A Brief History of God and Humanity

God as He is in Himself is the Infinite Life having no beginning, in whom infinite uncreate things make one consciousness, from whom radiates, as from a Spiritual Sun, love substance united to truth substance, that is, spiritual heat united to spiritual light.

God as He is outside of Himself has a beginning with the act of creation. Spiritual heat and light radiate downward and outside of God as He is in Himself. These two substances provide the infrastructure for creation. God is omnipresent, or present in all created things, as their infrastructure constructed out of spiritual heat substance (love, good) and spiritual light substance (truth, rationality).

At the first level of creation, good substance (or spiritual heat) and truth substance (or spiritual light) make up the mental world of eternity, layering it in three discrete degrees called the celestial-rational degree of the mind, the spiritual-rational degree of the mind, and the spiritual-natural degree of the mind. All discrete degrees are connected by the laws of correspondences which are cause-effect relations between events in the upper layer and those in the lower layer.

At each of the three degrees or layers, there are created three mental organs: (i) the affective organ for the reception of spiritual heat, which then exists in the human mind as goods, loves, virtues; (ii) the cognitive organ for the reception of spiritual light, which then exists as truth, intelligence, rationality; (iii) the sensorimotor organ for the ultimation of the united affective and cognitive organs acting as one.

At the second level of creation, a new discrete layer is created downward and outside and is called the natural mind (or the world of spirits). It has three discrete sub-layers called the natural-rational mind, the natural-sensuous mind, and the natural-corporeal mind.

At the third level of creation, a new layer is created downward and outside and is called the natural world (or physical universe) that contains time, matter, and place.

At birth, every human being is made up of two portions. The first portion is the spiritual body located in the mental world of eternity (see Step 2). The second portion is the physical body located in the natural world (see step 5). The physical body is connected by correspondence to the spiritual body until death when the connection ceases. The spiritual body then continues life in the mental world of eternity (see step 3).

Since there is only one mental world of eternity, the immortal spiritual body of every human being must co-exist with each other. An individual’s uniqueness from birth to eternity consists of the person’s unique cumulative collection of sensations, thoughts, and feelings that are accumulated every moment of life. This unique identity in eternity determines one’s life environment. Feelings and thoughts that are compatible with each other cause people to appear to each other, to be present with each other, and thus to form spiritual dwelling communities or societies. Those whose feelings are incompatible or oppositional are kept at a greater subjective or psychological distance so that communication become difficult or impossible.

Spiritual societies or collectivities create a psychological environment or intersubjectivity that is constructed out of the interactions between the individuals. Each spiritual society in eternity is distinguished by the characteristic feelings and thoughts of its inhabitants. These affective and cognitive operations produce by correspondence a sensorimotor environment of appearances that reflect the quality of the feelings and thoughts. The result is the appearance of things resembling the places and content of our natural mind, which is filled with the content of our experiences through the physical body we had on earth.

As a result, the spiritual societies made of people with feelings ordered by good and love substance in the affective organ, with corresponding thoughts ordered by truth and rationality substance in the cognitive organ, are called heavens. Their cities and habitations appear palatial, pleasant, and friendly. In contrast, the spiritual societies made of people who are distorting the inflow of spiritual heat and light in themselves, turning them into their opposites, are called hells. Their habitations appear dingy, unpleasant, and hostile.

The quality of feelings people have in eternity is determined by the choices they themselves make when they are resuscitated, which occurs approximately 30 hours after separation from the dead physical body. Upon resuscitation people in eternity become visible to each other, along with the external appearances that correspond to the quality of their feelings and thoughts. A series of experiences or happenings then lead each person to discover their primary inner feelings and affections (or ruling love). As they become aware more and more of their own deep-set feelings and intentions, their environment changes correspondingly, as they are led into a series of spiritual societies. In this way each individual is gradually led to abandon all feelings and thoughts that are not compatible with their ruling love. When the transition is completed (called the second death), the individual is fully embedded on a permanent basis in a spiritual society, which is either heavenly and receptive of spiritual heat and light, or is hellish and distorts the inflowing spiritual heat and light into its opposite.

