.
Our own proprium or self is actually dead, not alive, because it consists of the
denial of life through the denial of what is good and true--the only life there
is. Swedenborg went through many hells and sure enough, the people there
appeared alive and doing all sorts of atrocious and horrible things to each
other. But from the perspective of true life, of heavenly life, the life in hell
is indeed dead because it is devoid of all good and truth. Those who maintain
themselves in the hells of their mind are unwilling to rise above it, They
receive life moment by moment, and they invert it into something dead as soon as
it enters their conscious mind. They are said to be dead because they live in a
false appearance rather than in reality. They cannot die because all humans are
born immortal, but they can remove themselves from life by living in horrible
delusions and fantasies, shared mutually with others. They reject all rational
things and they hate God and innocence with the utmost rage.
When we put on God's Proprium and obey in innocence without self-interference,
we enter true reality and heavenly life, or everything that is good and true.
6.0.5
Spiritual Growth:
How the New Will is formed
The "will" refers to the operation of the affective organ. These operations vary
by categories which we are all familiar with--intentions, motivations, goals,
purposes, impulses, propensities, inborn preferences, enjoyments, satisfactions,
affections, loves. All these sub-categories of the affective operations are
referred to globally in Sacred Scripture as "love" and the "will." In theistic
psychology we use the term "character" to refer to the hierarchy of our loves in
every day life. We discussed above the word "propirum" which means "our own
self" or that which we feel is our own. In order for something to feel our own
we must choose it in freedom. If we choose it by necessity or threat we are not
choosing it in freedom and therefore it is not our love, and finally, it is not
our own. It remains outside of our own loves. Our immortality consists only
of those things that our own. Other things that belong to our personality or
appearance and reputation, do not transfer across our second death (see Section
xx). Our eternal state of mind can be composed only of our loves, and anything
that our loves want around, which means thoughts of a certain kind.
The will is the actual human being, while the personality, knowledge, and memory
is outside the actual human being, something that our will loves to keep around
for enjoyment and can change at will!
The will, dominant love, or character is therefore our proprium, our self, our
very own--what we are in reality rather than appearance.
Upon our first death, the physical body drops off and we are resuscitated in the
world of spirits. Surprisingly to most people, as observed by Swedenborg, we
appear to ourselves to be in a solid body whose youth, sensitivity, and health
is far greater than what we people remember from their material earth body.
Swedenborg himself was able to confirm this while living simultaneously in in
his physical body and "in spirit" as he sometimes refers to it. We are in a
mental state in which we experience rapid change. The first few weeks all our
earth memories are intact. This is when we appear to be meeting with "dead
relatives" and former friends or spouses. We also seem to be living in a city
and a house similar to what we left behind on earth. Through a series of intense
and rapid expriences we are led more and more into our real character, our real
loves that pulled the strings behind our personality habits and appearances.
We discover ourselves truly for the first time. We cannot resist the intense
urges of loves that have been held cooped up by social personality, reputation,
or the law. Like a genie out of the bottle, we rush into all sorts of frantic
behavior and new conduct of great passion and intensity. Now is your eternal
destiny sealed. Your second death is quickly approaching and you are
compelled from within, by your ruling dominant supreme love, to act to please
that love, to satisfy yourself, to enjoy life in its most. This is the moment of
destiny for which we all must prepare. If the ruling love is the "old will" we
were born with, we are compelled at this point to immerse our consciousness
completely and fully into the loves of the old will. This is called descending
into the hell of your mind.
If you have a "new will" you are quite pleased at this point to give up
altogether any love that is in the old will. Giving up any love and every love
in it, without exception, like--selfishness, pride, unfaithfulness in marriage,
love of disobedience, hatred of innocence, etc. etc. (see Section xx). With the
new will we are happy to give every one of the loves in our old will, so that
now, upon our second death, we are resuscitated into the heaven in our mind.
Which is our immortality, whether in heaven or in hell, is determined completely
by our daily choices. Theistic psychology gives us a scientific understanding of
how God creates the new will in an individual. It is a process that requires our
cooperation, which involves the willingness to resist temptations brought to us
by the Divine Psychologist as our character is being rebuilt, day by day, and
hour by hour.
6.0.5.1
The Role of Divine Speech in Building Up the New Will
In the Writings God reveals the rational methods of management He uses. There
are many aspects to this, some of which are discussed elsewhere (see Section
xx). A basic concept is "influx" which refers to the mechanism of control God
uses to manage the endless details of keeping the universe running in the
intended manner and purpose. We can distinguish between "immediate influx" and
"mediate influx." Sometimes they are referred to as "general influx" and
"particular influx." God maintains a line of control from Firsts to Lasts in the
universe. It is a series of control mechanisms based on the "laws of
correspondences" between what is higher and lower, that is, between what is
earlier and what is later in the series. The First in the series of control and
causation is the Spiritual Sun (see Section xx).
In order to maintain omnipotence and omnipresence it is necessary that God
inflow with power, or "be present." in every created object that exists. The
existing object is therefore "online" with God and continues to exist only
because it is being continuously recreated, instant by instant, from its inmost
structure. This is immediate or general influx and never ceases from creation to
the endless future. It is part of the rational idea of the "created universe."
It is not rational to think that God can create the universe and then can
withdraw Himself, totally or in part, so that the world runs by the laws He has
also created (see Section xx).
But if immediate influx were the only mechanism of control and causation, there
would not exist any "consciousness" and therefore any human beings. To be human
we must have consciousness. This is a property of rationality and intelligence
which only God, the Divine Human, possess. God had to create an organic form
that is capable of being online with His consciousness and rationality. Rocks,
trees, galaxies, or atoms are created in a structural form or anatomy that is
capable of being online for immediate influx. The human mind is an organic form
or anatomy that is capable of being online fro mediate influx, as well as
immediate influx. This is what makes human beings unique in the created
universe. Only the human mind has a spiritual organ capable of receiving mediate
influx from the Divine Human. Mediate influx is the cause of human
consciousness.
This phenomenon is very familiar to every person. Sometimes we use the phrase
"conscious awareness" to refer to the experience of consciousness.
Consciousness is not something we possess but something that we receive online
in the sense that a radio receives online broadcasts. Mediate influx is a kind
of "broadcasting" phenomenon where the mind receives consciousness beamed from
the Spiritual Sun.
We go online with mediate influx at birth, and never go off to eternity--since
we are born immortal.
At this level of thinking, influx is a kind of power or force issuing from God
and entering every human mind. By viewing mediate influx from a scientific
perspective, we can examine it as a mechanism or process that can be described
and researched. The concept of "Divine Speech," which we have discussed in
several places, is a way of describing and understanding how mediate influx
works (see Section xx). Consciousness always involves some rational content
or meaning. That's part of what it is. The rational content of Divine Speech
proceeds from the Spiritual Sun down into the layers of receptors in the human
mind. Just like human speech has content and is carried by words, Divine Speech
has a content that is carried by words at different level of rationality. The
highest level of understanding Divine Speech is the Sacred Scripture Swedenborg
saw in the highest or Third Heaven. This was written in "celestial
correspondences."
From there, Sacred Scripture gets transformed into a lower form of rational
content called "spiritual correspondences" of Divine Speech. From there it
descends into "spiritual-natural" correspondences in the lowest heaven of the
human mind. Finally, Divine Speech descends into the physical world into a
natural language through "natural correspondences." This is the Sacred Scripture
that we are familiar with here on earth.
The consciousness and rationality that human beings have from mediate influx is
therefore embodied or carried in linguistic correspondences that are arranged in
a series from lowest (natural) to highest (celestial).
In most ancient times on this earth the human race was celestial so that Divine
Speech was not written down in Sacred Scripture, but was received directly and
sensuously. The people were in inner conversation and contact with God through
the angels who had been their parents and ancestors. There was dual
consciousness similar to Swedenborg's. But at one point this race started
misusing their understanding of Divine Speech, using the knowledge and power of
correspondences to invent magic and cults or fantasies about the afterlife.
Eventually everyone born in that race inherited this tendency and involvement
with cults and all sorts of false obsessions. This celestial race was therefore
extinguished and a new evolution of consciousness began with a new race which
was spiritual, not celestial. That's us.
The celestial race had a unitary mind so that the affective and cognitive organs
could not operate separately. This was reflected by correspondence in the
structure of their brain which was unitary, while our race has
split-brain--right and left. This physical structure reflects the new split in
function between the affective and cognitive organs of the mind. People born
with the old inherited racial will now were required to undergo a process called
"regeneration." Through this process God slowly and progressively builds a "new
will" by means of temptations in which we battle against old loves by using the
weapons of the understanding. God gives us a conscience, which is an inner voice
in our consciousness that flows in from Divine Speech.
Along with the inner oral voice of Divine Speech through conscience, God also
gives an external written voice of Divine Speech through Sacred Scripture in a
natural language.
Note carefully: God does not speak to us directly, either in an inner
voice or an external voice, as took place with the celestial race. With our
spiritual race direct communication with God is shut down, except in the case of
a few people, as recorded in the Old and New Testaments, and in the case of
Swedenborg. The reason has been discussed in several places in relation to
sensuous vs. rational consciousness (see Section xx). To summarize: If God were
to talk to us in our mind directly, we would no longer be able to maintain the
as-of self appearance and we would lose all spiritual freedom, hence all
salvation and all heaven. Instead, the only road upward to our heaven is a
rational consciousness because heaven is a rational destination or state of
mind. Sometimes pious or evangelical people say that God spoke to them and said
this or that. We are not to interpret this as God speaking to them directly and
saying words that you can quote.
For this would be Divine Speech, which is not given personally to anyone but
only to the prophet who is writing Sacred Scripture. And we know from the
Writings that Sacred Scripture has been completed in a rational series called
the Threefold Word--the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Writings--so
that there is not going to be any new Sacred Scripture given in the future of
human spiritual evolution (see Section xx).
6.0.5.2
Flow Chart of How the New Will is Created by
Divine Speech
The left side of the chart above shows how heavenly life was achieved through
the "Adamic" will of the early civilizations on this earth. Direct sensuous
consciousness of God and those already in heaven created a "living voice" in the
conscious awareness of the celestial mind on earth. The right side of the chart
shows how heaven is created in the current spiritual race on earth through a
"new will." This new evolutionary creation of the human mind is achieved through
rational consciousness of God and heaven. One portion of this rational
consciousness is created by the inner voice of conscience, which is not direct,
like it had been for the celestial race, but indirect. The inner voice appears
like our own voice, not God's voice.
The second portion of rational consciousness involves written Sacred Scripture.
As this is read or studied our knowledge and beliefs change from materialistic
to spiritual or dualist. This is called "undergoing reformation" of the
understanding or cognitive mind. Then as this understanding becomes "the
doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture," it is applied as principles of living
in daily choices. This is called regeneration, especially wit regard to
"undergoing temptations." This process gradually creates the "new will" which is
the heavenly proprium with which we live in conjugial heaven to eternity (see
Section xx).
The distinguishing difference between the spiritual and the celestial races is
the method of creating a heavenly will. The celestial people were able to do
this in a straightforward fashion. They grew up being taught by direct
communication with heaven so that they became adults in an orderly manner,
loving to be obedient to the rule of God and rationality. But the spiritual race
is born in a disorderly state that is opposed to the order of God and
rationality. The will we are born has built in hereditary ties to the hells, not
the heavens. We grow up to be disorderly adults leading a life of conflict and
irrationality, full of personality traits that are selfish and obsessive. Hence
it becomes necessary for every individual to be "reborn" and "regenerated." A
new will then replaces the old will. This is accomplished through conscience and
the doctrine of truth from written Sacred Scripture. First the understanding or
cognitive organ is reformed by means of the doctrine of truth from Sacred
Scripture. Then, the will is regenerated as we make daily choices in accordance
with the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. This new will is a heavenly
proprium that lives in conjugial love to eternity.
The chart below shows the two roads ahead of us, one that leads to heaven by
means of the new will, the other leads to hell by means of the old will.
The flow chart above shows the radical difference for the spiritual race,
between sensuous and rational consciousness of Divine Speech. The sensuous
consciousness of God is a perspective of the old will with which we are born.
The old will refers to the evil inherited traits with which everyone is now
born. This is why the spiritual race is called the Fallen humankind. We incline
towards hellish traits (see Section xx). This means that unless we are
regenerated and receive a new will, we cannot escape our ultimate fate in hell.
The old will, filled with hellish loves, acknowledges Sacred Scripture as part
of culture and tradition--but only in its literal sense. Why?
Because the literal sense of Sacred Scripture allows people to use it to justify
their current loves. The literal sense of Sacred Scripture is written in natural
correspondences relating to a materialistic view of God and the world. The
hellish loves of the old will conjoin themselves with only those beliefs that
support these loves. We ignore all the places in Sacred Scripture where we are
instructed to change our character. We find passages in Sacred Scripture that
will justify whatever reasoning we need to justify ourselves, to justify our
current loves that we do not wish to give up. This approach to using Sacred
Scripture is called literalism and fundamentalism. It creates religious
institutions that have a social and political function in society. Disagreements
in interpretation of Sacred Scripture leads to conflict and factionalism.
Leaders emerge to create new prophecies and cults. People claim to have visions
and hear voices form heaven, or even, to talk to God directly. They are
unwilling to undergo regeneration as shown by the fact that they have
institutional hatreds and discriminations against those who disagree with
them--thus, immersed in hellish loves instead of heavenly. This is how we all
are and prefer it that way---until we switch from mystical spirituality to
rational spirituality.
As the chart above shows, rational consciousness of God starts with rational
understanding of Sacred Scripture. This means understanding the correspondential
meaning or "inner sense" of the sentences in Sacred Scripture (see Section xx).
As explained elsewhere, the correspondential meaning is universal and is the
basis of theistic psychology. We form our rational spirituality by studying
theistic psychology and reforming our understanding in according with it.
Everything that we thought we understood before about God is now modified in
terms of rational understanding. Mystical ideas are eliminated along with the
puzzling contradictions in the literal passages of Sacred Scripture. We are no
longer seeking a sensuous consciousness of God and heaven. We do not wish to
have God appear to us, or speak to us in a living voice. We do not wish a
special or personal relationship with God, but only a relationship of
understanding, a closeness from adoration of the truth in our understanding. The
more we apply the truths to our life choices, the closer we feel to God because
God is Truth.
The regenerated will, which is called the new will, is formed by means of the
understanding of truth from Sacred Scripture. Without this truth, the will
cannot be regenerated and remains the old will. Only Divine Truth, when loved in
our understanding, can we acquire the motivation and willingness to resist
temptations in the old will. If we obey the truth from Sacred Scripture in our
rational understanding, then the new will is being created gradually, and only
to the extent that we make our daily choices according to this rational
consciousness from Sacred Scripture.
Note carefully: We can learn and understand the doctrine of truth
from Sacred Scripture, we can even teach it to others, but fail to apply it to
our daily choices. In that case our rational consciousness will remain shallow
or narrow, and less effective in allowing us to regenerate the old loves.
Both charts above refer to the regeneration of the old will, which is then
called the new will. Because opposites cannot function together in the mind, the
new affective organ must grow in a different portion of the mind from the old
will. As we make heavenly choices in the course of every day experiences and
challenges, growth takes place in a degree within the natural mind. The anatomy
of the natural mind shows that it has three portions from lower to higher,
called, natural-corporeal mind, natural-sensuous mind, and natural-rational
mind. The old affective organ is located within the corporeal-sensuous portions.
That's what we inherit from our parents. But the natural-rational portion grows
from our own effort in becoming a literate citizen. This is our normal level of
thinking and understanding.
When we read Sacred Scripture we have the capacity and choice of understanding
it at this level of natural-rational thinking. We can study correspondences and
spiritual implications, and in this way develop for ourselves a doctrine or
philosophy of living. Now as we make choices every day in accordance with our
doctrinal principles, new spiritual fibers or nerve endings begin to grow within
our understanding of doctrine. As we discover new meanings in Sacred Scripture
we must make new choices in our daily life. Each time we understand something
new or deeper, we are challenged to apply this new element in our understanding
to the choices we make. We cannot get stuck with one invariable set of choices,
as the old will gets stuck in fundamentalism or cultism.
Our choices must reflect our understandings--that is the essence of rational
spirituality and growth.
New understandings must be loved, which means, must be enacted and performed in
choices. Then the new will is going to grow steadily within the spiritual portion of
the natural-rational mind. This new portion is called the "spiritual-natural"
mind, and sometimes, the "interior-natural" mind.
This is the only place in our mind that is heavenly or spiritual. Making
choices involves facing our resistance to acting according to each new truth we
understand. At whatever level we understand a spiritual topic, we face
resistance to it from the old will. Some love will have to be given up, and we
don't like that. So we resist. We find ourselves violating our conscience and
doctrine by doing X or not doing Y. For instance, yesterday and today I have not
shaved or cleaned my teeth. I've been thinking about it a number of times. I
feel guilty and irrational. My teeth feel sensitive. I think about the bacteria
eating up the enamel and causing cavities. I think about how I exaggerate to the
dentist when he asks me if I brush and floss every day. I lie to protect my
reputation as a reasonable person who's got his life in check. I feel anxious
when I'm thinking about the consequences of not being conscienscious in my
dental care. I'm aware of hellish traits involved--lying, misrepresenting,
neglecting, fearing, rebelling, resisting.
In other words, the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture tells me to go take
care of my teeth. This is a Divine Commandment that is frequently repeated in
Sacred Scripture--not mentioning the teeth specifically, but mentioning that we
are required to take care of our body, our family, our property, and our
country. But I fail to love this doctrine sufficiently, which is why I don't
follow it every day. It is the same with all other choices we make in the course
of a day (see Section xx). And now, I'm interrupting this work to go take care
of my teeth!
Here's another example. I have in my mind the doctrine of truth from Sacred
Scripture which tells me that I must learn to love others as much as I love
myself, and even, more than I love myself. Swedenborg has often talked with
people who dwell eternally in the highest regions of their mind called the Third
Heaven. They have assured him that the greatest enjoyment and blessedness they
experience is when they can be of some service to others rather than to
themselves. They gladly give up anything they possess to anyone who wants it. So
this is my aspiration. I love the idea that I should benefit others more than
myself. Before I started reading the Writings of Swedenborg I was afraid to love
others as much as myself. I was always privately rooting for myself in
anything--having more money than others, having more intelligence, and
luck, being most admired, etc. Everything that was going on in the world,
the news, the family, was about me--in my mind. I was the center of the
universe. I liked the idea of having more than others, and being able to hand
things to them to impress them and to make them feel beholden to me. Where did I
get this attitude of self-centered arrogance and delusion?
6.0.5.3
Self-assessment Using the Ten Commandments Chart
As I was studying the Writings my rationality became more genuine so that I was
able to understand that my total egocentrism was my inheritance, in common with
everybody else. I understood the consequences of remaining in that perspective.
I began fearing to remain what I had been. I began my spiritual self-witnessing
in earnest (see Section xx). I gathered much empirical evidence on the ways in
which my thoughts and feelings all day long were driven by my egocentricity. My
inherited selfishness became apparent at the minutest level of behavior. The
Table below gives examples in relation to the Ten Commandments (see Section
5.7.10).
TEN COMMANDMENTS
(literal meaning) |
SCIENTIFIC MEANING
The Doctrine of Truth from Sacred Scripture
(see Section 5.7)
|
SELF-WITNESSING DATA |
First Commandment
There is not to be any other God before my face |
God is the sole source of everything. Spiritual values
must guide every one of your behaviors. |
In the course of the day I constantly forget to keep God in
my conscious awareness. My commitment to do so is not constant, showing that
I have insufficient love or motivation for it even though I accept the
principle that I should. |
Second Commandment
Do not take the Name of God in vain |
You must give up what is against God in your mind--slander,
innuendo, character assassination, cursing, gossip, exaggeration, idle talk,
obscene jokes. |
I accept this in principle but there are occasions when I
find myself exaggerating something, or thinking of something obscene, or
something negative about a stranger I don't even know. |
Third Commandment
Keep the Sabbath Day Holy |
You must acknowledge God's operational presence in your
thoughts and feelings all day long every day. |
I understand this process rationally, yet I frequently act
as if I'm alone in my mind. I thus temporarily expel God from my mind when I
want to continue doing what I shouldn't. |
Fourth Commandment
Honor your father and mother |
Obey your conscience and the rule of law. Do not be cynical,
arrogant, and unethical. Conserve the common good. |
I hold this up as an ideal for myself, yet I give myself
permission to drive over the speed limit, or to waste water conservation by
laziness (like not fixing a leak, or keeping the faucet running
unnecessarily). |
Fifth Commandment
Do not murder |
Do not vent your anger or fantasize revenge. Do not violate
the human rights of anyone. |
I fully agree with this, yet I enjoy, for a few seconds, the
image of physically restraining someone who stands in my way, even mentally
crushing another car with my giant tractor. I reject these fantasies as
evil, yet I have not stopped enjoying them for the few moments they last,
before I put an end to them. |
Sixth Commandment
Do not commit adultery |
Do not fantasize illicit sex or enjoy pornographic
entertainment in the privacy of your mind. |
I understand how important this requirement is, and yet I
enjoy a sexual fantasy that pops into my mind, or a sexy photograph that
unexpectedly comes my way on the computer screen, on TV, or a Victoria's
Secrets lingerie catalogue. |
Seventh Commandment
Do not steal |
Do not spread false beliefs or deprive others of their truth
and rationality. Do not attribute any power to yourself, but only to God. |
I officially attribute all things to the omnipotent God, and
yet I often act as if I am my own boss, doing what I want instead of what
God says He wants us to do. |
Eight Commandment
Do not lie |
Do not deceive anyone for your personal benefit. Do not
contradict the truth of God. Do not justify in your mind or, find excuses
for the bad things you do. |
I dislike the idea of spreading false facts, and yet I
sometimes exaggerate how precisely I know something, giving my guess or
recollection the status of research facts. Thus, my convenience and my
self-promotion take precedence over being truthful. |
Ninth and Tenth Commandments
Do not covet |
Do not focus only on cleaning up your outward behavior. You
must also clean up your private thoughts and feelings. |
I'm fully committed to this principle, and yet I see how my
thoughts do not match my outward behavior, which means that I'm being
hypocritical for my benefit. When I'm competing I have to remind myself that
others have an equal right to win. |
The Ten Commandments Chart helps us to observe and catalogue all the ways in
which we break them in our daily behavior. As you can see from my entries for
each Commandment, I am fully committed to them theoretically, or cognitively,
because I have formed for myself the doctrine of truth out of Sacred Scripture.