The quality of life in eternity is therefore determined entirely by one’s ruling love or affections. These adhere to each person in the course of one’s daily feelings, thoughts, and actions while living on earth through the temporary physical body. The first few generations of people on earth received the inflow of good and truth without distortion. Their earthly environment was a paradise, and they were instructed by direct communication with their departed family members and teachers in heaven, whom they then joined upon their own death. Later generations however introduced into themselves feelings of selfishness and hostility towards others. They did this by distorting the inflow of good, love, and virtue. In this way evil was introduced into the mental world of humanity. When people with these feelings were resuscitated, their ruling love was contrary to heavenly influx, which allowed them to create the hellish habitations.

From then on with all the succeeding generations, including us today, people grew up into adults whose ruling love was hellish. Through these hellish traits people on earth made a unity with people in hell. This resulted in the deterioration of life on earth – anti-sociality, crime, wars, mental illness, unhappiness, degraded rationality and wisdom. The entire future human race was therefore in danger of becoming hellish. At that point in history, God Himself entered the natural world through the Incarnation Event. During the 33 years that God was embodied in a physical body He lived life as an ordinary citizen of a country in the Middle East, as described in the New Testament Sacred Scripture. This did not affect God’s omnipresence and omnipotence that God maintained as always. There was therefore a separation between God as He is in Himself (see step 1) and God as He is outside of Himself, and in this case, in a natural body.

While on earth with a physical body God put Himself through two distinct mental states. The first is called a state of humiliation (or exinanition) in which there was a separation. In this state the Incarnated God was called the “Son of God” rather than God. But in the

Second state, which is called a state of glorification, the Incarnated God was one with God as He is in Himself. When the Incarnated God was in a state of glorification He produced miracles, but when He was in a state of humiliation, He denied Himself the exercise of omnipotence, appearing as if He was just an ordinary man.

During His states of humiliation God connected Himself to the hells of the human race in order to create a new order for the human mind in which the hells were counterbalanced by the heavens in each individual’s mind. God could not accomplish this by retaining His omnipotence because this would have destroyed the hells, consequently the human mind and the entire race. Hence He had to incarnate and assume states of humiliation in which He limited His omnipotence, allowing the hells to attack His mind. These attacks are called temptations. By overcoming temptations with new truths He constructed, the Incarnated God created the truths that would henceforth allow every human being born on earth to also fight and defeat the hells that are inherited in the mind of every newborn. When people grow up to be adults, they are ready to face their hells through conscience and truths of Sacred Scripture.

By overcoming temptations we are able to disconnect our mind from the inherited hells. Through this we are able to hate evil traits and love heavenly traits. This will insure that at our resuscitation we will choose to retain our virtues instead of our vices.

At the completion of His task on earth, the Divine Human born in time was completely unified with Himself as God is in Himself. God now had a totally new presence in the created universe. Prior to this moment God did not have a sensuous presence in His creation. No one could see God or talk to God as person to person. Humanity did not have the ability to be with God directly, but only indirectly. Those times recorded in Sacred Scripture where God spoke to an individual, there was always an intermediary necessary, which was a role filled by people who were conscious in the celestial-rational mind, which is the highest awareness possible in the mental world of eternity. These individuals appeared to people in their natural mind so that those to whom they appeared became conscious of them, saw them, heard them, and called them “angels” of God. The person filling the role experienced the influx of God as a full possession of their mind or spirit, as perhaps in some celestial trance. As they spoke the words of God flowing into them, they subjectively felt like they are God Himself, but this ceased as soon as the influx ceased, at which moment they become conscious of themselves again.