Despite my commitment, I do not live up to the doctrine in my mind. this proves
that I have hellish loves that oppose my heavenly commitments. Clearly, I must
continue to fight for my eternal life in heaven. The Divine Psychologist is in
charge of the events in my life, and in my mind, so that I might have the
maximum opportunity possible to choose good over bad. Eventually, this process
of victories in temptations, will bring me to a state where my motive to follow
the Commandment is greater than my motive not to follow them. For more on this
topic see Section xx.
6.0.5.4
A Spiritual Growth Method Based on Swedenborg and
Gurdjieff.
Peter Rhodes, is a Swedenborgian psychologist in private practice in Bryn
Athyn, PA. In his book AIM (see Reading List) Dr.
Rhodes takes various concepts from Russian psychologist Gurdijef that are
compatible with his Swedenborgian perspective, and collects them into a
practical system for spiritual growth that has been used in Swedenborg oriented
support groups for the past few years (see for example this Web location:
www.newchurch.org/youngadults/AIM/Aim%20Title%20Page.htm )
Quoting from an interview in which Peter Rhodes discusses Gurdijef and the
spiritual growth practice based on some of his concepts:
He [Gurdijef ] had a tremendous interest in what he calls esoteric
Christianity. He was searching for the truth, and his premise was that the truth
has been lost over time so the further you go back in time, the closer you get
to a purer form of truth. As a young man he organized a group called the
"Seekers of Truth," and after a long time he came to a book in Tibet which he
describes as being written before Egypt had sand. (I don't know how old that is,
but it must be quite old.) He studied the book and formed an organization which
started to bring these teachings to London, Paris, Russia, and elsewhere. I was
introduced to his teachings through a book called In Search of the Miraculous,
by Ouspensky, who was a student of Gurdjieff and who was undergoing a similar
search. Ouspensky had immediately recognized that this man, known only to him as
"G," had something he had been looking for. It was something entirely different
than just a psychology or other various theories and philosophies that he had
previously studied. There was something unique in what Gurdjieff had found and
taught. His teaching helped me for the first time to make a connection between
what the Writings talk about and the thoughts, feelings and attitudes that I was
becoming aware of in myself. I wanted to be free of many of my reactions to
other people, my prejudices, anger, frustration and irritation, etc. This man
was talking in ways that I could understand and he told of actual changes I
could make by doing what he taught. A real change did take place in the way I
responded in life.
I first came across Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and also Maurice Nicoll, a student
of Gurdjieff who studied the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, when I was raising
young children. Anyone who has raised children knows that a lot of the things
children do produce very strong responses in the parent. The children may not be
doing something that we would term "bad" in terms of motive - for instance, when
a child inadvertently spills a glass of grape juice on a new rug. There's no
evil operating in the child; the glass is big and his hand is small, and his
coordination is just starting to develop. Nevertheless, as a parent who just
purchased a new rug, you may have a lot of anger; irritation and frustration
occur. The immediate mechanical response may be to discipline the child. "I told
you to be careful! Can't you pay attention?" A lot of anger comes out and the
child, of course, gets upset and cries, and there is a lot of negativity that
takes place. Gurdjieff's first statement to any student was, "You must not
express negative emotions." He says that you do not have the power to not have
negative emotions; you have no choice in regard to having negative thoughts and
negative feelings, but a man must start by non-expression of these negative
emotions. He also stressed that the negative response comes from within and is
due to a man's "level of being" and only appear to be caused by the event, i.e.,
the child. (Peter Rhodes interview posted at:
www.newchurch.org/youngadults/AIM/appendix%20etc..htm
)
The basis of spiritual growth is self-control for the sake of obeying God's
Commandments, the result of which is a heavenly character that can live its
immortality in heaven. This heavenly character must be formed while we are still
on earth. There are two things we should note about the Ten Commandments. First,
that they are about all the things we must not do (see Section xx). Second, they
apply to both outward conduct and mental behavior--thoughts and feelings. We
also know that negative emotions are symptoms we have that show our inherited
connectedness to the hells. Though we may know and understand the scientific
meaning of the Ten Commandments, we may still not be able to instantly obey
them, as I discussed above using myself as an example (see Section 6.0.5.3). We
need the help of systematic techniques or methods in order to compel our outward
conduct and our mental behavior to obey the dictates of our rational doctrine
from Sacred Scripture.
Gurdijef's method starts with the principle that we "must not express
negative emotions." This means that we must suppress their overt expression.
This we have the power to do, if only we have the motivation or commitment.
Suppressing the outward show of an inward negative emotion is thus the first
step. All other steps depend on this. Note that there are good and bad motives
for not showing a negative emotion like anger or disdain. A good motive would be
to spare the other person the negative experience of being exposed to our show
of anger or criticism. A bad motive would be to control, seduce, or mislead the
other person for our own benefit, and thus acting hypocritically.
To try to improve our character to become more heavenly, is a good motive. We
can elevate this motive to high rank in the hierarchy of our life motives
through commitment and fear or love of God. From this rational position we
are given the power to control the sensuous and corporeal mind, and therefore of
the physical body. We can suppress the expression of negative emotions for the
sake of our heavenly character. Gurdijef was much practiced in self-witnessing
and he observed that you cannot control the mental behaviors in the same way as
you can control the physical ones. In fact, he advised that you cannot control
having a negative emotion by suppressing it in the way you do with the physical
show of anger, like using threatening gestures and insulting words. Gurdijef
attributed our negative thoughts and emotions to our "level of being." The cause
of the negative emotion is never an outside event or person but the level of our
mental consciousness, that is, of our spiritual growth. Anger, resentment, rage,
criticism, depression, cynicism, arrogance, self-centeredness, pride,
deceptiveness, intolerance, etc., are negative mental operations at a low level
of spirituality. To grow spiritually, we must get rid of them in our daily life.
Continuing with the Peter Rhodes interview:
So I began not expressing negative emotions to my children and to observe
that these negative emotions were in me. It became clear that any real change
would come through a change in my reactions and not through trying to change my
children or others. The child had just spilled the grape juice. The negative
reaction was caused by the hells in the internal world, in my proprium trying to
come through me to love of the world, in terms of the new rug, or love of
dominion, etc. and if I gave in to negative responses I would see a live
demonstration of the hells in me. I started to see what took place if the hells
didn't operate through me. I saw the child and I could pick up the dropped
glass, and be with the child. I could observe the tender emotions going on in
him - his own concern, his own frustration, his own fear - and this would make a
definite real change in my relationship to my family and others. This could only
take place through what Gurdjieff calls, "the Work," i.e., work on oneself.
Why do we have to work on ourselves?
Because, as discussed in many places, we are born with ties to the hells in
the lower portions of our natural mind (see Section xx). These ties do not damn
us to hell and for which we need forgiveness to go to heaven, as some people
have expressed it. God forgives even before we commit the sin, as revealed in
the Writings. It is not God's lack of forgiveness that keeps us from heaven. We
keep ourselves from heaven, which is in the mind of every human being, freely
available at any time we should want it. God cannot compel us to raise ourselves
to the heavens in our mind, for if He did, we would arrive there and see nothing
and feel agony or death. This is because our life is in hell, though we may not
know it or believe it when told. If you remove our ties to the hells, we have no
emotions left, as long as most of our life is in negative emotions. And that
happens to be the case for everyone born today on this earth.
This is then the reason that we are required to work on ourselves so that we
ourselves freely come to choose heavenly loves and are willing to abandon all
hellish enjoyments. Then we can have a life left in heaven where we can be
conjugially happy to eternity. It is not God who prevents entry to our own
heaven in the mind. We prevent ourselves by being unwilling to give up negative
emotions we love from heredity.
Note carefully: If we end up in hell we are not being punished by God for
misdeeds. Rather, we confirm the hells in us that we have from heredity. It is
this confirmation in ourselves that sends us to hell and keeps us there forever.
We go with the life of the emotions. If we hold on to bad emotions, that is our
life, our only life, and therefore we keep ourselves in hell. The cause of
going to hell is this holding on to the bad emotions.
This "holding on" is the grip of hell that we try to break as we work on
ourselves.
The hell grips us not from its own power, remember that. Nothing has power
but God. But God cooperates--within limits-- with the intentions of human
beings. These limits are discussed in connection with the Laws of Divine
Providence and Permissions (see xx). Within these limits everyone has the
impression that they are acting from themselves with their own power. This as-of
self impression is carefully maintained in place by God (see Section xx). It is
required that we exercise this as-of self initiative and effort, or else we
cannot appropriate the heavenly loves which constitute our very life in
conjugial eternity.
The Writings reveal the process by which we appropriate to ourselves either
hellish or heavenly ties. We are born from inheritance with ties to evils, but
we also have the capacity to establish new ties with the heavens. The ties to
the hells are in the lower portion of the natural mind called corporeal and
sensuous, while the ties to the heavens are in the upper portion of the natural
mind called "rational and spiritual" (see Section xx). We confirm the ties to
the hells when we make the negative feelings our own. We make the feelings our
own when we identify with them as our own, when we believe that they are our own
and we love them and freely choose them. We experience the hells through our
senses and mental justifications of them. We experience the heavens through our
rational doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. If we understand them and then
love them by doing them, then we are appropriating the good traits. We are being
prepared for heaven in immortality.
We cannot suppress our hellish emotions, feelings, and thoughts, but we can
refuse to identify with them as our own.
The Writings explain that God has the power to suppress our hellish emotions
and feelings, but if He did this He would remove our freedom to choose, and
therefore, our ability to appropriate the heavenly traits we need for conjugial
immortality. God must therefore wait for our cooperation and willingness. This
is the work we must do to regenerate our character.
Continuing with the Peter Rhodes interview:
I remember one particular incident with my son. It was sort of like waking up
for the first time, or coming out of water and seeing clearly through the air. I
could see how young and how tender he was. He was just about to be very injured
by emotions in me, and I could see very clearly that the hells were going to
come out and interfere with my relationship with him, my love and concern for
him. I could see what Gurdjieff says is the horror of the situation. Swedenborg
talks about this a great deal. He says if you could see things the way they
really are you would be horrified. I started to see that things that I took as
natural (it's natural to get angry, frustrated, etc.) are not natural. They are
things the Lord has been telling us about. He really wishes His kingdom to come
on earth, and He wishes His children to be raised by people who are open to His
leading. But it takes a lot of conscious effort and work and it takes the
understanding that we can only get from Revelation, or what Gurdjieff calls
"higher influences." These things are not gained from natural reason but have to
be explained to us by doctrine.
Peter Rhodes talks about his rational consciousness of God through "the
understanding that we can only get from Revelation, " referring the Writings of
Swedenborg. It is the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture that has the power
to fight our own self-destructive tendencies that are made super-strong in us by
heredity. It takes "a lot of conscious effort and work" to use our doctrine as a
weapon of victory over our temptations. We would be horrified were we allowed to
see our real character or proprium. Our Divine Psychologist prevents us from
seeing ourselves as we are in order to protect us from a horror we cannot deal
with.
6.0.5.4.1
The Ugliness of the Proprium or What Is Our Own
Swedenborg, after special preparation and protection, was allowed to observe
the human proprium, and he provides these descriptions:
Man's proprium when viewed from heaven looks just like something bony,
lifeless, and utterly misshapen, and so in itself something dead. But once it
has received life from the Lord it appears as something having flesh. For man's
proprium is something altogether dead, though it has the appearance to him of
being something; indeed it appears to be everything. (AC 149)
Nothing evil or false can possibly exist that is not the proprium or derived
from the proprium. For man's proprium is evil itself, which means that man is
nothing but evil and falsity. This has become clear to me from the fact that
when the contents of the proprium are presented to view in the world of spirits
they look so ugly that nobody can paint any uglier picture. (Those contents vary
however according to the nature of the proprium.) As a result when anyone is
offered a glimpse of the contents of his proprium he is horrified at himself and
wishes to run as though from the devil.
On the other hand contents of the proprium which have been given life by the
Lord look beautiful and attractive, varying according to the life to which a
celestial quality that is the Lord's can be added. Indeed people who have
received charity, that is, been made alive by it, look like boys and girls with
very attractive faces. And people who have received innocence look like naked
small children adorned in different ways with garlands of flowers twined around
their breasts, and precious stones in their hair, living and playing in
brightest light, with a sense of happiness stemming from the depths of their
being. (AC 154)
What is the proprium? The human proprium consists of everything evil and
false that gushes out of self-love and love of the world. It involves people
believing not in the Lord or in the Word but in themselves, and their imagining
that what they do not grasp through sensory evidence or through facts does not
exist at all. They become as a consequence nothing but evil and falsity and so
have a warped view of everything. Things that are evil they see as good, and
those that are good as evil; things that are false they see as true, and those
that are true as false. Realities they imagine to be nothing, and things that
are nothing they imagine to be everything. They call hatred love, thick darkness
light, death life, and vice versa. In the Word such people are called 'the lame
and the blind'. This then is the human proprium which in itself is hellish and
condemned. (AC 210)
What a devastating description of the human proprium or hereditary self.
There are those who believe that the human psyche is innocent, beautiful, and
godly, for instance the well known French Renaissance educator J. J. Rousseau.
His followers today may have here a contrastive view from scientific revelation.
Through many generations our race has cumulated countless traits under the
influence of the hells, all of them collected in each generation, and
increasing. That's why it says that "The human proprium consists of everything
evil and false that gushes out of self-love and love of the world."
The most damaging feature of the Fallen human proprium on this earth is that
it hides from us the true ugliness and wickedness in which it is immersed. It
triggers our negative emotions from a distance, behind us, so that we do not
suspect the ugliness of the source of our enjoyments. It is like kissing a
stranger at a dance in a dimly lit room, or outdoors at night in moonlight. When
the lights are turned on you are horrified to see you've been kissing and
enjoying a horrible pussy human-frog with wild eyes like coal and full of
inhuman hatred like an alien in a bad sci-fi movie.
That's what self love is. We love to kiss the drippy alien demon without taking a
look at the ugliness and scariness of it. The repulsive appearance of the human
proprium, or self, is merely a reflection of the inhuman affections and insane
thoughts that are in our mind from heredity. Divine Speech speaking to us in the
natural mind says this about us: "The human proprium consists of everything evil
and false that gushes out of self-love and love of the world" But it's not
really about us. This is what provides an exit from our inherited loves. These
evil loves for self and world, this hatred for the good, the true, and the
rational, is not ours, and is not truly human. Our true humanity is the good,
the true, and the rational.
The problem therefore is that we think that the evil loves we enjoy are
ours.
Our defeat is to be unwilling to hear the message of Sacred Scripture that
informs uf of the true reality: These evil loves are not our own. Self-love is
not our own. The self feels like what we have that's most our own. This is why
it's called the proprium--the Latin word for "own" or "very own."
A useful way of thinking about it is that we are under a spell or in a dream.
The ancients Swedenborg talked to in the spiritual world described our situation
on earth as "darkness" and "utter darkness." This is also the expression used in
all Sacred Scripture. The solution is to wake up. And a method for waking up has
been provided for all people through philosophy, science, theology, religion,
and truth seeking. These are all rational activities leading to dualism, which
is the acknowledgment that there is God and immortality of the mind. Dualism
is the wake up call.
When we enlarge our ability to think rationally about Sacred Scripture, we
are acquiring new concepts, or new meanings, which elevate our consciousness
above the appearances of materialism.
Materialism in its modern form is enforced today in science and education by
the negative bias (see Chapter 1). Through this self-enforced censorship the
scientific professions are fostering materialistic views on the self, the mind,
death. This learned attitude strengthens the grip on the illusion of the self,
that is, keeps us thinking that the self is our own, our very own. But dualism
breaks this grip because it helps us to see that this feeling of "my" love, "my"
thing, "my" wants, "my" happiness, my etc.--is a falsity of belief, and by
believing it, we put ourselves in a sleep which is preventing us from preparing
for our immortality. And you know the consequences of that (see Section xx).
We elevate our consciousness by means of correspondences to Divine Speech
(see Section xx). God has created human beings so that they can be raised to
immortality in conjugial heaven. This required that we be born on a physical
earth until we acquire a heavenly proprium, at which point we transition
permanently into the conjugial heavenly state of eternity. This idea of
the afterlife is dismissed by many people, indicating their materialism or
sometimes, lack of specific knowledge. And though this idea of the afterlife was
known since the earliest generations on earth, its scientific basis was never
established--until the scientific revelations in the Writings of Swedenborg
(1768-1772).
Swedenborg interviewed these people in their immortal heavens. His
observations prove that the idea of the afterlife known to the ancients, is
accurate and verifiable. In fact anyone can verify it, once we are resuscitated
(see Section xx). Sacred Scripture as we know it here on earth, are natural and
spiritual correspondences of Divine Speech. As we study Sacred Scripture using
the methods of theistic psychology we extract the correspondential meaning of
Divine Speech. In other words, we are given a new rational insight on the
meaning of the natural correspondences of the literal text. This new
understanding is carried by spiritual-rational correspondences of Divine Speech
(see Section xx). And our consciousness can be elevated to the highest heaven by
being given the rational insight of a still higher-level of meaning
called celestial-rational correspondences.
I underlined the phrase "we are given" to highlight the idea that this
process is not in our own control.
Our Divine Psychologist is in charge of every step. Of course God would love
to elevate everybody's mind to the highest heavenly potential of each
individual. He would love to because He is pure Love and Love cannot do any
other way. What stops Him is Truth or Wisdom or rationality, just as our
parenting principles stop us from giving in to the impulse of love and stop
disciplining our children. God cannot take anyone to heaven, cannot raise
anyone's consciousness to that state of mind--except by the individual's
willingness to love a heavenly proprium.
It's a rational necessity of creation. We must love the heaven we are taken
to, or into which we are created--or else we do not feel free. We would feel in
a prison to be forced into the heavenly state of our mind. We would feel
controlled like a zombie, lose all joy of life and endeavor. Therefore God's
Divine Love cannot save us from staying in hell--unless we are willing to love
the heavenly proprium God creates in us by which we can be free and happy in our
immortality.
The key issue for personality theory in theistic psychology is therefore
this: How do we develop the practical skills human beings need to acquire a
heavenly proprium that we can love to eternity.
Divine Speech gives us the knowledge. It is not possible to discover this by
self-observation or observation of others. It must come to us by scientific
revelations from Divine Speech. Human beings were created in that relationship
to Divine Speech. There is an "online" relationship between our rational mind
and the Divine Human through Divine Speech. Through Divine Speech we have access
to correspondences of higher and higher levels, as discussed throughout theistic
psychology. And through correspondences we can elevate our rational
consciousness of God to our heavenly mind, where we can spend our immortality.
Let's examine some of these statements of Divine Speech, through its
natural-rational correspondences, the level at which we are studying theistic
psychology.
As has been stated, man's proprium is nothing but evil, and when presented
to view is terribly ugly; but when charity and innocence are instilled into
the proprium by the Lord it looks fine and attractive, as stated in 154. The
charity and innocence not only excuse the proprium, that is, a person's evil
and falsity, but also virtually do away with it, as anyone may see in the case
of young children. When they love one another and their parents, and at the
same time a childlike innocence is evident, evil and false traits at such
times not only go unnoticed but are even pleasing. From this it can be seen
that nobody is allowed into heaven unless he has some measure of innocence in
him, as the Lord said,
Let the young children come to Me and do not hinder them; of such is the
kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, Whoever has not received the kingdom of
God like a young child will not enter into it. Taking them up therefore into
His arms, He laid His hands upon them, and blessed them. Mark 10:14-16.
(AC 164)
In other words, when we stop believing the illusion that our inherited proprium
is our very own, we are given a new proprium that is beautiful in appearance
because it is made of heavenly loves. This new proprium is the Divine Human
Proprium of God which appears to us just as "our very own" as the former
proprium. Swedenborg confirms that the people he interviewed in their highest
heavenly states, are able to actually perceive the influx of the Divine Human
Proprium, love by love, and thought by thought. And despite this perception, and
knowledge, they still experience it as their own proprium.
Countless things can be said about the proprium - about what the proprium
is like in the case of the bodily-minded and worldly man, what it is like in
the case of the spiritual man, and what in the case of the celestial man. With
the bodily-minded and worldly man the proprium is his all. He is unaware of
anything else but the proprium. And, as has been stated, if he were to lose
his proprium he would think that he was dying.
With the spiritual man the
proprium takes on a similar appearance, for although he knows that the Lord is
the life of all, and that He confers wisdom and intelligence, and consequently
the ability to think and to act, it is more a matter of something he says and
not so much something he believes.
The celestial man however acknowledges that
the Lord is the life of all, who confers the ability to think and act, because
he perceives that this is so. Nor does he ever desire the proprium.
Nevertheless even though he does not desire it the Lord grants him a proprium
which is joined to him with a complete perception of what is good and true,
and with complete happiness. Angels possess a proprium such as this, and at
the same time utmost peace and tranquility, for their proprium has within it
things that are the Lord's, who is governing their proprium, that is,
governing them by means of their proprium. This proprium is utterly heavenly,
whereas the proprium of the bodily-minded man is hellish. But more about the
proprium further on. (AC 141)
The above passage describes the three stages of spiritual growth everyone can go
through. Each stage of growth is characterized by the content of the proprium,
which means, the level of its affective and cognitive operations. Our first
state of rationality is natural and materialistic, and referred to above as the
"bodily-minded and worldly man." In this state of negative bias we are "unaware
of anything else but the proprium." But in the next stage of spiritual growth,
called the "spiritual man," we acquire dualist concepts and begin to understand
rationally what God is and how His omnipotence requires the management of every
detail in our thinking and feeling. But at this stage, this knowledge is "more a
matter of something he says and not so much something he believes." I noted
students of theistic psychology who wrote accurate reports on its concepts, yet
at the end state that the "still do not believe." (See Reading
List, Part 2).
The next stage of spiritual growth is called the "celestial man" in which we
begin to actually perceive in a sensuous manner, the influx into the heavenly
proprium of the Divine Human loves and truths. This is no longer an issue of
believing Divine Speech, but of perceiving it. This heavenly proprium turns us
into Angels, "for their proprium has within it things that are the Lord's, who
is governing their proprium, that is, governing them by means of their
proprium." It is the Divine Human's Proprium that governs their thoughts and
feelings, and this puts them in a state of "utmost peace and tranquility" to
eternity in conjugial happiness.
The state of a person when caught up in the proprium, that is, when he
imagines that he lives from himself, is compared to a deep sleep. Indeed the
ancients actually called it 'a deep sleep' while the Word speaks of people
having 'the spirit of deep sleep poured out on them, [Isaiah 29:10] and of
their sleeping a perpetual sleep. [Jeremiah 51:57 ] The fact that man's
proprium is in itself dead, that is, that nobody possesses any life from
himself, has been demonstrated in the world of spirits so completely that evil
spirits who love nothing except the proprium, and insist stubbornly that they
do live from themselves, have been convinced by means of living experience,
and have admitted that they do not live from themselves. With regard to the
human proprium I have for several years now been given a unique opportunity to
know about it - in particular that not a trace of my thinking began in myself.
I have also been allowed to perceive clearly that every idea constituting my
thought flowed in [from somewhere], and sometimes how it flowed in, and where
from. Consequently anyone who imagines that he lives from himself is in error.
And in believing that he does live from himself he takes to himself everything
evil and false, which he would never do if what he believed and what is
actually the case were in agreement. (AC 150)
What must we do to exchange our inherited evil proprium for a new heavenly
proprium? The first stage of our effort must be self-witnessing (see Section
xx). Theistic psychology makes self-witnessing an essential first step in
regeneration. This idea is addressed by Peter Rhodes in the continuation of his
interview discussed above:
Gurdjieff's teaching is that we always turn around and observe and work on our
own response and not on the neighbor or "apparent cause." Observing our response
does not necessarily change our response. He stresses that for years all we can
do is observe our proprial response. It's not that by observing, you respond
differently at once. It can, on the other hand, make it obvious to us that the
hells through our proprium are in charge. He calls it being mechanical.
Swedenborg tells us that we are servants to the hells, that our spirit may be in
hell and may be captive.
Through observing these things objectively a transformation starts to take
place. It's like a new skier - he may get upset when he falls, but if he can
realize that falling gives him the same amount of information as not falling -
then he can learn. But if he gets angry and frustrated at not being a good
skier, then it's going to take a longer time for him to become a good skier. So
the first thing we observe is that we derive our life through our proprium and
love of self and of the world. We respond to other people by reacting in anger,
etc. Observing these things starts to bring about change.
If you immediately observe your response to a person, you will have a picture of
your place in the spiritual world. This will show you your level of being,
giving you some idea of what loves are operating within you, so you can see
where you are, compared to where you wish to be. Before observing their
reaction, people believe that another person running into their car causes their
anger, and that their anger is justified. At that point, according to Gurdjieff,
you are "asleep." You're not even free to work because you don't even know what
work is. Observation just brings you to the point of choice where you may wish
to work or change your "level of being." (Peter Rhodes interview posted at:
www.newchurch.org/youngadults/AIM/appendix%20etc..htm
)
Self-witnessing is an objective technique for mapping out the spiritual
socieites to which we are connected all day long. Rhodes says that "If you
immediately observe your response to a person, you will have a picture of your
place in the spiritual world." This is because the content of our proprium is
not ours but only feels like ours. The contents actually belong to the societies
of hell that are brought into connection with our mind (see Section xx). As
discussed above, we identify with the loves coming into us from the vertical
community, and consider these loves as our own rather than theirs. As a result,
we are unwilling to let go of these loves, believing that if we do, we would
lose all life and happiness.
An example is the button myth that I discuss in my book on "aggressive driving"
(see Reading List). Drivers often justify their aggressive
behavior by saying that it's the other driver that's to blame because "he pushed
my button." This is a trick that allows us to give ourselves permission to act
aggressively. We don't have such a button. This is an example of "being asleep"
in your proprium. You believe the illusion that the anger and desire for
retaliation is your own, so you defend it as your own, as something you want to
justify and hang on to. You think that it is right and good for you to be angry,
given the circumstances. In that state of mind, as pointed out in the quote
above, "You're not even free to work because you don't even know what work is."
"Work" means that you don't swim downward with the stream of you proprial loves.
You don't accept them as your own. You are able to think that the anger is not
yours. Whose is it? If you move into dualism as method of understanding reality,
then you know that the anger is from the hells. Once you make this new
identification, you are given the power to dissociate yourself from the hells,
whereupon you experience a sudden and complete cessation of the anger, rage,
resentment, and desire for revenge.
In the quote above it is said that Gurdijef "stresses that for years all we can
do is observe our proprial response." But his experience is not based on the
most effective method of emotional control since he does not make use of the
doctrine of truth based on Sacred Scripture. In theistic psychology we can
expect immediate results with the emotions that we reject as belonging to hell.
After all it is God who actually disconnects us from the hell societies. We have
no power to do that on our own. All that is required is that we have the desire
to be rid of this particular negative emotion for the sake of our heavenly
proprium.
I underline the phrase "for the sake of our heavenly proprium" because no
other motive will work.
The reason is that this is the highest of all rational loves we can have here on
earth.
Our loves in the affective organ of the mind are arranged in a hierarchy of
operation from highest to lowest. The top ranking love is called the "ruling
love" and also "lord" ( with a small "l"). Our loves are "lords" to us because
we obey them. This is our apparent happiness while we are growing up. We are
happy when we can do what we want, what we feel like doing, and we are unhappy
and depressed otherwise. Our ruling love is "lord" because all our other loves
are in obedience to the ruling love.
We may not be able to identify our ruling love until later in our regeneration,
but we can identify the upper hierarchy of loves, among them our ruling love, by
self-witnessing our thoughts and emotions all day every day. Our mind is created
structurally to allow the upper region to see what's going on in the its lower
region. This allows for self-monitoring and self-editing, which helps achieve
expertise in skills, including the skill of thinking rationally, so essential
for understanding Sacred Scripture and Divine Speech.
What do you think about a lot, more than other things? It's not enough to set up
a list like this one: Money, sex, God, reputation, marriage, children, etc.
These are broad topics within which one can do either heavenly or hellish
things. You have to observe your record of thoughts, or be a witness to them
while they are happening. If you're thinking about money or sex or children, in
what way are you involved--selfishly or altruistically. Everybody must answer
this question objectively, which means from actual self-observation of one's
thoughts.
Of course not this: the self-witnessing can be done for a number of reasons or
motives, but only one motive will actually be able to overcome the ruling
loves--the motive to prepare our heavenly proprium. Why? Because this is the
highest affective operation in the natural mind. It is built in that way. So we
must go to the top motive we are given to oppose our hellish loves if we are
going to succeed. A higher love trumps a lower love.
Peter Rhodes, a Swedenborgian psychologist who uses some of Gurdijef's
techniques, describes his understanding of the process of evolving our heavenly
proprium, as follows:
The beginning is that through observation one starts to see the real nature
of feelings and of his thoughts. Then comes an awareness that they are not in
fact good but evil. Through observing, we come to the possibility of not
expressing what we observe. What Gurdjieff says is that it becomes possible to
not identify with it and not to respond from it. We think evil, we feel evil,
but we refuse to do it. Once we recognize it for what it is, and refuse to do
it, then we are available to higher influences, heaven can begin to flow into
us. We must first empty the cup before it can be filled with something.
Gurdjieff talks about how to participate in the process of becoming
nothing. (Swedenborg tells us that of ourselves we are nothing.) We start to
sacrifice our moods, our mechanical or proprial responses. For instance, if we
are so wrapped up in love of self that we have envy of the neighbor, or hate,
or irritation, or contempt, then we certainly couldn't feel love for the
neighbor, or have what Gurdjieff calls "external consideration." But if we
feel contempt and see that it's within, that it has nothing to do with the
neighbor, and refuse to go along with that feeling, then at that time we may
be able to feel for the first time some compassion, some love, some joy in
relation to the neighbor. So Gurdjieff is really talking about the first
process, which is emptying the cup. Then positive emotions become possible for
the first time.
There's a long process and many techniques and exercises that Gurdjieff
talks about. But it all comes down to the same thing, which is to give up
one's own will, and to do so actively through conscious effort and attention.
Then we become available to an influx from something higher. We make a place
for heaven to enter. (ibid)
So this is the key technique that can be effective for us: "We think evil, we
feel evil, but we refuse to do it. Once we recognize it for what it is, and
refuse to do it, then we are available to higher influences, heaven can begin to
flow into us." In other words, heaven moves in where hell moves out. Note that
merely observing our faults or evils is not a motivation to suppress them. Our
self-witnessing must have a spiritual purpose, which means that we are to apply
the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. What makes self-witnessing
spiritual is the use of a heavenly tool to assess our inherited loves. Without
this basis in theistic psychology our self-observation is useless because the
assessment is then done from self, not from Divine Speech or God. When we judge
from self we see what is good as evil and what is evil as good. Likewise, we
think falsity and call it good, and we hear or read truth, can call it falsity.
Clearly, we do not judge objectively but in a biased way to favor ourselves.
Dr. Rhodes summarizes the process: "But it all comes down to the same thing,
which is to give up one's own will, and to do so actively through conscious
effort and attention. Then we become available to an influx from something
higher. We make a place for heaven to enter." We must "give up one's own will"
which means the inherited proprium. But can we give it up?
Yes or No, depending on the motive.
As already discussed, a higher motive trumps a lower one, so we must have the
highest heavenly motive on earth to trump the highest hellish motives we have
from inheritance. Swedenborg confirms this by observation in the world of
spirits where people from all the earths in the universe are resuscitated.
People undergo a series of intense experiences in which they are compelled to
give up their external veneer of loves that activated their social personality.
The top dog of our loves then takes over, or else, the top angel. We then become
either infernal or angelic for the rest of our immortality (see Section xx).
This point is called the second death. Swedenborg confirmed by observation what
was revealed to him from Divine Speech, that the motive to prepare for heaven is
the only one that can overcomes the infernal ruling love. One may have been a
kind and honest person, but for a selfish motive. For instance, for wanting to
be most praised, or for having a higher status in heaven so others could admire
them and serve them. We can be a seemingly good person on earth yet be motivated
by hidden loves that turn out to be raging and insane when liberated in the
world of spirits after resuscitation.
It is interesting to reflect upon the fact that Gurdijef did not make use of
this highest heavenly motive in a specific way, thought it is being said about
him that he was somewhat familiar with the Writings of Swedenborg. It seems to
me that what Peter Rhodes is doing as a Swedenborgian psychologist, is to
translate Gurdijef's less explicit approach into Swedenborg's more explicit
approach, with which he is also very familiar. In other words, he "reads into"
Gurdijef what isn't actually there. Nevertheless, Gurdijef's methods of
self-observation and daily exercises to do may be of use to theistic psychology
as long as the spiritual motive is applied in each exercise specifically, not
just globally. Spiritual motive in theistic psychology is always specified as
the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. Any other definition such as that
given by Gurdijef and others is thus a different meaning of spiritual, not
suitable for the purposes of theistic psychology. We know this from the Writings
which frequently specify this rule (see Section xx).
Here is an example of how Rhodes takes something from Gurdijef and embeds
it in the context of Swedenborg:
Revelation teaches us that regeneration is a gradual process. The frustration
and irritation at not becoming immediately a new person is really the impatience
of the hells, our love of our own understanding, because we tend to think we can
regenerate ourself. This is impossible. In the beginning all we can do is
observe the hells in us, and refuse to go along with them. This is the process
by which we are being made new by the Lord. Non-critical Self- observation is
extremely hard to do, because we tend to identify with those things we observe.
The Writings call it attributing them to ourselves. Gurdjieff explains the
conscious process of drawing our feelings out of what we observe and how that
starts to bring about change. It's much easier to teach people who are willing
to learn from any response they get. I think that's true even in the process of
transformation, repentance or regeneration. (ibid)
Here he takes this non-theistic idea from Gurdijef: "the conscious process of
drawing our feelings out of what we observe and how that starts to bring about
change." Then he supplies the theistic motive from Swedenborg: "frustration and
irritation at not becoming immediately a new person is really the impatience of
the hells" and "This is the process by which we are being made new by the Lord."
Here is another clear example:
Fortunately we don't have to regenerate all the way in order to have the process
take place in relation to one particular state. Often Gurdjieff talks about big
angels and big devils, and little angels and little devils. There are states, or
what he would call "mechanical" reactions, that we refuse to respond to and
thoughts that we refuse to think and emotions that we refuse to identify with
and with which we struggle. Over time - and time varies, depending on the size
of the state you're dealing with - you start to feel less and less identified
with these thoughts and emotions. You start to feel a distance from what you are
resisting. Then separation takes place; the hells may rage but the feeling of
who you are is separated from those hells. There begins to be a tranquility in
regard to that particular state, and a freedom that you realize was brought
about only by something that is higher than yourself. You know the Lord is doing
it, and that tranquility in regard to that particular evil encourages you to
continue working on other evils. You may see the storm raging, even be
surrounded by its fury, but you may still feel peace. A friend gave me a pillow
with the words on it "Serenity is not peace from the storm, it is peace amid the
storm." There's a peaceful place, a safe harbor available to us at all times, if
we really want it. It's where the Lord dwells. (ibid)
Here Rhodes takes this idea from Gurdijef: "Often Gurdjieff talks about big
angels and big devils, and little angels and little devils. There are states, or
what he would call "mechanical" reactions, that we refuse to respond to and
thoughts that we refuse to think and emotions that we refuse to identify with
and with which we struggle." You should be aware that Gurdijef's use of "devils"
and "angels" is metaphorical and refers to our mental states. He doesn't talk
about heaven and hell as an actual place for the afterlife, though he could have
known about this from reading Swedenborg. But obviously he did not take the
Writings literally, thus like Emerson and others, assuming that Swedenborg
merely talked this way to get his philosophical insights across.
To make up for this lack, Rhodes supplies to it the context from the Writings:
"Then separation takes place; the hells may rage but the feeling of who you are
is separated from those hells" and "You know the Lord is doing it...There's a
peaceful place, a safe harbor available to us at all times...It's where the Lord
dwells."
Theistic psychology has two branches of research--extractive and predictive (see
Section xx). Extractive research refers to "extracting" knowledge from the Old
Testament, New Testament, and the Writings of Swedenborg. Predictive research
refers to a theory we construct from our knowledge of theistic psychology, which
then needs to be confirmed by showing passages in Sacred Scripture that are
consistent with the theory. We can consider the research of Peter Rhodes about
Gurdijef as predictive research in theistic psychology since he always confirms
a Gurdijef concept by contextualizing it in a Swedenborgian environment, as
shown above.
6.0.6
The Birth of the Self in Infants
Self-consciousness begins in the newborn infant when the child notices the will
in action. The child might see its hand move across the field of vision. It is
moving the hand but the child is not conscious of that. At first, the hand is
just another moving object in the world. But the infant has an innate tendency
to grasp things in view, and with this effort comes the perception of one's own
effort leading to some external event. The will in action is the hand moving
according to one's desire. When the infant notices the correlation between inner
desire and outer action, the self is born.
But this is merely a sensorimotor self, a corporeal mind that is hardly above
the physical body itself. This self must grow into its next phase in order to
become a proprium or self-concept. This next phase requires another human will.
The child's will has to clash with another human will, and when this is noticed,
the true proprium is born. For example, the mother removes an object the child
is holding. The child holds on and resists, but the mother is stronger and takes
the object away. Now the child has a reaction. This reaction, when noticed by
the child, gives birth to the true proprium. The child's will against the
mother's will creates a clash of wills. When this is noticed the child has new
view, a new perspective, and a new orientation to life. This is the beginning of
the child's humanness.
The human child now begins life as an oscillating experience of heaven and hell.
Infants love many things since they are born with hereditary loves in the mind.
They love to grasp things and put them in the mouth, as everyone knows who has
had a child or has taken care of other people's infants. They love many
sensations of touch and taste. The love visual puzzles at their level of
noticing. They love being held and spoken to tenderly. These loves are not
learned. They come wired in the mental organ. Their heaven is the delight of
receiving the mother's approval. Their hell is to receive the mother's
disapproval or clash of wills.
When there is a clash of wills heaven suddenly disappears and hell is around.
The parent or care taker becomes a punisher and looks scary and disapproving.
The child wants to play and stay up; the parent wants the child to go to sleep.
The parent wants the child to eat; the child doesn't want to swallow. And so on.
The presence of hell is now evident. The child is in its hell quite visibly. It
contorts its face, it screams, it cries, it throws itself violently to the
floor, it refuses to be consoled, it is filled with a kind of infantile hatred,
that is just a forerunner of the hatred later that leads the child into being
bad and horrible. Then this hellish phase dies and the child is willing to be
comforted. Heaven returns, for awhile.
This alternating cycle between clashing wills and harmonious wills, produces the
mature self.
The child grows mentally in knowledge and intelligence. At every step of this
activity there are clashes between its will and the will of authority. Soon the
child learns about God's will. And this takes the self to its fully mature
phase. The concept of God is that of a parent who is always there, sees
everything that you think and do. This concept opens the beginnings of
rationality.
For instance, moral reasoning develops when the child thinks as follows: "I want
to play with those scissors. Mommy doesn't want me to. She punishes me when she
sees me playing with it. I won't play with it." This is the lowest stage of
moral reasoning. Obedience or compliance depends on external surveillance.
Drivers don't break the speed limit when there is a police car behind them.
People don't steal something in front of a surveillance camera, if they know
it's there. But as soon as Mommy's eyes are outside the room, I can play with
the scissors. Or, when I am allowed to visit overnight with my friend, I can
stay up all night and even do forbidden things like sex.
With the concept of God being there all the time, our moral reasoning has to
become more rational, more self-motivated. With God, there is no time out. If I
plan something forbidden, God knows it. If I enjoy something I should stop, god
is there to witness it. It is customary with most religious instruction to
emphasize that God rewards and punishes (or disapproves of) both overt deeds
that are bad and thoughts or feelings that are bad. There is therefore
established in the mind a constant clash of the wills between self and God. The
self always wants what God always forbids. Our reaction to this is one of
frustration and displeasure. We become more and more aware of what we want that
we cannot have, of what we want to do that we must not.
The essence or life of our own proprium or self is therefore rebellion to God's
Proprium.
Quoting from the Writings on the character of the human proprium or one's own
self:
What man's Own is may be stated in this way. Man's Own is all the evil and
falsity that springs from the love of self and of the world, and from not
believing in the Lord or the Word but in self, and from supposing that what
cannot be apprehended sensuously and by means of memory-knowledge [sensualiter
et scientifice] is nothing. In this way men become mere evil and falsity, and
therefore regard all things pervertedly; things that are evil they see as
good, and things that are good as evil; things that are false they see as
true, and things that are true as false; things that really exist they suppose
to be nothing, and things that are nothing they suppose to be everything. They
call hatred love, darkness light, death life, and the converse. In the Word,
such men are called the "lame" and the "blind." Such then is the Own of man,
which in itself is infernal and accursed. (AC 210)
In other words, our "self" is limited to the material aspects of our life. The
self is a materialistically oriented agent, to whom physical things appear real
and solid, while mental things appear unreal and ghostlike. When the self hears
about the existence of God, it rejects the idea as something mental and
hypothetical, of little consequence and importance in comparison to concrete
things like food, money, pleasure, or power that get you things. The self finds
God an inconvenient clashing agent, seeing God as a threat to the self's
security and comfort.
When infants oscillate into the heavenly phase they learn the existence of
heavenly feelings and delights. These experiences are produced in the infant
through the presence of celestial angels. As long as the infant allows it, the
angels stay. But when the infant is readied to go into the hellish phase, the
angels withdraw somewhat and allow the approach of the evil spirits. Now the
hellish traits that have been inherited are set into action, enflamed by the
passion of the evil spirits for bad things--rebellion against the good,
disbelief of the truth, delight in deceit, violent acts of destructiveness,
refusal to be rational, enjoyment of the forbidden, insistence on resentment and
anger, etc.
6.0.7
The Self in Childhood and Adolescence
Since the self grows as an oppositional agent to parent and God, the human
proprium derives its life or content from the hells. When the self is told that it must love parents
and God, it develops self-love instead. Self-love is the opposite of love of
parent and God. Self-love is the actual proprium that is evil. The evil in
self-love is the irrational insistence that the life we have is our own and
from our self. This insistence rests on irreality, which is nothing but an
appearance or delusional belief obtained when one opposes and denies truth or
reality. Swedenborg reports seeing a hall in the
spiritual world in which was a long table with many chairs. People would walk
in, sit on an empty chair, and place on the table a few nuggets of gold. When
all the chairs were filled, the doors were closed and the people sitting there
were left to their phantasies of riches. Every person there fantasized that they
owned all the gold they could see on the long table. This made them deliriously
happy. Afterwards they left, taking their few nuggets with them, and reported that they felt revived and content.
This happiness would last for awhile, and then they had to return to the room or
feel miserable.
What is this kind of happiness based on? Irreality. Fantasy and delusion. It is
a poor form of human happiness that is temporary and full of limitation in
comparison to the happiness of reality in heaven where all things are possible
that are truly good, lasting, and meaningful.
The proprium of a child is marked by a sharp ambivalence. Children and
adolescents experience swings between being in heaven and being in hell. They
develop the natural belief system that they have two selves, one good and the
other evil or rebellious. They alternate between these two states. They feel
that they are the owners of both the good self and the evil self. They see
themselves as ambivalent or dual. Both the good self and the hellish self feel
like their own. It is extremely dangerous to believe that the evil we enjoy,
think and do, is our own. The evil we enjoy is not on our evil but the evil of
those who are in hell and are in an influencing relationship on our mental
operations (see "vertical community" in Chapter xx).
We are not in hell while we are on earth tied to our physical body. We could end
up in heaven or in hell, but we still have the option of going either way. As
long as we don't appropriate the evil we enjoy we are kept in a state of mental
balance. This balance is what gives us freedom to choose. We can then proceed
with our rebirth and regeneration (see Section xx) and the Divine Psychologist maintains the balance for us. But as soon as we appropriate the evil enjoyments
to ourselves as our own, our very own, originating in ourselves and being part
of ourselves, then the balance is destroyed. As a result, we are not free to
choose between good and evil since we believe that the evil is already ours.
It's not a matter of choice but of fact. So we believe and so we think.
It is also dangerous to attribute to ourselves the good we enjoy and think. If
we believe that the good and truth we have is our own we have no choice but to
believe that we are good. This belief is called "meritoriousness," In the
Christian religion this is known as a fundamental sin that takes us to hell. It
is called attributing the "merit of righteousness" to oneself, and thus robbing
God since God alone has merit and righteousness. Whatever good we have is God's
good which we receive online, so to speak. Imagine if your refrigerator acquired
self-conscious thinking and thought that the electric power it has is its own.
It would be a delusional refrigerator. Delusional human beings think that the
life, good, and truth they possess is their own. This delusional thinking leads
them into further delusions like materialism and the negative bias, so that they
end up living false philosophies. These false ideas lead to the society we are
familiar with in our day--unloving, unpeaceful, unwise, beleaguered by sickness,
crime, stress, deceit.