This method of communication (called prophecy or visions) was constructed by God in order to retain historical and conscious contact with the human race prior to the Incarnation Event. But once this event was completed, the older method of prophecy and visions ceased in order to encourage a more direct access to God that He newly created through the acquisition of a visible or sensuous physical body in time. And yet no sooner than He acquired it, God took His Natural Body out of the physical world of time and into the mental world of eternity. Since then God is directly present in the mental world of humanity, at all the layers, including the lowest called the natural mind. Now God is directly present in the natural mind of humanity. Every human being living on earth in a physical body, and being conscious in a natural mind, can have direct communication, communion, or conjunction with God in His Divine Human. This was not possible before. The human race’s contact with God was indirect, but now, it was direct.

The difference is critical in evolutionary terms because God could not complete the creation of the mental world of eternity by omnipotence and indirect communication. God could not be directly present in the mind of any human being until the completion of the Incarnation Event. This was equally true of the people who already existed in their heavens and had been born on earth since the beginning. They too now for the first time were able to see God with their eyes and speak to Him face to face. They knew from Sacred Scripture that God was a Human Divine, but now they could see with their senses that God was a Divine Human.

People now can face their inherited hellish predispositions, turn to God the Divine Human in their conscious natural mind, and ask for the power to overcome each hellish trait at a time. Direct acknowledgement of God in our conscious natural mind is therefore the spiritual weapon by which we face our selfishness and desire to rule over others. This is the ruling love that controls and maintains in us the multitude of hellish traits we enjoy so much that we refuse to abandon them --- being untruthful, being cruel or uncaring, conceited, arrogant, irrational, lazy, unhealthy, biased, misguided, and so on. We enjoy being this way, which is why people don’t want to change themselves. At the same time we don’t enjoy heavenly traits and we turn away from them --- being truthful, avoiding deceit or cheating, being responsible, hard working, caring, clean, unselfish. How is it possible to change when we love what is evil and false, and hate what is good and true? If we do not change prior to resuscitation, it is certain that we will choose to let go of our heaven and to seek out our hell.

Nothing less is needed therefore than a full rebirth of our character and its gradual regeneration through into a new character that no longer contains the love for evil. This cannot be done through indirect communication with God, as in the past. It cannot be done by God’s omnipotence and control over our mind, for we would then turn into spiritual robots, not human beings. It can be done only through the direct conscious presence of God the Divine Human in our natural mind.

If God made an appearance today at the Unite Nations and addressed the planet, and then appeared in various cities around the world, He would then be present to people consciously and directly, and sensuously. Not rationally. The result would be that after some time people would deny that it was God who showed up, and if He shows up again and again, people would reject Him as not God. But if God appears to our conscious natural-rational portion of the mind (see step 4), He remains permanently and can bring us to heavenly life after resuscitation.

Direct presence of God in our conscious natural-rational mind begins when we acknowledge God the Divine Human as being omnipresent and omnipotent, and one with God as He is in Himself (see step 1). This acknowledgement must be made rationally, not sensuously, not persuasively, not by authority, not by rote memory or repetition. We must acquire for ourselves an actual living and direct relationship with God the Divine Human who is present in every mind and fills the mental world of eternity with spiritual heat (love, good) and spiritual light (truth, rationality).

Once this rational acknowledgement is made with full and clear understanding of God, we have the opportunity to form a relationship, which is done day by day, hour by hour, as we proceed with our daily round of activities. We strive to think and act in the presence of God. We must keep track or monitor the flow of our thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions, and effects on others and society. This is called self-witnessing our life. From conscience and from Sacred Scripture we have principles that allow us to judge what we feel, what we think, and what we do that affects others. Any feeling, thought, or act that is contrary to conscience or Sacred Scripture must be condemned, banished, and held in aversion as a sin against God the Divine Human who creates our heaven.