Hell on earth in our mind is produced by the false philosophies that are based
on the delusion of self-appropriation of either evil or good.
Self-love or egotistical character is the product of a self that is beleaguered
by false philosophies called "false gods." We worship false gods when we are in
self-love. Self-love attaches to itself only those thoughts and justifications
that will not oppose, and those reasonings that will support it. Self-love gets
rid of mental operations that oppose self-love and promote love of God. In this
state, good is perceived as evil, and evil is perceived as good. Also, truth is
perceived as falsity, and falsity is perceived as truth. You can see why such a
state is dangerous and deadly since falsity leads to hell and only truth leads
to heaven.
Children can greatly benefit from being taught early that there is both good and
evil in them, but neither belongs to them, and that they are to use the good to
defeat the evil. In this way they will avoid a life of pain and fear in hell and
can look forward to a life of fun and happiness in heaven. All they need to do
is to use the good they have to fight the bad they also have. The bad is not
part of them and therefore they can get rid of it, like dirt is not part of
their room and they can clean it up. But the wall is part of the room and they
cannot get rid of that. The commitment to get rid of the evil is like the wall,
but the evil is like the dirt.
Later children are further benefited by being taught that the commitment to get
rid of the evil in them is theirs, but the power that gets rid of the evil is
not theirs. The commitment is theirs but not the power. The power is God who is
present in the mind and managing all its details, making it work and operate. It
is very useful for children to get the idea that God is so intimately
participating in their thoughts and feelings and that they are never alone. If
God left them alone, they would cease to be. Nothing would work in their mind.
They thus get familiar with God and even attached to God.
Children are dependent upon adults to guard them from the consequences of bad
judgment. Children and adolescents have limited ability to foresee consequences.
They are dependent on responsible adults to help them resist inherited loves
they cannot resist on their own. Children must be deterred from doing bad things
and thus protected from the consequences they cannot accurately predict.
In infancy and early childhood the inherited heavenly trait of innocence allows
them to experience heavenly feelings when they are harmoniously connected to
parents. There is no feeling of the clash of wills because the children are
happy to obey the parents' will. Opposition or resistance from their own will
does not arise. Hence self-love has not yet developed. During this phase the
heavenly feelings are stored up in a special compartment of the mind called
"remains," and these are used later by the Divine Psychologist during the
Sabbath rest, as discussed above. The heaven we eventually enter is within these
remains. Once we reach there in our mind it feels like a "return home" because
we are back in the innocence of our celestial state in infancy. This is the
"heavenly proprium" that has now completely replaced the Fallen proprium. The
essence of the heavenly proprium is the willingness to be led by the
Divine-Human and the horror at the idea of being led by self.
The more children are given a focus on morality and virtues, the more they are
protected from their inherited evil loves because morality and conscience are
the tools for building rationality. Rational thinking is the only method
available for resisting inherited evil loves. Some of these loves try to express
themselves overtly while others linger in the background and exert their
nefarious influence from the dark recesses of the sub-conscious mind. But the
more rational or socio-moral tools we teach children the more of these evil
loves they can face sooner, and by resisting them, develop a spiritual mind that
can live in heaven.
The typical pattern in human growth is for heavenly remains to recede into the
sub-conscious while the aggressive hellish traits come out into the fore.
Self-love and independence grow up together so that older children and
adolescents are often rebellious to parental and societal authority. The
external natural mind or personality of the adolescent is in disorder in both
bodily and mental habits. Quoting Swedenborg:
The evils present with man have many origins. The first lies in the heredity
passed down to him by the series of transmissions to his father from
grandfathers and forefathers, and then from his father, in whom evils have
thereby become heaped up, down to himself. The second origin lies in what he
himself makes actual, that is to say, in what a person acquires to himself by a
life of evil. This evil consists partly of that which he draws from his
heredity, as from an ocean of evils, and puts into practice, and partly of much
more which he adds for himself to these. This is the source of the proprium
which a person acquires to himself.
But this actual evil which a person makes his own also has various origins,
though in general there are two. First there is the evil he receives from
others, for which he is not worthy of blame; second there is that which he
adopts of his own accord and for which he is thus worthy of blame. That which
anyone receives from others and for which he is not blameworthy is meant in the
Word by 'that which is torn', whereas that which he adopts of his own accord and
for which he is thus blameworthy is meant in the Word by 'a carcass'. (AC 4171)
In other words, people are not responsible for their inherited evils. This makes
good rational sense. It would seem a form of injustice to make us responsible
for what we have not chosen. However, we are responsible for what we do about
the evils with which we are born. This too makes good rational sense. The evil
we are born with is similar to the situation of being pushed off a boat that is
traveling up a large river. It wasn't our fault for falling into the river and
being threatened by death. But it now becomes our responsibility to swim to
shore. If we throw up our hands and drown it becomes our responsibility--not for
falling into the river, but for refusing to swim ashore to safety. In the same
way our inherited evils only put us into the life threatening river of evil
consequences. We are also given the skill of swimming prior to falling. We are
taught morality and respect for conscience--these are the "swimming" skills of
regeneration. If we are unwilling to resist evil enjoyments, then we are
responsible. It is counted to us as "sin" which means that we are being
permanently connected to the hells, to which we shall gravitate irresistibly
when we pass into the world of spirits. Unless we repent.
Repentance is the "one last chance" we are given by the Mercy of a compassionate
God. We can repent. We can be horrified at our evil enjoyments and insane
thoughts. Then our Divine Psychologist can bring us into spiritual temptation to
face the infernal loves that are lurking in our sub-conscious, from where they
are slowly and inexorably hauling us in to the hells where they actually are.
Repentance is merely the platform from which to fight the battle of temptations,
repeatedly, daily, for years.
But children are not capable of rational judgment and cannot be regenerated
since regeneration is by means of spiritual temptations that can only be
resisted by means of truths rationally understood. We don't reach adulthood
until we are capable of rational judgment on our own behalf, at which point we
are responsible for our choices and we can begin regeneration. Children and
teenagers who pass into the world of spirits are welcomed by guardians and
teachers who act as their parents, instruct them, supervise their mental growth
until they become adult in the mind. They are then given the opportunity to
exercise their choice for heaven or hell.
Bringing infants and children to adulthood in the spiritual world is one of the
beloved occupations of angels. They have powerful mental tools to monitor the
children's mental progress and to provide for each one the unique type of
experience and opportunity each needs to face their inherited evils. They are
instructed in rational truths about God, heaven, and regeneration. The children
then use these understandings to reason against their Fallen proprium and thus
to be regenerated. The process is more efficient in the world of spirits where
special mental methods are available to create scenes and induce impressions,
like a live version of Star Trek holodeck. The Writings inform us that the
children are never allowed to be immersed in the experience of evil itself but
are only allowed to the edge of it, as it were, then are held back until they
have a reaction of rejection of their own. They are then freed of that
connection with the hells in their mind--like a surgical cutting of the fibers.
Every person who reaches their twenties while still on earth is given the
opportunity to regenerate regardless of religious or ethnic background. It
wouldn't make rational sense for God to manage a system where some people get
left out of the loop so to speak. Regeneration is for everyone without any
exception. It is a universal psychobiological process all human beings undergo
on all the planets of the vast inhabited universe. Regeneration is the spiritual
development that is required for an earth born person to become a heavenly angel
in eternity. Those who are unwilling to undergo regeneration by giving in to all
their temptations, arrive into the world of spirits completely immersed in their
sensuous mind. To keep this level of thinking they refuse to let the rational
mind take over. They insist on irrational thinking and disorderly conduct. They
are therefore segregated and allowed to sink into their hells where they spend
eternity taking turn torturing each other in repulsive and horrible ways.
6.0.8
The Self or Proprium in Adulthood
Quoting from the Writings:
It is well known that a person cannot be regenerated except in adult years, for
not until then is he able to exercise reason and judgment and in so doing to
receive good and truth from the Lord. Before entering that state he is being
prepared by the Lord through the implantation of such things as can serve him as
the soil for receiving the seeds of truth and good. Implanted thus are many
states of innocence and charity, also cognitions of good and truth, and
consequently thoughts. This implantation occurs during many years before his
regeneration takes place. When a person has been endowed with these things and
so has been prepared, his state is now said to be complete, for the things that
are interior have been arranged ready to receive. All those things with a person
which the Lord grants him prior to regeneration and by means of which he is
regenerated are called remnants, which in the Word are meant by the number ten
(AC 2636)
In other words, regeneration begins when the young adult is fully prepared with
rational skills that can take Divine truth from Sacred Scripture and apply it to
one's thinking and feeling on the daily round of activities. The passage above
refers to "implantations" of states of innocence or "remains" (or "remnants").
This is also called the "seed of truth and good." Thoughts and sequences of
reasoning are called forth by these seeds of truth and good, which are called
"cognitions of good and truth." This process of implantation or spiritual growth
goes on for years before the preparation is "complete."
Adulthood begins when we begin to form our own proprium out of the childhood
self. We are now required to think for ourselves and most people have a strong
desire to be freed from the childhood proprium and dependencies. Up to the point
we mostly accepted our childhood religion and moral standard. It's the only
thing we knew and our innocence, or partial innocence, made us happy, or
sometimes happy, just to follow in the order of things that was laid out for us.
Beginning to question this former acceptance is the beginning of our adulthood.
There are individual differences in the intensity and urgency of this new
direction in our life so that some people grow up fast while others prolong the
dependency.
The fact that we are compelled by circumstances of life to think for ourselves
now produces a new proprium. It is a mixed proprium, containing both good and
evil habits of feeling and thinking. The Writings discuss the progression of
remains or remnants we receive throughout the growth process:
Three kinds of goods are meant by 'remnants' - those instilled in earliest
childhood, those instilled when want of knowledge is still present, and those
instilled when intelligence is present.
The goods of earliest childhood are those instilled into a person from
birth up to the age when he starts to be taught and to know something. The
goods received when want of knowledge is still present are instilled when he
is being taught and starting to know something. The goods that come with
intelligence are instilled when he is able to reflect on what good is and what
truth is. Good instilled in earliest childhood is received up to his tenth
year.
[3] Good instilled when want of knowledge is still present is instilled
from then until his twentieth year; and from this year the person starts to
become rational and to have the ability to reflect on good and truth, and to
acquire the good received when intelligence is present. The good instilled
when want of knowledge is still present is that which is meant by 'twenty',
because those with whom merely that good exists do not enter into any
temptation. For no one undergoes temptation until he is able to reflect on and
to perceive in his own way what good and truth are. (...)
[5] As regards the nature of these different kinds of goods- those
instilled in earliest childhood, those when want of knowledge is still
present, and those when intelligence is present - the last of these is the
best, since it is an attribute of wisdom. The good which precedes it, namely
that instilled during want of knowledge, is indeed good, but because it has
only a small amount of intelligence within it, it cannot be called the good of
wisdom. The good that belongs to earliest childhood is indeed in itself good,
but it is nevertheless less good than the other two kinds, because it has not
as yet had any truth of intelligence allied to it, and so has not become in
any way the good of wisdom, but is merely a plane enabling it to become such.
Cognitions of truth and good are what enable a person to be wise in the way
possible to man. Earliest childhood itself, by which is meant innocence, does
not belong to earliest childhood but to wisdom, as may become clearer from
what will be stated at the end of this chapter about young children in the
next life. (...) (AC 2280)
This passage tells us that there is a progression of goods and truths that we
acquire as we grow, and only those we acquire as adults can be called goods and
truths of "wisdom." The rational understanding of truth is called intelligence
and its application to good is called wisdom. For instance, we learn,
understand, and accept the idea that people are entitled to have their wallet
back when it's inadvertently dropped. We can see from intelligence that it's
only fair and that losing something doesn't mean it's no longer ours. But it's
not until we find something that belongs to someone else that we have the
opportunity to act according to our intelligence. If we return the wallet
because of what we understand rationally by intelligence, then we are acting
from wisdom. Only when truth is allied to good are the two secure in our
character. Truth refers to what we know about something and good refers to
acting in accordance with the truth we know and understand.
Conscience is formed by wisdom which is the "good of intelligence." It is the
principles by which we now want to live our life. It gives rise to our personal
code of conduct. This ideal self is now freely chosen, not merely received
uncritically from parents and from a borrowed religious faith. Our ideal self is
a heavenly proprium. But if we don't live up to our code of conscience we are
building a hellish proprium. In this way the adult mind develops as spiritual
schizophrenic, with two heads, one beautiful and good, the other ugly and evil.
We alternate between the two like the infamous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in his
multiple personality disorder. Because our mind is made of this mixture of
oscillating opposites the rational mind is only operating at an immature level
called the "first rational." Quoting from the Writings:
With everyone who is being regenerated there are two rationals, the first
existing before regeneration, the second after. The first, which exists before
regeneration, is acquired by means of the experiences of the senses, by means
of reflecting on the things that take place in public life and in private
life, by means of formulated knowledge, and by means of reasonings based on
and presented through these, as well as by means of cognitions of spiritual
things obtained from the doctrine of faith, that is, from the Word. But none
of these acquisitions rise at this time very much above the ideas present in
the external or bodily memory, which are relatively speaking quite
materialistic. Consequently whatever thought takes place in the rational at
this time consists of such materialistic ideas, or else, so that what it
thinks may be comprehended at the same time by inner or intellectual sight,
the semblances of such things are presented in the form of comparisons or
analogies. Of such a nature is the first rational, or the rational that exists
before regeneration.
[3] But the rational after regeneration is formed by the Lord by means of
affections for spiritual truth and good, which affections the Lord implants in
a remarkable manner within the truths of the first rational, and in this way
the things there that are in agreement and are favorably disposed towards them
are given life. The rest however, having no use, are separated from these,
until at length spiritual goods and truths are gathered so to speak into
bundles, once those that do not agree and which cannot be given life are cast
away so to speak to the circumference, this being effected gradually as
spiritual goods and truths increase together with the life of the affections
for them. From this it is evident what the second rational is like. (AC 2657)
In other words, there are two levels of rational operations in our mind. The
first rational reflects a materialistic order since it is an intelligence built
on the order of the world and society. Even the religious ideas we have are
natural, not spiritual. This level of mental operation is called the
"natural-rational" to distinguish it from the "spiritual-natural" which is a
higher type of rational operation. The spiritual-natural is also called the
interior-natural, and represents the level of thinking of those who are in the
"first heaven." Note carefully that knowledge about God, religious faith,
heaven, hell, or the things in Sacred Scripture, come to us in the first
rational so that these ideas about spiritual subjects are natural ideas about
spiritual topics. Later, when we operationalize the higher rational levels of
operation, we then first begin to comprehend these spiritual topics spiritually.
The passage above says that the second or more advanced rational begins with
regeneration when we develop our new adult proprium through the love of Sacred
Scripture or "affections for spiritual truth and good." The difference between
the first and second rational is described further in the same Number:
[4] These matters may be illustrated by comparing them to the fruit of
trees. To begin with the first rational is like unripe fruit which ripens
gradually until it produces seeds within itself. Then, having reached the
point when it is ready to part from the tree, its state is complete, regarding
which see above in 2636. The second rational however, which the Lord confers
on those who are being regenerated, is like this same fruit now lying in good
soil, where the flesh surrounding the seeds decays and these express
themselves from the core, after which they send down a root and also a shoot
up above the ground that grows into a new tree and spreads out, till finally
it produces new fruits, and after that gardens and orchards, according to the
affections for good and truth which it is receiving; see Matt. 13: 31, 32;
John 12: 24.
[5] But since examples help to make things clear, take the proprium which a
person has before regeneration and the proprium which he has after
regeneration. From the first rational which he acquires through the means
mentioned above, a person believes that it is from what there is within
himself, thus from his proprium, that he thinks what is true and does what it
good. This first rational is incapable of thinking anything else even when the
person is taught that every good of love, and every truth of faith, derives
from the Lord. But when he is undergoing regeneration, which takes place in
adult years, he then starts - from the second rational which is conferred by
the Lord - to think that good and truth do not spring from that which is
within himself, that is, from his proprium, but from the Lord, though he still
does what is good or thinks what is true, as if it began from within himself,
see 1937, 1947. At this time the more he becomes confirmed in this the more he
is guided into the light of truth concerning those matters, until he finally
believes that all good and all truth come from the Lord. At this time the
proprium belonging to the first rational is gradually separated and the Lord
confers on that person a heavenly proprium which becomes that of the new
rational. (AC 2657)
In other words, when we still operate mentally with the first rational we
cannot but think that the truth we think and the good we do is from self. The
truth and the good are felt to be our own, from our proprium. This is a
dangerous delusion we must give up once regeneration begins. Through temptations
in regeneration we begin to observe ourselves directly, seeing that we are
indeed powerless to be good and to think truth, unless we allow God to give us
the truth to think and the good to do. We can now see that truth and good do not
spring from our proprium but from God. The old rational is "separated" or laid
to rest and the new rational is now called the "heavenly proprium" by which we
can think and understand that every and all truth and good is from
God.
Continuing with the same Number:
[6] Take a further example. To begin with the only love known to the first
rational is that of self and the world, and although it hears about heavenly
love being altogether different it still has no conception of it. In this case
when the person then does anything good the only delight he sees in doing it
is that he may seem to himself to merit another's favor, or that he may be
considered to be a Christian, or that he may obtain the joy of eternal life
out of doing it.
The second rational however which the Lord confers through regeneration
begins to feel some delight in goodness and truth themselves and to be stirred
by this delight, not on account of anything that is his own but on account of
goodness and truth themselves. When led by this delight he spurns the thought
of merit, until at length he detests it as something monstrous. This delight
as it exists with him gradually increases and becomes a blessed delight, and
in the next life a blissful delight, being for him heaven itself. From this it
may now become clear how it is with each of the two rationals in one who is
being regenerated. (AC 2657)
Again we see that the first rational is meritorious since it is motivated to be
good for the sake of reward. We think that "if I am being good, I deserve to be
rewarded." This is called "monstrous" because it robs God of the ownership of
all good and truth and therefore denies God's omnipotence. To feel that we
deserve heaven is to feel that we are good from ourselves, which is a hellish
thought based on hatred of God and innocence. But with the mental operations of
our second rational we are able to see that all good and truth belongs to God.
By loving "good and truth themselves," that is, for the sake of good and truth
because they are good and truth, we are loving God. There is no meritoriousness
in this since we do not think we deserve heaven but instead, are grateful to
receive heaven from God. Our task is to prepare our mind so that it can live in
the heaven graciously offered to us by God.
6.0.9
Death of Self and Rebirth of the New Proprium
God provides a specific mechanism by which we can anesthetize the Fallen
proprium, or self-love, so that we could adopt the new will and
understanding that self-love denied and kept out, and that is innocence or
willingness to obey God's order of reality. As pointed out before, this process
is called rebirth and regeneration. It involves cooperating actively with the
Divine Psychologist who is effecting the regeneration by His Own Divine
Proprium, and the extent to which we are thus regenerated is proportional to the
extent of our cooperation.
A central focus in theistic psychology is to develop effective principles for
the psychology of cooperation with the Divine Psychiatrist. People would greatly
benefit to learn effective techniques for cooperating with the Divine-Human in
the critical lifelong process of regeneration or character rebuilding. The old
self must die to make place for a new self, one that comes not from the disorder
of the materialism but from the order of the mental heaven which each individual
mind contains by creation.
We need to understand the mechanism by which the old material self can be
rendered operationless so that the new spiritual-rational self can take its
place as the center and sphere of our consciousness. This mechanism must involve
our thoughts and feelings and the self-witnessing methodology (see Section xx)
is quite adequate to give us an accurate map of how our thoughts and feelings
gradually change as the old self is being pushed down and the new self to take
over the agent and executor of our behavior, both physical, mental. The more
rationally we understand this mechanism, the more we can be effective in our
cooperation with the Divine Psychiatrist, thus insuring the elevation of our
consciousness to the heavenly sphere of conjugial love in eternity.
We have already discussed in several places that regeneration is the process
spiritual development and it is carried out by God through temptations--natural,
spiritual, and celestial, in that order over a lifetime of struggle (see Section
xx). The function of temptations is to bring to the fore something in our self
that is hidden. For instance, a motive like infidelity in marriage may lie in
the background in a husband's hierarchy of motives for many years unrecognized.
Yet its motivational influence continues to exert powerful effects that slowly
dissolve his resolve for loyalty to his marriage partner. These signs are not
seen collectively by the man, thus not putting them together and realizing that
they are all caused by this one big motive lurking there on its hierarchical
node, beaming its powerful nefarious influence, dissolving the strength and
future of his marriage and happiness. He may for example give himself permission
to enjoy pornography in various forms. He may enjoy flirting with women at the
office, or he may engage in phone sex or a fake passionate email exchange with a
stranger. The man does not realize that these various activities are satisfying
the hidden lust of infidelity.
Now then the Divine Psychologist has created a method for dealing with hidden
motives. This is the method of temptations. When the temptation is precipitated
upon us we suddenly are faced with this hidden love now suddenly seen in the
open and clear vision of our conscious awareness. For instance, an unexpected
situation may develop, such as being away at a conference, or being stuck in an
elevator, and meeting a woman who arouses in us intense feelings that we are
enamored with. We suddenly realize that all along we were longing for this kind
of feeling, and that now we seem to ourselves really alive, while before we
hardly were. This is a spiritual temptation.
It is agonizing.
It is called a spiritual temptation because there is no other way of fighting it
except by means of spiritual weapons of truth that we have acquired previously
and consider to be our creed.
Now our love and loyalty to the creed or "doctrine" is tested against our love
and loyalty to self-love, this egocentric fascination we have with the feeling that seems
to make us alive when we were not.
A lot of at stake. In fact, everything--your life, your future, your happiness,
your eternity. Everything.
The Writings say that if you lose the temptation battle and after consciously
applying your doctrine to the situation, you gave in, you are done for. Your
fate in hell is sealed. Why? Because you will be unwilling to ever let go of
that enamored fascination, no matter how much you suffer for it to eternity.
This Swedenborg has confirmed--to his own amazement at such enormous tenacity of
infernal love.
This is the reason that the Divine Psychologist does not bring to us a
temptation that we cannot overcome. Of course those who are bent to take
themselves to hell are given the spiritual temptations, and give in to them.
This seals their desire to be in hell. But those who are unsure, feeling
attracted to both heaven and hell, need the temptation so they may face the
choice against the hidden evils to which they are attached by heredity and
acquisition.
How then do we prevail upon the love we enjoy so much that we think all our true
happiness will be gone if it's taken away from us .