This cannot be done without struggle. We must fight as of self, but in the presence of God. We fight by thinking against the evil in ourselves that our self-witnessing reveals. One by one, feeling by feeling, thought by thought, we fight all our life every day and hour. God the Divine Human is present and does all the work of overpowering the hells and disconnecting our mind from it. After each combat and victory, God gives us a “Sabbath” rest or peace of mind like that of heaven. Then another fight begins. This goes on till the end of life here.

When we acknowledge the conscious direct presence of God the Divine Human in our natural-rational ideas of Him, we are kept in a state of freedom to choose good or evil, truth or falsified truth. Without this conscious acknowledgment of Him, God is still able to influence us indirectly and thus to help us develop morality of life through conscience and external education and socialization. This natural morality is an essential component of civilized life. But it is not sufficient to penetrate deeply enough to influence our ruling love. Although we may act morally all our life yet when we are resuscitated and shed off all external constraints of compliance and obedience, we are no longer motivated to act morally. In that case we are also unmotivated to acquire spiritual truths about heaven. We turn to our hellish traits and delight in them with like-minded companions.

But when we understand God rationally and acknowledge Him in our mind and life, we are able to face spiritual temptations through the truths that God reveals to us in Sacred Scripture and in conscience. As we then face our evil enjoyments, condemning them as a sin against God and heaven, we are then given victory by God through His omnipotence. We are able to withhold ourselves from continuing to love and repeat the evil acts, thoughts, and feelings. We then have spiritual freedom. Prior to that we have natural freedom, but not spiritual.

Theistic psychology is the science of regeneration extracted from Sacred Scripture. All Sacred Scripture is Divine Speech in correspondences. Divine Speech, which is Divine Truth (or spiritual light), flows into the celestial-rational level of the mental world. There it appears as written Sacred Scripture in the language we all speak innately when in that mental state or layer. This visible Sacred Scripture is written in celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Speech. This is the layer that humanity is wisest and is able to understand Divine rational things about good, love, truth and wisdom.

Then another version of Sacred Scripture appears in the spiritual-rational layer of the mental world. This is written in a spiritual language that we innately possess when conscious in the spiritual-rational layer of the human mind. A still different version appears in the spiritual-natural layer, and finally a still different version that appears in our natural mind here on earth as we read Sacred Scripture in one or another natural language. The four layers of Sacred Scripture exactly correspond to each other, but at successively lower levels of rationality. Theistic psychology gives us the knowledge of how to climb up this ladder of rationality with our conscious awareness. When we extract spiritual-natural correspondences and spiritual-rational correspondences form Sacred Scripture, we are in effect climbing up as to consciousness, to our natural and spiritual heavens in eternity.

There is a new medical field of research today called neuro-theology. It is based on initial research with a few subjects from different religions showing that when they are praying with intense focus, certain areas of their brain “light up” on the computer screen that shows color maps of their brain being monitored by digital imaging techniques. Hence there may be a correlation between mental activity and brain activity. Logically there ought to be a different brain activity configuration for every unique mental state.

From this correlation a few scientists and news reporters have drawn an amazing conclusion, namely, that certain people are biologically programmed or wired to be religious, to have faith, to pray, to believe in God. This would then explain why there are religions, why some people believe in God while others do not. This astonishing conclusion is illogical. A mere correlation between mental and brain activity is turned into a cause effect relation, and this in the wrong direction. Our mental activity in eternity are spiritual causes that act by correspondence on physical events, which are their effects in the physical world of time. When people are praying or meditating they are in a certain mental state.

This means that their affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor organs act jointly in correspondence with each other. For example, we may want something that God can give us (affective organ), we love and respect God (affective organ), we are motivated to ask God for that thing (affective organ), we construct sentences addressed to God (cognitive organ), we silently speak them to ourselves (sensorimotor organ). This is praying. It is a mental activity in eternity that we do through our spiritual body that contains our mental organs. This mental activity now activates specific regions in the neurons of the brain that correspond to the mental activity. Every mental activity has its own particular reflection in neural activity and pattern.