Quoting from the Writings:
(...) the joining together of good and truth within the natural is effected
by means of spiritual conflicts, that is, by means of temptations. With regard
to the joining together of good and truth in the natural, the position in
general is that man's rational receives truths before his natural receives
them, the reason being that the Lord's life which, as has been stated, is the
life of His love, may be able to flow in by way of the rational into the
natural, bring order into it, and make it submissive. For the rational is
purer, and the natural grosser, or what amounts to the same, the former is
interior, the latter exterior. It is according to order - an order that one
can know - that the rational is able to flow into the natural, but not the
natural into the rational. (AC 3321).
In other words, the power of Divine truth enters the conscious mind through
the rational thinking we do when we reason from Sacred Scripture. This rational
power has the ability to "subdue" the natural mind which contains the Fallen
proprium of self-love. The natural mind has several levels (see Section xx). The
lower levels are mental operations based on materialistic thinking. The upper
levels are mental operations based on Sacred Scripture. Reasoning from Sacred
Scripture can be either rational or materialistic. In the lower operations of
the mind, Sacred Scripture is misused to justify principles and behaviors that
support self-love. In the higher more rational operations, Sacred Scripture is
used to justify principles and behaviors that oppose self-love.
The above passage tells us that "the Lord's life," which refers to Divine
Truth from Sacred Scripture, comes into our natural mind in the upper portion
where we think rationally. In other words, the Divine Truth becomes our doctrine
of life, that is, the principle to which we are committed as the ruling love in
our daily behavior. This rational principle is from a Divine origin and has the
power to make the lower potion of the mind "submissive" to itself. It cleans up
our act. We are able to understand and see clearly the consequences of not
imposing the Divine rational order upon our sensuous mind and life of enjoyment.
Though we enjoy the excitement of infidelity in a moment of temptation and
unexpected opportunity, we are not blinded by the rush of its irresistible
fever. Since it is irresistible, only Divine Power can defeat it and save us
like a firebrand from a fire. This Divine Power comes through the doctrine of
life or the rational principle we formed for ourselves from Sacred Scripture.
Continuing with the same Number:
[2] Consequently a person's rational is able to be adjusted to truths and
to receive them before the natural does. This becomes quite clear from the
fact that the rational man with someone who is to be regenerated conflicts
greatly with the natural, or what amounts to the same, the internal man does
so with the external. For as is also well known, the internal man is able to
see truths and also to will them, but the external man refuses to see them and
stands opposed to them. For in the natural man there are facts, which are to a
great extent derived from the illusions of the senses, and which, although
they are falsities, he nevertheless believes to be truths.
There are also countless things which the natural man does not grasp, since
the natural man, compared with the rational man, is in shade and thick
darkness; and the things which the natural man does not grasp are thought not
to exist or not to be so.
There are also desires in the natural man which are those of self-love and
love of the world, and the things which support those desires he calls truths.
And when a person gives in to them everything that arises from them is
contrary to spiritual truths. Present also are reasonings derived from
falsities imprinted since early childhood. What is more, a person comprehends
plainly with his senses the things which exist in his natural man, but less so
those which exist in his rational until he has shed the body. This also causes
him to suppose that the natural constitutes the whole, and what does not fall
within the compass of his natural senses he believes to be scarcely anything.
In other words, through our rational thinking we are able to "to be adjusted
to truths and receive them." When we are stuck in our sensuous way of reasoning
it is difficult to believe in the existence of anything but the concrete sensual
experience. The lower natural mind is materialistic while the upper rational
mind is dualist (see Section xx). The lower way of thinking about truth and God
is through sensuous consciousness; the higher way is through rational
consciousness (see Section xx). The sensuous mind is opposed to the rational
mind, and therefore it must be subdued and compelled to obey. The sensuous mind
reads what truth is but refuses to see it, wants to doubt it, and finally
rejects it. Now it sees falsities as truth because the falsities support the
self-love and justifies it. Think of how many philosophies and creeds our
generation entertains that justify any type of love that is enjoyable to the
Fallen proprium. A general review with many examples will be found in my book
A Man of the Field, Volume 1:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume1-nonduality.html
In the passage above it is said that the "natural man is in shade" and
doesn't comprehend many things about reality because it is not visible to the
physical senses. This is talking about the sensuous portion of the natural mind.
Our affective life at this level of consciousness is filled with the affections
of "self-love and the love of the world." Whatever supports those desires is
called truth. At this level of operation our mind is not genuinely human but
animal. We become human in our higher operations that are in the rational
portion of the natural mind called the natural-rational (see Section xx). The
passage says that after "we shed the body" and are resuscitated in the world of
spirits (see Section xx), we are able to better understand rational things. When
we think at the level of the sensuous mind we believe that rational things are
less real than sensuous things. When we hear about spiritual things like life in
heaven, we think of a thinned out sensuous world like floating in clouds.
The truth however is that rational things are more real than sensuous things
and that the rational ether that constitutes the spiritual world is far more
alive and real than the physical matter of the natural world. Heaven is in our
rational consciousness while hell is in our sensuous consciousness. Heaven is
infinitely more real than hell. Rational consciousness is more real than
sensuous consciousness devoid of the rational. But there is also a sensuous
consciousness that has rational consciousness within it, and this is the
mentality we have in heaven. For in heaven sensuous delights are plentiful and
real and they are produced by the rational consciousness that is within them.
Continuing with the same Number:
[3] These and many others are the factors which cause the natural man to
receive truths much later and with greater difficulty than the rational man
receives them. Consequently conflict occurs, which persists for rather a long
time and does not end until the recipient vessels of good in the natural man
have been softened by means of temptations, as shown above in 3318; for truths
are nothing else than recipient vessels of good, 1496, 1832, 1900, 2063, 2261,
2269. The harder those vessels are the more firmly is a person settled in the
things referred to above. And the more firmly settled he is, the more serious
is the conflict if he is to be regenerated. This therefore being the situation
with the natural man - that the joining of truths to good in the natural man
is effected by means of the conflicts brought about by temptations (...). (AC
3321)
A useful study of this passage (AC 3321) is given in a sermon by Rev .J. Clark
Echols, Jr. titled Honest Self-Observation (General Church, Cincinnati, Ohio
January 11, 2004). He points out that repentance is an important component of
the process of temptations. Conscience and guilt motivate us to feel sorry
about our evil deed or thought. Feeling sorry is a rejection of some particular
evil in us that comes to our attention through the temptation experience. Prior
to feeling sorry we feel indulgent toward the evil enjoyment as indicated by
such expressions as, "You only live once so go for the gusto!" or, "You deserve
a break today" or, "It's okay, no one else will ever know" or, It has always
been this way."
When we operate at the level of the lower natural mind we want to hide how we
feel, what we hope for, and what we think. Naturally, we don't want to be
punished or disapproved of because of them. We want to enjoy loves that are
antisocial, stupid, gross, abusive, deceptive. So we hide them and do the
enjoying part in secret. We pose as hypocrites with a veneer of decency and
generosity, meanwhile in our private self we are filled with envy, rage, and
disdain for others.
When we think the upper portion of the natural mind we can reason in a rational
way and understand rational things. We are not swayed by the senses and we can
have ideas that are abstracted from the senses, ideas that have to do with
morality and eternity, with altruism and integrity. When we think rationally we
think from Divine truth since it is the source of all rationality in our mind.
Rational consciousness of God motivates us to be innocent, to love to be
obedient to God's order and God's Commandments (see Section xx). During
regeneration we discover this basic conflict and opposition between our sensuous
consciousness and our rational consciousness.
"Honest self-observation is the first step of repentance. To observe ourselves
is to look at ourselves from our rational man, from the light of heaven. ... And
repentance leads to spiritual freedom, to a genuine love for neighbor, to
marriage love with your spouse, and to eternal happiness in heaven." (Echols, p.
4).
6.0.10
The State of Reformation Begins Regeneration
Regeneration is the central issue in theistic psychology. Without regeneration
there is eternal hell and with regeneration there is eternal heaven. Given that
we are born immortal human beings what can be more important to us than
regeneration?
We discussed above that regeneration begins in adulthood and continues lifelong,
and beyond. Regeneration is a word frequently used in Sacred Scripture,
especially in the New Testament and the Writings. Little details are offered in
the literal sense of the New Testament and the bulk of what has been revealed
about it is in the literal meaning of the Writings. In the future much more will
be known about regeneration when extractive research recovers the scientific
revelations that lay hidden in the literal sense of Divine Speech.
Quoting from the Writings:
(...) the quality of the state of those who are reformed is in the
beginning ... that they are carried away into various wanderings; for it is
given them by the Lord to think much about eternal life, and thus much about
the truths of faith; but because from what is their own (as just stated) they
cannot do otherwise than wander hither and thither, both in doctrine and in
life, seizing as truth that which has been inseminated from their infancy, or
is impressed upon them by others, or is thought out by themselves-besides
their being led away by various affections of which they are not
conscious-they are like fruits as yet unripe, on which shape, beauty, and
savor cannot be induced in a moment; or like tender blades which cannot in a
moment grow up into bloom and ear.
But the things which enter in at that time, though for the most part
erroneous, are still such as are serviceable for promoting growth; and
afterwards, when the men are being reformed, these are partly separated, and
are partly conducive to introducing nourishment and as it were juices into the
subsequent life-which again can afterwards be partly adapted to the implanting
of goods and truths by the Lord, and partly to being serviceable to spiritual
things as ultimate planes; and thus as continual means to reformation, which
means follow on in perpetual connection and order; for all things even the
least with man are foreseen by the Lord, and are provided for his future state
to eternity; and this for his good insofar as is in any wise possible, and as
he suffers himself to be led by the Lord. (AC 2679)
This passage strikingly describes the intimate relationship every human being
has with the Divine-Human who foresees in advance the future from birth to
eternity of every individual. To foresee and to bring about--such is the total
involvement of God with every human being's every instant of existence. This is
called a "perpetual connection." The passage also reveals some of the mechanisms
God uses to create our future moment by moment. In this instance we are focusing
on that portion of our life called "reformation." Experientially it feels like
we are "carried away into various wanderings" which are supervised or managed by
the Divine-Human. Specifically, we are given to "think much about eternal life"
and about "truths of faith." In our generation we refer to it as being
"spiritual" or having "spiritual interests" or being interested in
"spirituality" or religion.
But here only the period of reformation is involved. Some people may get stuck
at this stage and be interested in spirituality all their life as a hobby or as
entertainment or as expertise. These later states of intellectual searching or
"wanderings" are not being discussed here (but elsewhere). If one prolongs
the wanderings of reformation one postpones regeneration and all subsequent
interest in spirituality is in vain until one returns to Sacred Scripture
exclusively as the soul source of all truth. Then the Divine Psychologist can
resume the process of reformation followed by regeneration. Endless wanderings
in search of truth produces an idealist like Don Quixote, who though well
meaning, is portrayed as a fool and laughing stock.
The intellectual wanderings in search of truth during reformation have a
vacillating quality, going "hither and thither both in doctrine and life." In
doctrine, our multivalenced approach takes us into all sorts of
nonduality--eastern religions, ascetic disciplines, psychotropic drugs,
shamanism, nihilist philosophies, secular humanism, political idealism, moral
dissonance, fundamentalist faiths, universalist expressions, new age rituals.
These are the spiritual interests of the early phases of reformation. It is a
universalist awakening to dualism through all sorts of introductions and
initiations. We are being "led away by various affections of which we are not
conscious" and we bounce around with the persuasions to which we are exposed.
The Divine Psychologist supervises every detail of these wanderings, every
opportunity, every chance encounter or discovery in a book or conversation,
every determined follow up, and yes, every crash--for the only reason we meander
across the territory is that we abandon whatever we come to, back out, and
continue searching.
The passage reveals how the Divine Psychologist conducts the wanderings for
truth from things that are "for the most part erroneous" yet they are
"serviceable for promoting growth." There are no real chance encounters or
happenstances. These seemingly random events are used by God to hide His
presence and close management of our mental operations (see Section xx). God is
managing things in our mind in such a way as to bring us to rational conscious
awareness of His Presence in the mind and outside. It must be a rational
consciousness of His Presence. It would be so simple for God to instantaneously
give us sensuous consciousness of Him as the Divine-Human simply by turning on
the light of the spiritual mind so that we could see Him no matter which way we
turned or what we were doing. This is precisely what He does when we climb to
the heaven of our mind. Swedenborg has seen the Divine-Human many times for 27
years during his dual consciousness period. Everyone in the heavens of their
mind can see Him. Right now if you could elevate your conscious awareness to the
top region of your mind, you would see the Divine-Human surrounded by the
Spiritual Sun and in the midst of it.
This would be so simple. So the fact that God is not doing this, not raising our
sensuous consciousness to Him, must mean that He has a good reason why not. It
always means in these kind of issues that, for God to do so, would be injurious
to the individual. The Writings give much information on why such enlightenment
of our sensuous consciousness would destroy our ability to develop our rational
consciousness of the Divine-Human. Perhaps we would see God in flash, and then
we would tumble from the heaven of our mind into the hell of our mind, and will
we be able to emerge from there to eternity?
All this is understandable if you consider the full details (see Section xx).
The fact you have to remember is that the new heavens that now exist in our mind
(see Section xx), were created in our mind by the Incarnation Event two thousand
years ago (see Section xx). There is no other heaven we can live in except the
new rational heavens that were created then--the spiritual-natural operations in
our mind ("First Heaven"), the spiritual-rational operations in our mind, and
the celestial-rational operations in our mind. There is no other place in the
human mind or the spiritual world where there is a heaven except in our rational
consciousness. You can see now why God doesn't just appear in your mind or in
your living room. Among Christians, the rational consciousness of the
Divine-Human is called the "Holy Spirit" (see Section xx).
And so the Divine Psychologist uses wanderings to cure us of our inherited
obsessions until He can bring us to Himself, through His Divine Speech or Sacred
Scripture. In this we find the absolute dualities we have been running away
from, and now we can accept them, and wonder of wonder, begin to love them. This
insures that our regeneration will be successful since when we love the truth of
Sacred Scripture we are restored to state of innocence, hence obedience with
gladness. We are then willingly induced to cooperate with the Divine
Psychologist. Our mission: To learn to reject the evil enjoyments and to abhor
them. As we do this, and to the extent that we do, the Divine Psychologist
implants the new proprium, the good will, the fresh thoughts, the good of
blessedness and charity.
But this is only the beginning of a long journey full of effort and suffering,
as well as full of discovery and enthusiasm. At first we believe that heaven is
where all our wants are satisfied. Sure we want to go there. But along the way
the Divine Psychologist shows us that His will is not the same as our will. What
He wants for us is not the same as what we think we want for ourselves. There is
a clash of wills between a Giant and "little me." The clash is painful,
agonizing. Until we learn to give up the idea that heaven is where we get to
satisfy what we want. Gradually the Divine Psychologist enlightens our
understanding so that we begin to see that our heaven is where we satisfy the
Divine-Human's wants, not our wants. For all our wants in the state of
regeneration stem partly from the hellish proprium that is being eliminated,
eliminating, going--but not yet gone.
We never knew and will never know what we truly want but only what we imagine we
want. But if we love God more than self and world, we are more than happy to
rely on God's ideas of what is our true happiness. This total and absolute
reliance on God is much more reassuring than reliance on self. When we see this
rationally, we would feel horror and anxiety at the idea of relying on self
instead of God.
The Divine Psychologist is leading us therefore to a future that we cannot
foresee or imagine, and even less, contribute anything to bringing it about.
6.1 The Awesome Power of the Affective Organ
The spiritual world (or the mind) is divided into heaven on top, hell at
the bottom, and the world of spirits in between. These mental states or levels of mind
are the same in every individual. Every person has a mind in which these three
organic levels have been formed at birth. Since the mind operates in rational ether, all three
geographic levels of the spiritual world are in the mind of every individual. We can
ascend to heaven or descend to hell at will. For instance when we give in to
selfishness and insincerity, we begin behaving in cruel and destructive ways and create a
hell around us. On the other hand, we can create a heaven around us when we put
up the effort to modify our character to become good, sincere, and wise.
While we are earth bound there are limitations to the heaven
and hell we can create, but these restrictions are no longer there when, at the
death of the physical body, we start operating in rational ether with our
spiritual body. While as earthlings we have many limitations, when we become
spirits at "death," we are liberated into the world of spirits, rational ether
in rational ether, as a unique immortal individual.
There are no limits at that point. The will of the mind is
powerful beyond expectation when it can act in rational ether and is not tied by
physical restrictions of matter and space. The power we have to create a world
in our dreams is now a real power creating a reality, not a dream. We can
instantaneously create real palaces and
real mountains and real diamonds, all within the rational ether of the spiritual world. You can see from
this that if other spirits can catch you in their own web of creation, they
could create a hell for you in which you are tortured beyond belief.
It may be puzzling as to how we cross from our own mental
world into theirs where we suffer their hell, and also why we can't escape from
their clutches if we are free spirits? The answer is as surprising as it is catastrophically
devastating: You are keeping yourself in their hell!
This is the reason why you cannot be rescued from hell once
you get into it. No one is forcing you in there and no one is keeping you there. Remember that hell is the bottom of your mind, hardly human,
completely savage and uncivilized and stupid. The only way your consciousness
can enter there is by willfully destroying the two operations that keep you
from falling into hell: your conscience and your rationality.
Once these two spiritual operations have been willfully
neutralized or rendered ineffective, and you have descended into the hell in
your mind, what can bring your consciousness back up again?
Swedenborg reports various experiments he was allowed to
conduct with people who live in hell, that is, willfully keep themselves in that
state of mind. They were medically and momentarily raised back into the world of
spirits, which is midway in the mind between heaven and hell. Once they are
brought back into their "external mind" they appear normal, not like hideous
devils, and they talk like normal people, and do not behave like dangerous
delusional maniacs. This proves that they have the capacity to return to their
sanity at any time. Amazingly, they only tolerate this normalcy for a little
while, after which the craziness returns and they "cast themselves" back down
into the hell of their mind.
At birth we come into possession of two bodies, one temporary, the other
permanent and eternal. The temporary body is the physical body made of matter
that is tied to time and space. The eternal body is the mind or spirit made of
spiritual ether which contains substances from the Spiritual Sun. The physical
body is made of matter originating in the natural sun or star, while the
spiritual body or spirits is made of substance originating in the Sun of the
spiritual world. This perspective is called substantive dualism (see Section xx).
Upon the death of the physical body our spirit is resuscitated within a few
hours and we awaken in the world of spirits. At the point we can see that our
spiritual body is a complete copy of the physical body but much more alive,
sensitive and dynamic. From then on we continue life in immortality in the
spiritual body.
The spiritual body contains our mental organs since birth. There are no mental
organs in the physical body or brain. All sensation is located in the spiritual
body. No sensation or feeling can be located in a physical body.
The spiritual body contains an integrated and coordinated action of three
separate but interacting systems called the affective organ, the cognitive
organ, and the sensorimotor organ. This integration of the three mental systems
corresponds to the integration of the three physical systems known as
circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems of the physical body. The three
systems in the spiritual body are known to atheistic psychology by tradition
going back to Aristotle. Modern psychology recognizes that the affective,
cognitive, and sensorimotor functions of the mind are distinct and form an
integrated whole.
The affective organ in the spiritual body has spiritual fibers that are adapted
to receive spiritual heat from the Spiritual Sun. This heat radiates from the
Spiritual Sun everywhere in the entire spiritual world, which is also the human
mind. The Spiritual Sun creates a rational ether or sphere in which the
spiritual body can be born and develop to eternity. The spiritual heat radiating
outward from the Spiritual Sun enters every human mind from the chest of the
spiritual body where the heart is located. The heart in the physical body
corresponds to the heart of the spiritual body, and this is the affective organ.
So the affective organ in the spiritual body is in the region of the heart and
has a pulsation like the heart. The entire heaven of the human race pulsates
with this beat.
The lungs of the physical body correspond to the lungs of the spiritual body
which are its cognitive organ by which the spirit can think and reason. This
organ of thinking is constructed of spiritual fibers that have the capacity to
receive spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun. Spiritual heat and spiritual
light streaming out of the Spiritual Sun together are separated when received by
the two distinct mental organs. Once received, the spiritual heat in the
affective organ create the experience of sensations and feelings, while the
spiritual light in the cognitive organ create the consciousness of rational
thought or meaning. When the feelings and the thoughts are now reunited in the
mind, they give the power of overt behavior through muscles. This overt or
external behavior is the outward correspondence of the two affective and
cognitive organ acting together.
While we are on earth the affective--cognitive integration in the spiritual body
has the power to produce movement in the physical body. The two bodies are
linked by the laws of correspondences. Whatever action occurs in the mind has a
correspondential action in the physical body. If you remove this mind-body
connection the body cannot function and quickly disintegrates.
6.1.1
The Affective--Cognitive
Integration
The relation between the affective and cognitive organs is determined by the
relation between spiritual heat and spiritual light form the Spiritual Sun.
These two substances make up the two organs and keep it operational by the
constant influx of these two substances. This gives us the ability to think
thoughts from rational meanings and to feel feelings and satisfactions from
affections. All affections are forms of love and all thoughts are forms of
truth. Spiritual heat is love and spiritual light is truth.
It takes a level of abstract thinking to be able to understand that love and
truth are rational substances streaming from a Sun and entering our mind.
God is infinite Divine Love and Truth. That's the best way to describe and
understand what God is. Love is God's Divine quality and truth is God's
Divine-Human qualities. Rationality is from truth. In other words, rational operations
in the cognitive organ are initiated and built by the truth it receives as
spiritual light. Freedom and choice is from love. In otter words, affective
operations in the affective organ are initiated and built by love it receives as
spiritual heat.
To love is the power of the affective organ, while to think rationally is the
power of the cognitive organ. In order for behavior and experience to occur we
must perform loving and thinking together. They must act conjointly like husband
wife, or like heart and lungs. For instance, to think a single thought or to
visualize a single image, we must have a love for it, or a motive to do it.
Without a motive or love to think something, we cease thinking. If you take away
all the wants we have, we can no longer think anything. Thinking is a response
to a want or desire or effort to reach a specific goal state.
You can see this when you consider how humans act. We have a motive, desire,
need, or impulse. This mental experience is the result of the operations of the
affective organ. This state of wanting something persists as long as it is
maintained by some love that inflows or is received from the spiritual world.
The motive or goal-effort acts upon the cognitive organ in such a way as to
elicit thoughts that support and agree with the motive or goal effort. We begin
to reason by means of cognitive skills of understanding and formulate a plan
that promotes the fulfillment of the goal or want. The motive and the plan thus
make a one. This then leads to the overt action which is therefore the
integration of the affective and cognitive operations.
Everything about our life and future is therefore determined by our loves
operating in the affective organ.