The idea of a biological predisposition to be religious is illogical because “to be religious” refers to faith and praying which are mental events while “biological predisposition” refers to physical events such as physical neurons and physical genes. The reason these scientists and news reporters fail to see the illogic is that they consider faith and God to be physical like neurons and genes. This negative bias in science is called materialism. This is called a negative bias in science because it is accepted and enforced even though it cannot be proven. Materialism cannot be proven, hence to maintain it and require it is a formally accepted and practiced intellectual bias.

The other option is called the positive bias in science, as in the theistic sciences that are now being created, like theistic psychology. Since theistic psychology cannot prove dualism, it is called the positive bias in science. In this mode of thinking we are born dual citizens, with a temporary physical body in time and a permanent spiritual body in eternity. All mental events are therefore located in the mental world of eternity and these are linked by functional correspondence to the events in the physical body.

Traditionally, being religious and faith in God and an afterlife were considered outside the bounds of science. But now we have an overlap in two directions. One direction is neuro-theology and the other direction is theistic psychology. Neuro-theology is the direction of reductionism, that is, reducing mental to physical, which is the same as reducing the eternal to the temporal, and also, reducing God to a human fiction or imagination. And this after all, is biological, and hence the genes are god. One is led to such illogic by the bias of materialism.

If God is omnipresent and omnipotent why is there a hell and why do wicked people succeed in their hurtful plans against innocent people? And why does God maintain in existence things that hurt human beings, such as hurricanes, poisonous substances, or viruses and bacteria? If God is perfect then why is His creation not perfect? Or is it?

Yes, God maintains what He created in a perfect order that is designed to create a heaven in eternity out of the human race and for the human race. Heaven in eternity is the upper layer of the human mind and the more individuals join that state of life in themselves, the more it is that heaven evolves into a human perfection to endless eternity. What is life in heaven like? It is not unknown. In fact nothing can be more familiar to us than our mental states. God gives each person numerous heavenly mental states in the course of our earthly life in the natural mind so that we may learn to love them. These are called heavenly "remains" because God stashes them away in places in the mind that are not conscious. thus protecting them from corruption.

Look at babies, infants and young children. Every moment they seem to experience the fullness and beauty of life in an unselfconscious way, but being totally in the wonderment of life around them. These involve feelings of wonderment, curiosity, peace, excitement, love for parents and other infants, obedience, innocence, love of learning. These are heavenly traits that we love as children and God collects them and saves them in your heaven to be. Throughout life on earth we receive such moments of heavenly impulses and loves and enjoyments. God retains every one of them and makes them available to us in our heaven, if only we choose to raise our consciousness there and be content doing that.

And so the fact that there is crime, evil, sickness, and war does not mean that these things hamper God's ability to bring the individual to a desire for heaven through cultivating a love for heavenly traits and enjoyments. This desire or love cannot be imposed by God on an individual. Every love is an individual operation. Love does not stick to you by glue or osmosis. A person's love is a subjective assimilation of spiritual heat flowing into the affective organ. If the individual does not assimilate the love from self and as-of self, it does not remain in the individual's mind but flows away. Only the enjoyment of love binds it to the person forever. Heavenly traits must be loved in order to have a heaven to go to, for heaven is in your love of good and truth from God. Without loving good and truth from God, we cannot exist in the celestial layer of our mind in eternity since that layer is constructed out of the rational love of good and truth we receive from God the Divine Human.

God allows only that kind of evil that He can use to help people learn to love heavenly traits. That is God's highest ruling love, namely, to continuously strive to help people He creates to learn to love heavenly traits, for this alone can realize God's plan of a heaven from the human race perfecting itself forever. In this perfect evolution of perfection rests boundless and endless happiness for each human being. This is God's Passion from His Divine Love and Essence.

The history of God is the history of the human mind.

For a full list of topics see the Index Volume of Theistic Psychology:

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/