While we are on earth God maintains two types of influx or inflow into the
spiritual body and mind--a heavenly and a hellish influx. The heavenly influx is
heavenly love from the spiritual heat of the Spiritual Sun. The hellish influx
is infernal heat issuing from the hells. This heat is also called lust and
cupidity. All inflowing love from the Spiritual Sun enters the highest level of
the affective organ and descends by successive degrees to the lowest level of
affective operations. In the process of being handed down by successive degrees,
the love is transformed in accordance with the individual unique characteristics
of the recipient affective organ. At this stage the original love may still be
functionally present, or else its opposite love is present. Heavenly love thus
turns into infernal love by how the individual reacts to it or receives it.
For instance, while riding the bus, we can receive the impulse to give up our
seat to someone who seems to need it. This impulse inflows from heaven and gives
rise to the thought of giving up the seat and the desire to do so. But then we
have a reaction to it. We don't feel like leaving the comfort of the seat. We
are reluctant. This feeling is an infernal love flowing from hell. It is the
opposite love from the heavenly.
There are two ruling loves flowing in from heaven--the love of God and the love
of heaven for the sake of loving others. These two loves can be turned into
their opposites--the love of self and the world for the sake of self. So
altruistic loves flow in from the heavens and selfish loves flow in from the
hells.
When we are resuscitated in the world of spirits we quickly adjust to the new
way of life in eternity. We learn that the surrounding environment or quality of
our life is determined completely by what loves are operating in the affective
organ. Heavenly loves create a heaven around us where we dwell in community with
others who are also in similar heavenly loves. Hellish loves create a hell
around us where we dwell in societies with others who are also similar in
hellish loves.
Shortly after resuscitation we undergo various experiences designed to bring out
our deepest ruling loves. If they are heavenly loves we enter the state of mind
called heaven and abide there in conjugial love to eternity. If they are hellish
loves we enter the state of mind called hell and abide there in infernal lusts
to eternity. Therefore it is obvious that nothing can be more important to us
while still on earth than to make sure that we acquire heavenly loves. And these
loves cannot stay with us unless we rid ourselves of hellish loves. This is the
process of regeneration (see Section xx).
6.2
What Determines Our Ultimate Fate in
Eternity?
One can understand it more rationally if you think of life
after death as a continuation of life on earth. You bring with you what is
already in your natural mind that has accumulated over your lifetime on earth.
No one compels a novitiate spirit to choose heaven or hell, as a reward or as a
punishment. Everyone is compelled by their own will. So whether you go up or
down depends on what is in your will or character. If you've acquired affective
habits in your will that are selfish, cruel, dishonest, foolish, then you are
compelled by your own will to seek out the spiritual spheres that are most
nourishing to it, and to avoid and recoil from spiritual spheres that inhibit
its mode of operations.
Swedenborg interviewed people both in the bottom of their
mind, and then afterwards, when they were momentarily brought up to the world of
spirits, and also when they were momentarily brought up all the way to the
heaven in their mind. What happened? If you are artificially brought up into the
heaven of your mind while you retain active operations in your hell, you feel
torn apart from the inmost of your being, exploding like a field mine you just
stepped on. This is because the sphere of rational ether in the upper regions of
the mind enters the spiritual fibers of the mind in counter-clockwise influx
from the Spiritual Sun, and as this descends it tears up the spiritual fibers in
the will that run in the opposite direction. There is no way you can stay in
heaven for more than a few breaths before you are destroyed from within, which
causes you to precipitate yourself back down as quickly as possible where,
Swedenborg reports, they revive and stay put. Any hell is better for a "devil"
than heaven.
You can see from this that minds operating in rational ether
in the spiritual world are vastly more powerful than
anything that exists in the physical world. There is a direct and instantaneous connection
between our feelings and thoughts on the one hand, and on the other hand, the
appearances of the spiritual environment around
us. This is analogous to the awesome powers we have in dreams. The environment
that appears in our dream world is not made of physical matter like the environment
around our sleeping physical body. Dream scapes and objects are rational or spiritual
objects,
constructed of rational ether from the substances of the spiritual world.
They are instantaneously created by the
operation of the feelings and thoughts upon the spiritual environment. This is a built in feature of the
structure of the spiritual world and the structure of the spiritual body. Both
have the same substances and the same laws so that there is an identity
already discussed: mental world = spiritual world. This
the basic tenet upon which theistic psychology is founded. It is the definition
of substantive dualism.
6.2.1 Wanting to Know the Future Through Psychic Prophecies
Quoting from the Writings:
As a foreknowledge of future events destroys the human itself, which is to
act from freedom according to reason, therefore it is not granted to anyone to
know the future; but everyone is permitted to form conclusions concerning
future events from the reason; hence reason with all that pertains to it
enters into our life.
It is on this account that we do not know someone’s lot after death, or
know of any event before we are involved in it. For if we knew this, we would
no longer think from our interior self how we should act or how we should live
in order to meet the event; but we would only think from our exterior self
that we were meeting it.
Now this state closes the interiors of our mind in which the two faculties
of our life, liberty and rationality, especially reside. A longing to know the
future is innate with most people; but this longing derives its origin from
the love of evil. It is therefore taken away from those who believe in the
Divine Providence; and there is given them a trust that God is disposing their
lot.
Consequently they do not desire to know the future beforehand lest they
should in any way set themselves against the Divine Providence. (…)
[2] That this is a law of the Divine Providence may be confirmed by many
things from the spiritual world. Most persons when they enter that world after
death desire to know their lot. They are told that if they have lived well
their lot is in heaven, and if they have lived wickedly it is in hell.
But as all, even the wicked, fear hell, they ask what they should do and
what they should believe to enter heaven. They are told that they may do and
believe as they will; but that they should know that in hell good is not done
and truth is not believed, but only in heaven.
To each one the answer is: "Seek out what is good and what is true; then
think the truth and do the good, if you are able." So in the spiritual world
as in the natural world all are left to act from freedom according to reason;
but as they have acted in this world so do they act in the spiritual world.
(…) (DP 179) (“man” and “his” were changed to the plural)
6.3
The Vertical Community of Minds
What is always surprising about this identity is the
experience we all have that we are alone in our mind. It feels absolutely private
and it cannot be measured, detected, or copied. This is accurate -- but only for
physical privacy, physical measuring devices, physical attempts at detection. It
is the opposite in the spiritual world where our spiritual body is born and
located. Our spiritual body is our mind and contains the affective organ, the
cognitive organ, and the sensorimotor organ, each operating at three
non-overlapping levels. But what does the spiritual body
look like -- surely not like a walking brain! How funny. People have imagined
all sorts of shapes for the soul, or ghosts and spirits. Even the word "spirit"
gives us a feeling of airiness and unreality in comparison to the body or a
tree. But Swedenborg verified the fact that spirits look like solid, clothed,
earthlings. The mind that undergoes the resuscitation phase, a few hours
following the cessation of the brain's functioning, is already housed in a
spiritual body, since birth. There is no death or change in the spiritual body
when the physical body disintegrates. Nothing can die in the mind because
nothing mental exists in the physical body that dies. All along the brain did not house
our feelings, thoughts, and sensations. These were in the mind all along, not on
earth but in the world of spirits.
So our shape as spirits is the same shape as the spiritual
body which is the same shape as the physical body. In fact the physical body has
its shape only because it is a copy of the spiritual body. But whereas the
physical body can be born damaged or undergo damage later, there is no damage or
blemish on the spiritual body, nor can there be to eternity, for it is made
of eternal substances in an eternal arrangement. The spiritual body can be seen,
heard, touched by other spiritual bodies in the spiritual world. Swedenborg
confirms the fact that spirits can see the spiritual body of anyone who is still
tied to the physical body. Our spiritual body appears to them like the physical body appears to
us when it is in a coma. Swedenborg observed that there is a special aromatic aura that
surrounds the area around each of those spiritual bodies, serving as
a warning for the spirits not to come closer, and also as a protective shield from
unwanted communication and influence. Swedenborg observed these phenomena
daily for 27 years as he was writing his notes.
What does it mean that our mental world is a spiritual world
in which we are together and can interact with each other?
6.3.1 Human Consciousness
and Mediated Divine Influx
(From:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing2.htm )
This is what I call the vertical community. Our
physical body is immersed in a social world of others so that we can interact
and touch each other. Our body has a social and legal identity within a society
within a nation and culture. This is our horizontal community -- it is bound in
space and time across the planet. Within the context of the horizontal community
our mind is a private world. But within the context of our vertical community
the mind is a social world -- auras around our head reflect our mood and
intentions when approaching, whether hostile or friendly. Objects and animals
seen around us are clues to what we are feeling and thinking since these
external appearances are creations by the laws of correspondence of the feelings
and thoughts we have at any moment.
As feelings or moods change in an individual there is an
instantaneous effect on the spiritual world. Bad moods create the appearance of
a dark and stormy weather filled with screeching owls and black birds and
scorpions. Negative emotions create the appearance of wild
animals roaming around and awful smells that correspond to particular thoughts. Good feelings create
beautiful gardens and paradises filled with gentle animals and luscious fruit. When you think about someone with the desire to
interact, the person and you suddenly are in each other's presence. When you
fight with a companion, he or she disappears from your presence. When you feel
like eating, food appears. And so on. Swedenborg observed these instantaneous
creations and changes for 27 years and it became so familiar that it was
accepted ass something normal.
It is clear from this that the human personality has a
super-natural ability and power that is impressive. An individual's mind is far
more powerful than the all the natural forces on an entire planet. You know this
from the power you have in your dreams, day dreams, imagination, and
visualization. When we think from materialism we are less impressed by this
mind-power since dreams, imagination, visualization are mental and come and go,
with little apparent effects on our earthly environment. People say, Oh, that's
just a dream, or that's just my expectation, etc. This appears valid only as
long as we restrict our focus on the material physical world where is our
physical body. But what about the spiritual world where our mind is? What
happens there when we dream, daydream, fantasize, or feel a striving or desire
for something?
Boom!
Suddenly everything changes as you change feelings or moods
-- the environment, the house, the people you're with, your clothes, the sounds
and smells, everything changes. So it's never "just" dreams or thoughts since
they are the everything in the spiritual or mental environment.
The individual traits of personality are determined by the
unique way each mind or "spirit" receives and processes the spiritual heat and
light streaming forth from the Spiritual Sun. The spiritual light streams into
the cognitive organ of the mind while the spiritual heat streams into the
affective organ of the mind. The result is a unique reception with each unique
personality or individual. This is analogous with the natural sun rays which
stream into a variety of plants, each plant species in a unique way
(wavelength), so that the same sunlight (photosynthesis) and heat (activation
and flow) produce a variety of flowers and fruit. Similarly, the same spiritual
light and heat from the Spiritual Sun produce unique effects in each mind
receptor.
The spiritual influx of substances into the mind organ
produces its affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor operations at several
levels. Influx first enters through the celestial mind and is unconscious. The
effects produced on the celestial mind filter down to the spiritual mind by the
laws of correspondences. Ordinarily we are unaware of the operations in our
spiritual mind, though we can acquire that ability to some extent. Finally, the
effects of the operations in the spiritual mind filter down by functional
correspondence to the natural mind. Here we become conscious of them.
The natural mind is built up by daily experience through the
physical body and social interactions. The natural mind has three sub-components
or levels of operation: corporeal-sensuous, and natural-rational.
Corporeal-sensuous levels of operations in our mind are focused on sensations
and motor movements. Natural-rational levels are focused on abstract
representations of the corporeal-sensuous operations. When the operations of the
natural mind are integrated and healthy the human personality is civilized,
intelligent, virtuous, and moral. Prior to this integration, or even in
states of disintegration, the human personality is savage, partially
intelligent, corrupt, and amoral or immoral. Inheritance of personality traits
insures that the disintegration of the natural mind is passed on to the ensuing
generations. Each generation passes on additional new negative traits so that
there has been a tendency for "fossilizing" negative and unhealthy personality
traits. Every generation and every individual is thus faced with the challenging
task of modifying inherited traits that prevent individuals from reaching their
full human potential. See the Section on Character Reformation (below).
Theistic psychology makes available new human resources by
uncovering hidden powers known from scientific revelations. For instance, the
knowledge that both heaven and hell are inside every individual provides us with
techniques for character reformation. For every depression we have available
anti-depression, and for every negative emotion we have access to is positive
counter side. No one has to be stuck where they are born or where they have
fallen. No one is more or less privileged in possessing both the highest and the
lowest of humanity. Another example is the knowledge that everyone possessed a
spiritual-rational mind that is not under their conscious control and cannot be
perverted. This is the mind which causes the natural mind to be orderly arranged
and to carry out operations that are rational. Hence everyone has an equal
capacity to arrange their natural mind into a civilized and rational mode. All
society's ills are caused by the natural mind remaining in disorder due to its
active opposition to the influence of the spiritual mind. Untold human benefit
would result if we allowed the knowledge of theistic psychology to spread to
science and public education.
Certain cognitive habits function to inhibit the rational
influence of the spiritual mind and thus lead to the downward spiral of hell.
Atheism, materialism, cynicism, Machiavelli's, cultism, terrorism are all
systems of thought, ways of thinking and feeling that are opposed and
destructive of theism and rationality, the two elements of our character upon
which heaven is built up. For instance religious terrorists have developed a
religious and patriotic rationale for justifying hellish acts that go beyond
universal rules of human decency and international law. On the one hand they
ascend to their heaven and worship God through their ritual and dogma. On the
other hand they descend to their hell and practice evil deeds as a deliberate
policy to solve a particular political problem. They are thus activating both
heaven and hell within themselves, destroying the fabric of their mind. Can
suicide bombers enjoy life in heaven when heaven is a place of loving others
more than self?
Consider the contrast with wars a country wages according to
human decency and international law. One can disagree with the motive for going
to war, and yet definite rules are voluntarily observed when dealing with the
enemy. We are even expected to feel compassion for the enemy so that when we
wound an enemy soldier we feel compelled, not to finish him off, but to rescue
him from death by medical care, and afterwards we feel obligated to send them
home. We wage war in a civilized manner because to become uncivilized is worse
than to lose the war or to die honorably.
Atheistic psychology has been hampered in its mission to
improve the lot of humanity by its inability to take sides between good and evil
personality traits. There was no rationale for saying that this human trait is
better than that. Blind evolution theory has it that the fittest survive, not
the good in heart, and even that selfism is more "rational" than altruism since
it is more likely to lead to one's survival. But now with theistic psychology we
know as a scientific fact that the human mind is immortal and contains heaven
and hell. Suddenly the stakes have gone much higher. Instead of a few decades of
unhappiness due to immaturity we are looking at an eternity of happiness, or
else, unhappiness. The stakes could not be higher than this!
Theistic psychology gives the current generation, and all the
generations in the future, a knowledge of what's at stake and how to meet it.
Theistic psychology opens up vast new untapped resources of human potential.
Understanding personality from within is a great advantage that gives power to
transform one's inherited character into a heavenly character that consists of
loves that can sustain us in our heavenly mansions. Swedenborg has interviewed
and observed many heavenly inhabitants. In that state of life every person is
called an "angel" and everyone is in the "flower of their youth" -- around age
20 in looks, according to Swedenborg's impression. Everyone is beautiful there.
Everyone is wise, decent, altruistic, and imbued with the love of serving the
needs of others. Only "conjugial couples" live there, each in their heavenly
mansion or garden, each growing happier, wiser, and more beautiful on a daily
basis to eternity. Such is the awesome power and goodness of the human mind in
its full potential.
Atheistic psychology teaches that people and animals do
things for reward and reinforcement of their needs and goals. In that case every
novitiate spirit should immediately rise to their heaven, but this is not the
case. Swedenborg observed thousands of people being resuscitated from different
countries during his years of active observation of the world of spirits
(1745-1771) and he was amazed to discover that more than half descended to the
bottom of their mind. He interviewed them to find out why. He eventually came to
understand the spiritual physiology of personality which explained whey people
would freely choose to descend to the bottom of their mind instead of ascend to
the top.
The most important dynamic feature of the mind is that the
affective rules the cognitive, and the two together rule the sensorimotor, which
rules the body. In other words the will, which is an affective organ, rules the
understanding, which is a cognitive organ. It is significant that atheistic
psychology has not been able to discover this, always leaning towards the
position that the cognitive rules the affective. The primacy of the affective
over the cognitive was confirmed by Swedenborg in many ways. It is known today
that synergy depends on integration of diverse elements. The Writings had
already fully established this thesis in the 18th century. For instance, the
cumulative perfection of the human race is dependent on the diversity of its
races and cultures, but only if they are integrated. If not, the diversity leads
to conflict and discrimination. This applies equally to the affective domain,
that is, the operations of willing and intending.
Quoting from the Writings:
These two verses deal with the introduction of truth into good. But the
nature of this introduction does not fit easily into the pattern of thought of
anyone whose mind is illumined solely by such things as are seen in the light
of the world, and not at the same time by those seen in the light of heaven,
by which those belonging to the light of the world are illumined.
People who are devoid of good and consequently of faith have no other ideas
in their minds than those formed from objects seen in the light of the world.
They do not know what the spiritual is, nor even what the rational is in the
genuine sense, but only the natural, to which they ascribe everything. Here
also is the reason why those things stated in the internal sense about the
introduction of truth into good appear to them too remote to mean anything at
all. Yet to those who see in the light of heaven they are considered most
precious.
With regard to the introduction of truth into good, before truth has been
introduced and rightly joined it does indeed reside with man, yet it has not
so to speak become his or his own. But as soon as it is introduced into its
own good it does become his own. It goes out of his external memory and passes
over into the internal memory. Or what amounts to the same, it ceases to exist
in the natural or external man, and passes over into the rational or internal
man, where it clothes itself with the person himself and constitutes his
humanity, that is, his own human character.
This is the situation with all truth that is being joined to its good, as
also in a similar way with falsity that is being joined to evil which it calls
good. The difference however is that truth opens the rational and so makes a
person rational, whereas falsity closes the rational and makes him irrational,
though he seems to himself while in the darkness enveloping him at this time
to be more rational than others. (AC 3108)
This passage explains how the Divine Psychologist causes our mind to develop
spiritually in preparation for entering eternal conjugial heaven in our mind.
This is called "the introduction of truth into good." This refers to the
marriage or conjunction between our cognitive and affective organs. This inner
mental marriage makes us heavenly. It is an actual mechanism that will be
researched in the future under a branch of theistic psychology called "spiritual
psychobiology" (see Reading List under that title, as well as the title "Human
Organic").
The above passage refers to our "external memory" and our "internal memory."
These anatomical parts of our mind are distinct and have different functions.
The external memory is involved in our overt personality roles and involvements.
Only that information will enter the internal memory which we love. It's very
important that people monitor this process of interiorization since the external
memory is made non-operational at our second death when we permanently enter
either heaven or hell in our mind. IN order to enter heaven we must transfer the
doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture into the interior memory, or else we do
not have it with us at the second death, meaning that we cannot enter the
heavenly state in our mind.
The passage above describes how we can transfer the doctrine of truth from
Sacred Scripture from our external memory to our internal memory. This is the
method of love. By making ourselves love the doctrine of truth from Sacred
Scripture we achieve the marriage between the will and the understanding, that
is, between our affective and cognitive organs. In other words, we make the love
actual and real when we intend and act in accordance with the doctrine of truth
from Sacred Scripture. That's what it takes.
The second paragraph in the quoted passage above explains that we cannot
understand this process of spiritual development without the doctrine of truth
from Sacred Scripture. Without this information or concept of Divine Truth
operating in the world, we remain materialists in our thinking, being unable to
see anything whatsoever in these ideas about good and truth and how God
introduces one into the other to create a marriage that makes a heaven out o
four mind. The the materialist person in the negative bias, these things seem
meaningless and without any foundation (see Section xx).
The third paragraph in the quoted passage above explains that when the doctrine
of truth from Sacred Scripture initially "resides" with us but has not become
"our own." That's why it is called the "external" memory--it is outside of us.
What we call the "us" or the "self" or what is our "own" is what is in our love
or affective organ, that is, our character, what we really love underneath it
all. This is the internal spiritual mind that remains with us into immortality.
When we make our daily choices according to the truth in our external memory, we
intend what we believe and know. This makes it our very own. Anything that we
freely intend is our own since when we are free, we intend only what we love (no
pretenses). If we freely intend what we know from our doctrine of truth from
Sacred Scripture, then the truth "ceases to exist in the natural or external
man, and passes over into the rational or internal man." The doctrine of truth
from Sacred Scripture then becomes our own, which means that our character has
become heavenly.
It is not possible for a non-heavenly character to freely intend the doctrine of
truth from Sacred Scripture. Before we are mature adults we often know the
doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture but we do not freely intend it. We make
a show of intending it because we desire to have a good reputation in the yes of
those around us. But in the privacy of our own mind it is not possible for us to
freely intend the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture--unless we desire to
love it. But the hellish part of our mind cannot freely desire to love the
doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. It is as impossible to do that as it is
to put a house in your pocket from which you just exited.
The last paragraph of the passage quoted above explains that doctrine of truth
from Sacred Scripture (or "truth") "makes a person rational" while non-truth or
"falsity" makes a person "irrational." What is noteworthy is that when we are in
an irrational state of mind, truth appear false and falsity appears like truth.
Quoting from the Writings:
It is well known that nobody is born rational but merely into the ability
to become so, and that he becomes rational by means of factual knowledge, that
is to say, by means of cognitions which divide up into many genera and
species, the first of which are the means leading on to those next to them,
and so on in order to the last of all which are cognitions of the spiritual
things of the Lord's kingdom and are called matters of doctrine. These latter
cognitions are learned in part from the doctrine of faith, in part directly
from the Word, and in part therefore by a person's own efforts, as is also
well known. As long as these matters of doctrine remain solely in the memory
they are merely factual truths and have not as yet been made over to the
individual as his own.
They first become made over to him when he starts to love them for the sake
of life, and more so when he applies them to life. When this happens truths
are raised up from the natural memory into the rational part of the mind and
are there joined to good. And when they have been joined they are no longer
matters of knowledge but of life, for in that case a person is no longer
learning from truths how to live but actually living by them. In this way
truths come to be his own and become matters of the will. He accordingly
enters the heavenly marriage, for the heavenly marriage consists in good and
truth joined together in the rational. With men these things are accomplished
by the Lord. (AC 3161)
The same applies to everything implanted in someone since childhood. It
does not become his own until he acts according to it, and does so from
affection. For when he acts from affection that which has been implanted in
him passes into his will. Then it is no longer put into practice by him simply
because he knows that he should or because he has been taught to do it, but
because some delight unknown to himself and so to speak his own disposition or
nature lead him to do so. For everyone acquires such a disposition or nature
from frequent practice or habit, and that practice or habit from the things he
has learned.
This does not come about until the things he has absorbed through his being
taught them have been passed through from the external man to the interior;
for when they exist in the interior man he no longer acts from the sensory
memory but from his acquired disposition, till at length they flow into action
spontaneously. For in this case they have been inscribed on the person's
interior memory, and the things that proceed from this give the appearance of
being innate. This may be recognized from the languages a person has learned
in childhood, also from the ability to reason, and from conscience too. From
these considerations it is evident that the truths of doctrine, even those
that are interior, are not joined to a person until they are matters of life.
But further information on these points will in the Lord's Divine mercy appear
elsewhere. (AC 3843)
You can see that the essence of a human being is the
hierarchy of loves contained in the mind. If these loves are good and rational,
the human being is heavenly. But if the loves are evil and irrational, the human
being is hellish. We are such as our loves are, and in fact, angels in heaven
call each other "affections," meaning, loves, enthusiasms, happinesses, and the
like. The individual's highest potential is built up by the quality of loves one
has as one's very own. If we live in our evil loves, we are nothing but devils
and satans -- delusional and dangerous caricatures of humans. But if we live
good loves, we are nothing but angels and good spirits -- peaceful, rational,
and compassionate. Every individual can be either of these two from an
innate capacity, as part of the spiritual organics of the immortal mind.
Human loves in the affective organ of the will, are organized
in a ruling hierarchy. The entire hierarch depends on the "ruling love" which is
top dog, king, and chair of the board. Swedenborg determined that the entire
human race on earth has evolved an affective hierarchy that is passed on from
generation to generation, cumulating in strength and intensifying over the
generations. This hierarchy is visible by its ultimate effects -- a society
marred by increasing criminality causing suffering and a deteriorating physical
environment causing sickness and discomfort. These negative effects are the
results of negative loves.
There are three strong forces that oppose this deterioration
of loves: rationality, conscience, and sacred scripture. Rationality always
promotes morality and respect for community standards. Conscience always
promotes resistance to selfish and irrational temptations and serves as a guide
to what are bad loves that should be avoided and what are good loves that should
be embraced. Sacred Scripture always promotes love of God's commandments of life
and love of others. You can see that these three forces -- rationality,
conscience, and sacred scripture, give us the power to realign our affective
hierarchy by dethroning the chief loves in place by the time we become adults
and can survey our mental territory. The two ruling loves of every individual on
this planet is "the love of self and world" and "the love of ruling over
others."
By understanding the nature of these two loves theistic
psychology can be more effective in reversing the downward evolution of human
loves.
6.3.1.1 The
Formation of Habits
Quoting from Hugo Lj. Odhner's theistic psychology book on interaction with
spirits:
Viewed from the spiritual world, the establishment of a certain habit
actually means that we have placed ourselves under the rule of a special kind
of spirits who delight in that routine. We no longer bother to spend any
thought upon it. The question whether it is right or wrong no longer comes up.
This is for us a great saving of mental labor and even of physical energy.
Human life would be most arduous, if not impossible, if whatever a person
learned to do would have to be reasoned out again whenever they wished to
repeat it. A person could then never acquire skill or facility in anything. No
matter how often they had convinced themselves of some truth, they would still
have recurrent doubts until they worked it all out in his or her mind again.
Under such conditions there could be no progress. Therefore we are allowed to
relegate what we have once approved to the interior or subconscious memory or,
what is the same, to the spontaneous working of an accepted influx from the
spiritual world. And when after death we enter that world, the roads we will
see and wish to travel will correspond in general to the habits of thought
which we have established in this world.
When we exercise our freedom of thought in the course of our earthly life
we are, from time to time, making decisions as to what particular spirits we
desire to receive; for choice has to do with "particular influx." As long as
we are in the life of the body there will be repeated opportunities for such
choice. Yet it seems likely, that when we are being carried along in a
confirmed habit, which has established an unconscious plane of order or second
nature, individual spirits are not so much in question as whole groups of
spirits - a selected group of societies through whom life is channeled into
our minds.
A person must therefore take thought and explore their habits of mind and
body, before they are confirmed beyond the point of no return. In our habits
we can recognize the workings of our self-love, our lack of consideration and
charity, our impiety, brutality, conceit, or vanity. Our habits will reveal to
us our ruling loves, our besetting sins and temptations. External habits which
are in themselves good may because of their obsession over us indicate that we
place overmuch value on external things.
We can imagine an evil person, a slave to his or her passions, without
restraints or shame, who by their habits has abandoned themselves to the
general influx from an infernal society. Their love has been fixed to the
degree that they no longer desire to exercise their freedom of choice, but
have surrendered to evil openly and irrevocably, so that their rational mind
no longer resists. Their spirit is immersed into the hell of their delight.
Particular influx is then renounced, and a general influx from hell takes over
the government of their mind. (Odhner, Spirits in Human Life, see
Reading List)
Note especially what is said in the next to the last paragraph quoted above,
namely, that we "must explore the habits of mind and body" in order to discover
which ones are from evil spirits. "Our habits will reveal to us our ruling
loves" and it is these that form the center of our character. We must concern
ourselves with the loves that sustain our habits of thinking, intending, and
emoting (see Section xx). We become "slaves" to our habits so that we tend not
to exercise our freedom of choice--the habit takes over without our thinking
about it. We are no longer in the protection of our rationality through the
doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture.
xxx
6.4 Love of Self
and the World for the Sake of Self
The expression "love yourself" is not meant in the same way
as the love of self for the sake of self. Ordinarily the advice of loving
yourself is seen as legitimate in the sense of "do not neglect yourself."
Sometimes people, especially women, feel pressure to satisfy the needs of people
around them, which leads them to neglect certain basic self-care requirements
such as proper food and rest, as well as the pursuit of personal interests. It's
not human to be a slave to others. Hence the advice, Love yourself, meaning,
take care of your basic needs and then take care of other people's needs.
But the love of self for the sake of self is a selfish love
that leads to self-centered thinking. For instance, when I'm driving somewhere
in an aggressive manner because I'm in a hurry, I put others at risk. Every
decade 65 million Americans end up in a hospital with a serious injury caused by
an automobile crash. Millions of injuries could be avoided if people stopped
driving aggressively. If I am motivated by the love of self for the sake of self
I am going to drive aggressively whenever I want to, not caring about the fact
that I'm putting others at risk. Or, suppose I get an insider tip about stocks
that I own and I sell them just in time to avoid a loss. The love of self for
the sake of self allows me to do it despite my knowing that it is illegal and
unfair, causing loss to others. Or, when I watch TV in the evening I can have
the volume loud enough to disturb my neighbors. I can do this night after night,
even though my neighbors have complained. What allows me to do this is the love
of self for the sake of self.
It is similar with the love of the world for the sake of
self, which is another version of the love of self for the sake of self. For
instance, many people love to be famous and popular, admired and praised, being
given awards and recognition, special status and privileges. Some people love
recognition because it allows them to be more useful with their skills. This is
a good love. But when we love recognition and praise for the sake of self, we
don't care if we are being more useful as a result. We just care about the fact
that we will have more power and access to pleasures and conveniences.
6.5 Love of Self and the World for the Sake of
Others
Health professionals give this advice to people who don't
take care of themselves because they are too busy taking care of others: You've
got to love yourself. Of course they don't mean egocentric self-love or
selfishness. They don't mean that one should stop helping others. To love
yourself in a good sense means to nothing else then to take care of yourself. In
other words, you have the motivation to take care of your body and comfort,
otherwise you get sick, depressed, and stressed, a state in which you then need
to be taken care of by others.
Some people are ambitious and competitively seek public
office or job promotions and career moves. Does that mean they love self more
than others? Not necessarily since good or bad always depends on the motive or
goal we have in mind. We can pretend to care by doing things for others in a
calculated hypocritical way in order to become more popular or influential, but
at the same time, not caring at all and secretly doing things that hurt others.
Or we can act in a caring way out of a desire to be helpful and useful to
others, and at the same time, withholding ourselves from doing anything in
secret that might hurt others.
The expression "for the sake of others" is frequently used in
the Writings. Swedenborg observed the heavenly personality of the people he met
in the heavenly regions of their mind. Every love they had was dependent on
their ruling love which was "for the sake of others." We can call this altruism,
a word from Old French that means "other people." The dictionary defines
altruism as "unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others"
(Merriam-Webster Online). Selfish is the opposite of altruistic. When we are in
an affective state ruled by the "love of self for the sake of self" we behave
selfishly, which is defined as "concerned excessively or exclusively with
oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or
well-being without regard for others." Note the phrase "without regard for
others" which means the opposite of "for the sake of others."
The love of the world for the sake of others is a heavenly
love while we are still on earth. It is heavenly because our motivation for
acquiring riches, power, status, and influence is in that case not selfish but
altruistic. Our motive is to be useful to others and society by serving their
needs in the capacity of an office or an influential position. This altruistic
love is not opposed to our being rich and powerful in society. It is well known
that many people seek public office in order to be useful to others rather than
to satisfy their own needs. Altruism is not opposed to taking care of ourselves
by reducing stress and increasing comfort and conveniences. Altruism is not
opposed to our love for art and the outdoors, nor to engaging in hobbies and in
being entertained. But altruism is involved in the way or style that we do these
things. We can enjoy the public beaches, lakes, and forests selfishly, in which
case we behave obnoxiously to others by not cleaning up after ourselves or by
injuring the environment in some careless way. Or we can enjoy the things of the
world altruistically by always thinking of others when our actions may affect
them.
But could we not be selfish in some situations and altruistic
in others? Yes, while we are attached to the physical body here on earth; but
No, once we become spirits upon death of the physical body. When we are
conscious in our spiritual body and live in the spiritual world it is not
possible for us to retain mixed affective states, that is, selfish traits and
altruistic traits. The process of development in the spiritual world inexorably
leads to a separation of opposite traits in our mind. This separation is called
the second death. This separation phase may last a few days to a few months, as
viewed from Swedenborg's earthly calendar. During this intervening time we face
intense experiences in rapid succession which bring us face to face with our
ruling loves, desires, and attitudes.
The psychological mechanisms for this personal drama include
others in the world of spirits who also undergo this transition phase. It also
involves spirits who have already undergone the second death and are already
situated in their eternal states of mind, either in the heavens of their mind or
in the hells of their mind. These people are allowed to return to their former
external mind which they had prior to undergoing the second death. And in this
temporarily altered state of consciousness, they participate in the transitional
experiences of those still undergoing their second death phase.
At the end of the process no one is left with mixed loves.
The ruling love that wins out is now permanently established and never changes.
All other remaining loves are then subordinated to this one ruling love, and the
person then enters their state of heaven or hell. If the ruling love that wins
out is altruistic, the individual is indeed happy and enters the heavenly state
to eternity. But if the ruling love is selfishness, one enters the permanent
state of one's hell. The details of one's live in heaven and hell vary with
individual differences, and since no two people can ever be identical to
eternity, every person is in their own unique heaven or hell. What is
amazing is that when we are in our own unique heaven or hell we are in company
with others who are in their own unique heaven and hell. The others appear
around us like in our dreams we have other people appear with whom we can
interact. The difference is that in our heaven or our hell the people are real,
not just a dream. They are people born on earth who passed on and are now living
in the eternity of their mind.
The laws of the spiritual world are such that people who have
similar character traits appear in each other's heaven or hell. In other words,
both these propositions apply simultaneously:
(a) heaven and hell are subjective mental states that are
unique to each individual; and
(b) heaven and hell are objective spiritual places that can be visited by others
These two statements are reconciled by the basic tenet of
theistic psychology discussed before (see the
section on Spiritual Psychology,
namely:
mental = rational = spiritual =
immortal and eternal
Propositions (a) and (b) appear odd only because of our prior
assumptions that are not factual or valid. But you can see that the propositions
are compatible when you think, not from natural place and time, but from mental
space and time, which is an appearance. Again think of your dreams. The places
you visualize are not physical places but mental or rational places. These
mental appearances of place and time are changeable, not constant as on earth.
Just as others you know can appear in your dreams, in the same way others who
have similar mental traits can appear and disappear in your presence in the
spiritual world.
Swedenborg observed that loves are all powerful in the
spiritual world so that friends and neighbors we love and enjoy never leave our
presence. We spend an eternity with them because we are similar and we are tied
by love. But since each one is a unique human being, the presence of others in
our mental world vastly enriches our life and experiences every day. This is
especially true of conjugial love which is the ruling love of couples in the
highest heavens. A husband and a wife are together interiorly even when they
seem to be in different places doing different things in the spiritual world. As
well, whatever reactions, emotions, insights, perceptions, and enjoyments that
an individual has in the spiritual world, it is instantaneously communicated by
contagion to all the others who are in our company. Thus entire cities and
larger societies are mutually affected in this way, and eventually the mutuality
spreads to the other societies who are more distant to us in similarity.
Ultimately every thought and feeling a person has spreads to the entire human
race.
6.6 Love of Ruling
Over Others for the Sake of Self
The expression "ruling over others" refers to dominance and
power. Sometimes we may want dominance and power in order to be more effective
or useful to others and society. This is a good love. But to want to rule over
others for the sake of self is an evil love that leads you to wanting to enslave
everyone, and those who refuse to be enslaved, we hate and try to destroy. If
this love remains at the top of our motive hierarchy we are led more and more
into a syndrome of dictatorship in our personality -- discriminating against
those who resist us, imposing our will on others to deprive them of their
rights, using deceptive methods to get our way regardless of the negative
consequences on others, refusing to cooperate with others and disrupting the
order of things other people depend on.
It's quite different with people who actively pursue a goal
they believe to be good for others as well as for themselves. Some people
campaign hard to be elected to a certain office because they intend to carry out
their ideas for improving things for everybody. This is the love of ruling over
others for the sake of their benefit. It is a good love.
Learning theistic psychology gives people self-witnessing
skills for critically examining the loves that motivate their daily activities
and to use other loves to realign the love hierarchy in their personality, thus
reducing the rank of the ruling love, replacing it eventually with their
positive counterparts. It is well known that personality makeovers are difficult
to achieve successfully. We make many new year's resolutions about diet,
exercise, addiction, anger, responsibility, compassion, but few of these are
carried out. It is common for therapists, counselors, and self-help books today
to say that people have no willpower or that willpower is not consistent and
therefore you cannot depend on it. Instead you are to use systematic
self-modification techniques. This explanation is inconsistent since it takes
willpower to follow the instructions involved in all systematic
self-modification, such as being motivated to keep notes, being motivated to
proceed in small steps, being motivated to persist despite temptations and
habits, being motivated to talk about their efforts to the counselor, and so on.
What doe sit mean to be motivated? It means willpower. So it doesn't make
rational sense to say that we have no willpower!
Instead we need to point out that resolutions are only a
momentary motivational state that is replaced by stronger motivational states
that are opposed to the resolution. For instance, we can be motivated to start a
diet on January 2, but by January 12, the motive has fizzled into the
background, replaced by the motive to satisfy you cravings. In both cases you
have to use your willpower. First you use your willpower from January 2 to
January 12 to stick to the diet. Then you use your willpower to dethrone that
love and to pursue another love, which is your craving for certain foods.
Willpower is just another word for motivation.
The real problem therefore is how do we maintain a particular
state of motivation or willpower?
First note that motivation or willpower is directional or
goal-directed. If we crave ice cream or avocado cheeseburgers, we have the
constant motivational state of wanting to think about it even when we are not
eating. The willpower or love for these particular foods provides directional
energy for our thinking and planning. We make sure in advance that we carry
money, that we are in the location where we can get these foods, or stash them
at home where we can get to them. These preparations take motivation and
willpower to carry out consistently and successfully. The fact that we get to be
overweight is proof that our willpower is powerful indeed.
Exactly the same effective process must be used to overcome
the motivation or willpower to satisfy our cravings. Willpower overcomes
willpower, or, one motivation or love can overcome another motivation or love.
The key to personality makeovers is therefore the use of willpower judiciously
and with understanding. Techniques for increasing our efficiency in exercising
willpower will be reviewed in the Section on Character
Reformation.
6.7 Love of Ruling Over Others for the
Sake of Others
Swedenborg reports that all heavenly societies have a public
order and a form of government suitable to the character and orientation of the
people. Human beings cannot be happy unless they do something they have an
interest in. The effort of the work we enjoy keeps us happy. We would not be
happy if we were spirits floating in clouds singing praises to God all day and
forever. To be happy human beings need others around, they need a city where
they can have a house next to neighbors, they need a daily work occupation or
activity that involves being useful to others in some way. Nothing makes us
happier in heaven than to use our own traits and skills to enrich the lives of
others we love and feel close to, or others who need that help. These patterns
of loves and happinesses are built in from birth and stay to eternity.
It's a sharp contrast with the people living in the hell of
their mind. They have been separated from all altruistic traits and loves at
their second death. Now they have immersed themselves in the selfish loves and
their happiness depends on being able to satisfy those loves, which are called
"lusts and cupidities" in the Writings, to distinguish them from the good loves
in the heavens. There are two ways we experience lust and cupidities when we
sink to the bottom of our mind. One is by torturing, abusing, or manipulating
others who appear in our hell. The second way is by being associated with the
spiritual bodies of those who still live on earth. When they are in this state
of contact or communication we are not aware of their presence but we are aware
of the lusts and cupidities they are enjoying. We then have the illusion that
these are our own feelings. The evil spirit's enjoyment of something bad is felt
by us as our own enjoyment.
God uses these vertical community contacts in a systematic
and rational way to help us to become aware of our ruling loves. For instance,
you see someone at work being ridiculed and made fun of by someone else. We
laugh and enjoy it. This enjoyment is the lust of the evil spirits in contact
with us. Every society of hell has its own version of lust they enjoy more than
others. The hells are specialized communities of lust where people sharing
similar lusts appear in each other's hell. God gives us the experience of these
lusts along with a conscience that is activated to oppose the lust. This double
process functions to increase our self-knowledge and to set us up for the
occasion where we can voluntarily reject the enjoyment of lust as unworthy of
our character, or the character we want to develop in ourselves, such as
altruism, compassion, fair mindedness, the desire to protect the innocent and
the public good.
The love of ruling over others for the sake of others is part
of altruism and our heaven. Those who rule over others in the heavenly
governments are placed in that position because they have certain virtues,
skills, and understandings by which they can be useful to their societies.
Swedenborg visited the homes of several heavenly "Princes" as the governors are
called there. Their inhabitations appeared more magnificent than the others, and
their clothes appeared more sumptuous or complex. Yet they were imbued only by
the desire to serve and recoiled with horror at the suggestion that they enjoyed
these honors for the sake of themselves.
6.8 Sexuality: Love
of the Sex vs. Love of One of the Sex
Sexuality is a key issue in most people's lives and is an important topic in any
society. For example, in the number one word in frequency that millions of
people are looking up every day on the Web is "sex." If you type in sex in the
top ranked Web search engine, www.google.com
, you get an astonishing 250 million registered Web pages. The word "God"
receives 61 million hits, which is pretty impressive to me, compared to "food"
which receives 100 million hits. Just to get a real contrast the word
"psychology" receives 14 million hits, the word "mother" receives 38 million,
and "money is listed on 106 million Web site. "Patriotism" has less then one
million, and "morality" has over 2 million. "Rationality" has about half of one
million and "Swedenborg" receives a little over 100,000 hits.
Why does the topic of sex arouse so much passionate interest everywhere? The
topical frequency of occurrence measure reflects the mental frequency of
occurrence. A hot issue in society is a hot issue in the minds of the majority
of people in a community or nation. The hot issue in our mind about sex is
caused by the love of the sex that is built into the affective organ of every
mind, a different way for males than for females. Scientific revelations in the
Writings about human sexuality are both fascinating and tremendously useful to
society and to individuals.
Theistic psychology distinguishes two forms of sexuality, one heavenly the other
hellish. This may sound intolerant and bigoted from the perspective of today's
diversified attitudes toward sexual behavior, but when you examine it within the
positive bias perspective, it will be seen that this account is both rational
and objective, not judgmental. At the level of religion, the basis for
prohibited sex is dogma or doctrine based on the literal meaning of Sacred
Scripture. But when you reconstruct the scientific sense of Sacred Scripture
there emerges the universal principle that everything in the human mind, without
exception, originates either from heaven or hell. Within this context, saying
that every sexual behavior and quality originates either from hell or heaven, is
not dogmatic or prudish, but objective and rational. Sexuality follows the same
universal principles as do all human behavior characteristics.
Now we need to discover what features of sexuality are from hell and what from
heaven. Again, it will be seen that only objective criteria are used, not
judgmental or dogmatic. Since hell and heaven are both in every person's mind,
our sexuality originates in our own mind. But we would not be able to have any
sexuality without "influx" from the vertical community (see Section xx). Every
hellish trait and every heavenly trait in our mind is similarly dependent on
influx. Since the spiritual world = the mental world (see Section xx), all human
traits, both hellish and heavenly, are shared in common by the human race. The
sexuality of one individual is nevertheless unique because every person adapts
the pool of pan-human traits to oneself in a unique way.
During character reformation, or spiritual development, we must investigate our
traits and decide with each if it is hellish or heavenly, then reject the one
and accept the other. In this manner we take progressive steps toward our
regeneration, which refers to the preparation of a conscious character that can
live in heaven to eternity. The trait of sexuality also needs to be examined in
ourselves, a task that lasts a lifetime on earth. The following diagram can be
helpful in distinguishing between heavenly traits of sexuality and hellish.
Sexual behavior and attitude are closely linked to selfishness and altruism.
The Writings tell us that the hellish aspects of sexuality are activated by a
ranking built-in and inherited motive called the "love of the sex," while the
heavenly aspects of sexuality are activated by a ranking built-in and inherited
motive called the "love of one of the sex." Be sure to carefully contrast these
two expressions. I had to look at them many times before they stopped looking
similar:
the love of the sex (hellish) vs. the love of one of the sex
(heavenly)
To understand the precise difference we need to focus on "sex" vs. "one." To
love sex is to love the activity, while to love one of the sex, is to love a
person sexually. Quite a difference!
The love of the sex is a mental operation in the affective organ of the
corporeal
mind, the lowest part of the natural mind which we also share with animals. The
love of the sex by humans is very similar to the love of the sex by animals.
Atheistic biology and medicine view all sex in these terms. But theistic
psychology cannot view all of sexuality at those limited levels of the mind,
since the operations of the affective organ are ranked in a hierarchy of
distinct degrees--natural, spiritual, and celestial. In the lowest portion of
the natural mind sexuality is indiscriminate, non-exclusive, and temporary
because it is determined by the love of the sex, which is the love of sex
regardless of situation or condition. The attitude behind the love of the sex is
exploitative because it is tied to the love of self and the world for the sake
of self and the world. There is no love of others for the sake of others--which
may be called altruistic sex.
The selfish sex of a husband is a sensorimotor coupling with his wife but it is
not conjunctive. It is a natural-sensuous experience for him and does not go
deeper than his physical pleasure. This kind of sexual activity by a husband is
indiscriminate, promiscuous, pornographic, and unchaste. It is not personal with
his wife. Sex therapists in atheistic psychology prescribe or approve of
fantasizing being with someone else while making love to one's spouse. Some even
recommend pornographic videos to stimulate and "revitalize" the passion of the
married couple for each other. This kind of therapy or advice ignores the
internal-spiritual consequences of approving non-exclusive sex thoughts.
The unity model of marriage leads the partners into a spiritual-sensual
sexuality which is modeled after the celestial marriage they are going to enjoy
together in heaven in eternity. The delights and pleasures of conjugial love are
immeasurably greater and more passionate than the pleasures of natural-sensuous
sexuality. Swedenborg conversed about this with both husbands and wives in the
heavens and it is they themselves who reported this wonderful intensity of
their sexuality. This is not something Swedenborg invented or theorized about.
It is noteworthy that Swedenborg was never married in this life, yet he was
commissioned by Divine-Human to write the scientific revelations of sexuality in
the book of the Writings called Conjugial Love (1768). I speculate that
the reason Swedenborg didn't get to get married on earth was brought about
Providentially so that he could report on the subject of marriage without
personal subjective experience of it in this world. He was led in this way to
rely exclusively on his objective observations of married couples in the
spiritual world and on their own self-witnessing reports of their feelings and
thoughts.
In the spiritual-sensuous portion of our mind, sexuality is entirely different
from that in our natural-sensuous mind.. At the spiritual
level of rational consciousness sexuality consists of the love of one of the
sex and is closely tied to the love of others for the sake of others. The love
of one of the sex in the affective organs of the spiritual and celestial mind is
exclusive, monogamous, and eternal. It builds and solidifies unity between
husband and wife so that externally they appear as one individual. The love of one of the sex cannot operate
below the spiritual and celestial levels. This spiritual sexuality can be
acquired by elevating one's rational consciousness by means of Sacred Scripture.
But there is an important difference between the religious and the scientific
levels of thinking about it. Religion specifies what sexual behaviors are
permissible and which ones are prohibited. For instance, virginity, monogamy and
fidelity in marriage are presented as Commandments of God that must be obeyed at
the risk of displeasing God or going to hell. This is strongly motivating though it becomes
less powerful if we reject heaven and hell, as so many people do when they are not
offered scientific proof of their existence.
In theistic psychology heaven and hell are given a scientific status and
rational description. Therefore it becomes more difficult to merely reject or
dismiss the religious prohibitions against the love of the sex. As we elevate our mind above the literal meaning
of Sacred Scripture to theistic science, we discover the scientific details with
which we can assess our own sexuality. This gives the opportunity to choose
objectively in freedom by means of rational understanding. This is the spiritual
level of understanding sexuality. We can understand rationally that there are
two intense and passionate forms of sex we can have. One is natural-sensuous,
the other is spiritual sensuous. The natural-sensuous sex we have is
non-exclusive and feels good with many, not just with one person. The
spiritual-sensuous sex we have is exclusive and feels good with only one chosen
person. All thoughts, fantasies, and desires for other partners in sex are seen
as threats to our monogamous and exclusive sexual relation.
In movies and novels this theme is often reflected contrastively with men and
women, men being shown as promiscuous and unchaste, while their girlfriends or
wives are chaste and exclusive. Often the women are portrayed as feeling jealous
and threatened when the man shows a sexual interest in others. It is known
therefore that women love monogamy and exclusivity in sex while men do not love
that, and have to force themselves to be faithful in act or thought. Eventually
the men also love exclusivity in sex when they begin to bond internally with
their wife. Even then the husbands may feel attraction and excitement of the
non-exclusive type of the love of the sex. The Writings advise and warn that
husbands should be very careful to reject these natural-sensuous thoughts and
desires when they occur. It's not their occurrence that should be addressed
(over which we may have no control), but the rejection of them when they occur
in our mind. If we do not actively and explicitly reject them in our mind, we
are allowing them in, and since they are pleasurable and delightful, we love
them, and the loves we accept we can never give up.
Quoting from the Writings:
Love of the sex is love towards many of the sex and with many; but conjugial
love is love towards one of the sex and with one. Love towards many and with
many is a natural love, for man has it in common with beasts and birds, and
these are natural; but conjugial love is a spiritual love and peculiar and
proper to humans, because humans were created and are therefore born to become
spiritual. Therefore, so far as we become spiritual, we put off love of the
sex and put on conjugial love. In the beginning of marriage, love of the sex
appears as if conjoined with conjugial love; but in the progress of marriage,
they are separated, and then, with those who are spiritual, love of the sex is
expelled and conjugial love insinuated, while with those who are natural, the
opposite is the case. From what has now been said, it is evident that love of
the sex, being a love shared with many and in itself natural, yea, animal, is
impure and unchaste; and being a roving and unlimited love, is scortatory; but
it is wholly otherwise with conjugial love. (CL 48).
Note that the love of one of the sex is called "conjugial love." Non-exclusive
sexual relationships are referred to here as "love towards many and with many,"
and is called a "natural love." Animals have this love and so do we--in our
natural mind. But higher up we have a spiritual love which animals do not have.
Everything spiritual is based on rational consciousness which animals cannot
possess, not having the mental physiology for it.
We become spiritual to the extent that we think rationally and abandon non-exclusive sexual
relationships in favor of conjugial love. This makes sense since love of the sex
keeps our consciousness in the natural mind where that affection operates. To
raise our consciousness to the spiritual-rational level we must commit ourselves
to conjugial love which is a love operating in our spiritual-natural mind, hence
above the natural as heavenly things are above earthly things.
Note also that at the beginning of marriage we have the love of sex, but as we
progress in spiritual-rational development, the natural love of sex in our mind is transformed into the
spiritual love of one of the sex, or conjugial love. External marriages that do not have a
spiritual dimension remain natural, but if a spiritual dimension develops, the
natural love of sex is extinguished and conjugial love takes its place. This
elevates our mind to the spiritual and celestial levels of operation. The love
of sex is also called "roaming" because it is non-exclusive. For instance,
husbands who are into pornographic entertainment remain in a natural love
towards their wife because they are maintaining their sexuality as promiscuous
or non-exclusive.
It doesn't matter if they do not have physical sex with other women. If they
desire it and enjoy the idea of it, accepting it as permissible, they are immersing their
consciousness in a natural-sensuous and corporeal animal love. It is the same with husbands who fantasize having sex with another woman
while they are having sex with their wife. And it is the same when they are
having "phone sex" or "email sex" with others.
It is important to understand rationally what are the consequences of remaining
in a natural state of sexuality and not progressing to a spiritual love of one's
spouse.
Quoting from Conjugial Love 48:
THAT AFTER DEATH, TWO MARRIED PARTNERS, FOR THE MOST PART, MEET, RECOGNIZE
EACH OTHER, [AGAIN] CONSOCIATE, AND FOR SOME TIME LIVE TOGETHER; WHICH TAKES
PLACE IN THE FIRST STATE, THAT IS, WHILE THEY ARE IN EXTERNALS AS IN THE
WORLD. There are two states through which we pass after death, an external
and an internal. We come first into our external state and afterwards into
our internal. If both married partners have died, then, while in the external
state, the one meets and recognizes the other, and if they have lived together
in the world, they again consociate and for some time live together. When in
this state, neither of them knows the inclination of the one to the other,
this being concealed in their internals; but afterwards, when they come into
their internal state, the inclination manifests itself, and if this is
concordant and sympathetic, they continue their conjugial life, but if
discordant and antipathetic, they dissolve it. (CL 48)
Swedenborg was able to observe that when married partners have both passed on
they meet in the world of spirits and live again together in their external
state, which means in the natural state in which they lived on earth. During
this initial encounter neither of the two partners are aware of how they feel
toward one another in their "interior" mind. They seem to get along and like
each other on the surface, but deep down they may feel the opposite. The deeper
feelings were hidden from their conscious awareness on earth, yet they were there, as
shown by the fact that at times they did not get along, had fights, and
expressed dislike and even hatred of one another. After awhile, the two partners
are separated from their external feelings and they become conscious of their
deeper or interior feelings. Now if these deeper feelings for one another are
positive, they continue to live together forever, but if the deeper feelings are
negative, they now separate and go their own way.
What happens now to those who have harbored desires for other partners that
they kept from coming to the surface? They now come out in their most intense
form and one feels irresistibly drawn to others and away from the spouse. The
married partners now find themselves separated from each other. It is the end of
their marriage. But it is different with those who rejected their non-exclusive
desires when they occurred throughout the marriage on earth. The unchaste
desires were not suppressed and hidden from view or expression. They were judged
as inappropriate and dangerous, even if delightful, like a hungry person who
rejects a tasty meal knowing that the dish is poisoned. When this mental
rejection is performed consistently and honestly throughout marriage on earth,
we are liberated from the love of non-exclusive sex and enjoy the far greater
pleasures and delights of conjugial sex. When we meet our conjugial partner in
the other life we are able to enter heaven together and abide there forever.
When married partners who first meet in the world of spirits discover that
they are internally unsuitable for each other, they separate and then each meets another
person with whom they can develop a conjugial love relationship, at which point,
they enter heaven. Or, one may enter heaven while the other enters hell, or both
can enter hell. In hell there are no conjugial love relationships because this
requires a rational consciousness that is spiritual or celestial. In the hells
of our mind we are corporeal-sensuous and irrational, hence we cannot
experience a rational love. Those in hell are compelled to live in a state of
"concubinage" or "infernal marriage" with someone there whom they hate and
despise. Definitely something that we would want to avoid, especially since, as
Swedenborg observed, those in hell have absolutely no more any love of sex. The
men loathe marriage and the idea of sex with the wife makes them violently
nauseous. Some women in hell called "sirens" acquire the ability to make
themselves look beautiful, virginal, and chaste. They set traps for men in hell
who try to satisfy their never-ending lust for various types of sexual
perversions or "degrees of degeneracy"--fantasies having to do with "deflowering
virgins" and then abandoning them; or, seducing another man's wife; and many
other weird things.
Here is a brief passage showing the controlled and experimental character of
Swedenborg's reports on the spiritual world. On this occasion he wanted to
find out if there are men who are only interested in sex when they can seduce
someone else's wife. A sample of men were brought to Swedenborg by his angel
guides who were people from the highest portion of their mind called the third
heaven and thus possessed super-powers relative to those who were lower in their
mind. This is an amazing characteristic of the spiritual-mental world of
rational ether (see Section xx). I underlined the phrase that shows the
experimental condition used on this occasion.
To this I shall add some facts from the spiritual world which are worth
relating.
I heard there that some married men have a lust for promiscuity with
inexperienced women or virgins, some for experienced women or whores; some for
married women or wives; some for such women of noble families, and some for
women of the lower classes. I have been convinced in that world of the truth
of this by numerous examples from various kingdoms .
When I thought about the variety of such lusts, I asked whether there were
men who seek all their pleasure with other men's wives and none with unmarried
women. So to prove to me that there were, a number were brought to me from a
certain kingdom, who were compelled to speak as their lustful nature
dictated. These said that their sole pleasure and joy had been, and still
was, to misbehave with other men's wives. They said that they picked out the
beautiful ones for themselves, and hired them for as high a fee as their
wealth allowed. For the most part they agreed the fee with the women alone.
I asked why they did not hire unmarried women. They said that this was too
common for them, being inherently worthless and devoid of any pleasure. I
asked again whether these wives afterwards went back to their husbands and
lived with them. They replied that they either did not, or did so coldly,
since they had become promiscuous.
I then asked them very seriously whether they had ever considered, or were
now considering, that this was double adultery, since they did it while
themselves married; and that such adultery robbed a person of all spiritual
good. This caused many of those present to laugh, and they said, 'What is
spiritual good?'
But I insisted and said, 'What is more detestable than to mix one's own
soul in a wife with her husband's soul? Don't you know that a man's soul is in
his semen?' At this they turned away and murmured, 'What harm does it do
there?' At last I said, 'Although you are not afraid of God's laws, are you
not afraid of the civil law?' 'No,' they answered, 'only of some of the
clergy, but we keep this from them; and if we cannot, we keep on good terms
with them.' Afterwards I saw them divided into groups, some of which were
thrown into hell (CL 483):
The above experiment is a case of forced self-witnessing out loud. Here on
earth today, the lie-detector is used by some companies and institutions when
investigating personnel issues. The instrument makes physiological measurements
of an individual's skin conductance (perspiration) and blood pressure, both
being viewed as indicators of emotional reactions. The questions are phrased
slowly and in different ways, relating the person to some act (e.g., "Did you
know it was broken?" "Did he speak to you?"). GSR readings and blood pressure
changes are recorded and later analyzed. A conclusion is then reached as to
whether the individual was lying, not lying, or that one cannot tell from the
results. The angelic guides who were assisting Swedenborg had a more effective
technique available to them--they compelled them to answer as they think, making
it impossible for them to say the opposite of the truth.
In the above passage Swedenborg portrays himself as indignant at their
callous attitude. Swedenborg reminds them graphically that sexual intercourse
with another man's wife mixes their semen with her husband's semen. But they
obviously fail to be shocked at this image: "What harm does it do there?"
Swedenborg was confronting them with the fact that they were flouting "God's
law" because "a man's soul is in his semen." This is explained in other
places, namely that the semen carries not only the father's DNA but also a
complete copy of his soul, which is a spiritual organ that receives the impulse
of life and therefrom animates the body's physiology. In this soul are contained
all the loves of the father, those that he himself inherited and those that he
himself contributed. These inherited loves are both evil and good. They will all
strive to come out into the mind and behavior of the offspring. They are visible
or measurable in terms of innate capacities, impulsive tendencies, various
weaknesses, and strong preferences.
The physical act of sexual intercourse is itself only a representative or an
effect of a mental-spiritual act. This mental act is defined as contrary to
"God's laws." The men in the passage above can only focus on the physical semen
and see no consequences in having the semen of several men in a woman's vagina,
like a prostitute who doesn't wash herself every time. Apart from the fact that
sexually transmitted physical diseases come in this way, one must also consider
the disorderly intentions and motives that cause the act, because these are
spiritual events that have their consequences. Even if no immediate physical
harm comes from seducing another's man's wife, there is spiritual harm to the
mental organs of the man and woman. This spiritual harm is the result of
intending against God's laws of spiritual order. There are built in and
inevitable spiritual consequences to every disorderly mental act. Any mental act
that is contrary to God's laws is a disorderly act. One of the items I hear on
the news today is a new survey that shows that 40 percent of Americans say they
have tried a "sex toy." This would be funny were it not so pathetic. It shows
the impossibility of satisfying "roaming" love of sex. The biggest money maker
ever for U.S. pharmaceutical companies is Viagra, a drug prescribed for
men who can't have an erection at the appropriate time and women who lack
"libido."
The limited clinical use of sex drugs is understandable but the use of it for
the majority of physically normal men is an indication that the love of
non-exclusive sex and pornography leads to mental impotence. The "roving" love
of sex with many partners is a four-stage process. The first stage is that of
being sexually active with multiple partners, physically, mentally, or both. The
second stage is temporary loss of sexual interest. The third stage is resumption
of roving and looking for other partners. This process recycles for some years,
then it ends with the final stage: loss of interest in all sex, at first, and
later, hatred of all sex.
These built in consequences and mechanisms must be understood rationally, or
else one begins to question what is disorderly. If it's just some moral or
religious dogma, I can skip it, but if it's a scientific physiological
consequence, I better pay attention. At the end of the passage above we get an
image of what these consequences are: "Afterwards I saw them divided into
groups, some of which were thrown into hell." To be thrown into hell means, as
explained elsewhere in the Writings, that they appear to throw themselves into
hell out of anticipation and lust for the disorderly things they can do there.
But they are certainly not counting on the fact that after a little time of
wanton abandon and delights, their mental state changes to an endless cycle of
emotions they hate--being deprived of their lusts, being persecuted and haunted
by others there whom they cannot escape, and taking turns torturing each other
endlessly.
Let's get back to the earlier passage discussed above regarding married
partners who meet in the world of spirits. Continuing with that passage:
If a man has had several wives, he conjoins himself with them in turn while
in the external state; but when he enters the internal state, in which he
perceives the nature of the inclinations of his love, he either takes one or
leaves them all; for in the spiritual world as in the natural, no Christian is
allowed to take more than one wife because this infests and profanes religion.
The like happens with a woman who has had several husbands; women, however, do
not adjoin themselves to their husbands but only present themselves, and their
husbands adjoin them to themselves. It must be known that husbands rarely know
their wives, but wives readily know their husbands. The reason is because
women have an interior perception of love, and men only an exterior
perception. (CL 48)
It's revealing to discover that husbands "rarely know their wives"
when they meet up in the
world of spirits, while wives recognize their husbands. This comes about because
of a fundamental physiological difference in love between men and women. Men
have an "exterior perception" of love while women have an "interior perception."
Wives monitor the feelings of their husbands at a more interior level than
husbands themselves are aware of their own loves. A man might say that he loves
this or that, but his wife knows what he really loves or hates.
Continuing with the Number:
BUT THAT SUCCESSIVELY, AS THEY PUT OFF THEIR EXTERNALS AND COME INTO THEIR
INTERNALS, THEY PERCEIVE THE NATURE OF THE LOVE AND INCLINATION WHICH THEY HAD
FOR EACH OTHER, AND HENCE WHETHER THEY CAN LIVE TOGETHER OR NOT. This need not
be further explained since it follows from what has been set forth in the
preceding article. Here it shall only be shown how, after death, a man puts
off his externals and puts on his internals.
After death, every one is first introduced into the world which is called
the world of spirits--which is in the middle between heaven and hell--and is
there prepared, the good for heaven and the evil for hell. This preparation
has for its end, that the internal and external may be concordant and make a
one, and not be discordant and make two.
Here you can see that whether a man and a woman stay together to eternity is a matter
of spiritual physiology and compatibility, just like antibodies act on other
cells of the body to reject or accept. It's not a matter of subjective or
arbitrary preference but is the inevitable consequence of the structure of the
mind that each has formed for themselves while living on earth. What's
remarkable is that there are two levels of structure, external and internal,
and many people are not aware of their own inner structure. For instance, they
are aware that they like this or that activity or experience, and desire to
repeat it over and over, yet they are not aware of the interior feelings and
delights that actually control the external likes and choices.
Think of the iceberg analogy here: We can see the external structure of the
mountain of ice floating on the ocean, but we do not know how large the
structure is below the surface, or what is its shape. Yet what is below the
surface is far more important in determining the consequences. For instance,
if a ship collides with the iceberg, whether it survives or not depends on the
size of the iceberg below the surface. And other consequences that one can
describe. In the same way the consequences of our inner feelings and motives,
which we cannot see, are far more important for our future--whether we go to
heaven or hell, whether we stay together or not, and other consequences that
follow from these.
From the passage above (and others relating to it in the Writings),
you can also see that there are two phases we go through after the process of
resuscitation from the death of the physical body, normally a matter of a few
hours. The first phase is the awakening to our conscious awareness in the
world of spirits. We are then in the external portion of our natural mind, or
personality and memory. We recall our life on earth just like when we are
awakened from surgery and after a few moments of confusion, we are back in the
saddle of our life. Our memories and knowledge of this life is what our
consciousness is immersed in during this first phase of the afterlife. We know
our identity and relationships, often meeting up with friends and family that
preceded us in the afterlife. If our spouse or significant other has preceded
us, we meet up and even live together intimately for awhile. In our spiritual
body we can perform the same activities as we are used to, and the
sensations and delights are far stronger and purer than what we had in the
physical body. These observations were made by Swedenborg with large samples
of people he was able to observe from the moment they were resuscitated to
their final dwelling place in heaven or hell.
Then we become aware of a change that is taking place with us. Inner
feelings we were only dimly aware of, now begin irresistibly to come out of
us. We are surprised but also delighted. The deeper the feeling that comes out
into conscious awareness, the more intense the delight we experience and the
freer we feel. The freedom we felt in our external loves and motives now
appear to us as partial and very limited. We would never want to go back into
such restricted mental spaces, like a genii out of the bottle. Along with
these powerful new feelings and enjoyments comes a change in our appearance
and environment. Our former friends no longer recognize us and we seem to be
encountering all sorts of new people that are exciting and lead us further and
deeper into the unfolding of our inner character. These experiences are
carefully timed, arranged, and presented individual by the Divine-Human, regardless of whether the individual recognizes God's existence or not.
This is the process of the "second death" which refers to the quieting down
and laying aside the external personality we had on earth. The process varies
in extensiveness depending on how aware the or unaware the individual is of
their inner character and what loves and motives are entrenched there. Love is
what produces freedom, according to the Writings. Freedom is the feeling we
have when we act out our love, both in thinking and in sensing and doing. If
anything inhibits the acting out of our love, we feel unfree and unhappy. Our
delight and enjoyment of life is gone when we are prevented from acting out
our love. While we were on earth there were external reasons and forces
restricting us from acting out many of our loves. We didn't like that, and it
often made us depressed or resentful, even rebellious and destructive.
Forces that prevent us from acting our loves here on earth include
fear, disapproval, punishment, guilt, embarrassment, shyness, lack of suitable
partners, etc. These are external natural conditions that have no power in the
world of spirits. In that state of mind we do what we please. We go where we
want because it is our desires and motives that bring us to the places and
people we are interested in. Those who would disapprove or punish cannot be
around us because we choose to exclude them and there is nothing they can do
about it. There is no government, police, or prison since the walls would
crumble immediately you have the desire to exit. Your environment is produced
by the feelings and thoughts you have, not by the physical constraints around
your body.
The coming out of your inner loves is therefore an inevitable process for
every individual who has been resuscitated. Whether it seems to us like a few
hours, days, or months, the process comes to an end when all of our external
motives and loves have been shut down, and we are fully immersed in our inner
loves and character. Now at last you can know for sure who you are and what
you are. If you discover yourself to be a devil, you are led to where devils
are in their mind, and together you form a spiritual or mental community. The
thoughts and feelings each individual has in such a community now determines
the appearance or environment of the dwelling place. Swedenborg saw the
dwelling places or mental envir