Consider these results of a rage-depression survey I did on the Web in 2000.

Note: The detailed results may be accessed here --  www.drdriving.org/surveys/rage_depression.htm

The following summary of all statistically significant results is arranged in terms of the 4 spin cycle zones (see diagram above) in relation to the effect attributable to gender, age, and education. Trends that do not reach statistical significance (p<.05) are not mentioned in this analysis.

In terms of gender, more men report feeling anger, rage, or hate on a daily basis than women do--37 vs. 29 percent. In terms of age, more of the younger people (both men and women) report daily rage than older people--the percent for each succeeding age group is 40, 37, 26, and 22 percent (age groups are: 19 or less; 20 to 34; 35 to 54; 55 to 69). In terms of education, the lower the educational background (for young and old, men and women), the more they report anger, rage, or hate on a daily basis--38, 32, 29 percent for the three educational backgrounds (high school, college, graduate school). (Item 11)

About 21 percent of people--one in five, have the experience of enjoying fantasies of violence on a daily or hourly basis. Of these people, 6 percent are women and 15 percent are men. Thus, twice as many men as women enjoy fantasies of violence on a frequent and regular basis (hourly or daily). More of the younger people (men and women of all education) report enjoying fantasies of violence than older people--17, 12,   6, and  2 percent for the four successive age groups. The lower the educational background, the more people report enjoying violence fantasies on a regular basis--14, 11, 7 for the three levels of schooling. (Item 12)

The majority of men and women report feeling impatient with others on a daily or hourly basis-- 62 and 55 percent respectively, thus more of the men then the women report this. Younger people report feeling impatient with others more frequently than older people--about 64 percent (up to age thirty-four) vs. about 48 percent (thirty-five and older). The lower the educational level, the more people report feeling impatient on a daily or hourly basis--63, 59, and 54 percent for the three levels. (Item 17)

Men outnumber women in wanting to be obnoxious or rude to someone on a regular basis--hourly or daily-- almost half of all men (45 percent) vs. one in three women (36 percent). Younger people report this more than older (both men and women): 60, 48, 24, and 11 percent for each of the four age groups. Clearly, as people get older they feel less and less like being rude, obnoxious or sarcastic to someone.  More people report this who have less education: 54, 38, and  29 percent for the three education levels. (Item 20)

On a daily or hourly basis, 45 percent of women and 60 percent of men feel like calling someone stupid, dumb, or an idiot. About 60 percent of people up to age thirty-four feel this way, but only 42 percent among those thirty-five or older. Clearly, as people get older they feel less and less that others are stupid or dumb. More people (men and women of all ages) report this who have less education: 61, 52, 43 percent for the three education levels. Adding all three categories--weekly, daily, hourly, the number of people who report feeling that someone is stupid, dumb, or an idiot on a recurrent basis is 87 percent (high school background), 85 percent (college background), and 81 percent (graduate school background). In all, a majority of our population feels like calling someone an idiot at least once a week, and many feel this several times a week. In all, the vast majority of our population (between 81 and 87 percent) regularly feels like someone else is an idiot. (Item 22)

Younger people report feeling humiliated, disrespected or insulted by someone more frequently than older people-- 35, 30, 15 and 8 percent for the four age groups. Clearly, as people get older they feel less and less humiliated, disrespected or insulted by someone on a regular basis. There is no significant difference between men and women on this. More people report this who have less education: 32 ,19, and 14 percent for the three education levels. Adding all three categories--weekly, daily, hourly, the number of people who report that they have been humiliated, disrespected or insulted by someone: 62 percent (high school background), 52 percent (college background), and 48 percent (graduate school background). In all, the majority of our population regularly feels humiliated, disrespected or insulted by someone. (Item 23)

About 23 percent of men and 13 percent of women (of all ages and education levels) feel like humiliating, disrespecting or insulting someone on daily or hourly basis. Younger people are more prone to this than older: 34, 19, 9, and 4 percent for the four age groups. Clearly, as people get older they feel less and less like humiliating, disrespecting or insulting someone. More people report this who have less education: 28, 16 and 10 percent for the three educational backgrounds. Adding all three categories--weekly, daily, hourly, the number of people who report that they want to humiliate, disrespect or insult someone is: 47 percent (high school background), 35 percent (college background), and 30 percent (graduate school background). (Item 24)

About 16 percent of women feel criticized, picked on or bullied on an hourly or daily basis, while 14 percent of men, feel that way. The main difference between men and women on this item is how many say they rarely feel bullied or picked on: 55 percent of women, but 63 percent of men. Younger people report feeling criticized, picked on or bullied more frequently than older people-- 23, 16, 11, and 8 percent for the four age groups. Clearly, as people get older they feel less and less criticized, picked on or bullied. More people report this who have less education: 23, 14, and 8 percent for the three education levels. (Item 27)

Younger people report feeling like picking on or bullying someone more frequently than older people--17, 6, 4, and 2 percent for the four age groups. Clearly, as people get older they feel less and less like picking on or bullying someone. More people report this who have less education: 14, 6, and 3 percent for the three education levels. Adding all three categories--weekly, daily, hourly, the number of people who report that they feel like picking on or bullying someone is: 29 percent (high school background), 18 percent (college background), and 14 percent (graduate school background). (Item 28)

About 23 percent of women and 20 percent of men feel emotionally out of control on a daily or hourly basis. Only 46 percent of women and 57 percent of men say they rarely or never feel disturbed enough to be out of control emotionally. In other words, about half of our population feels disturbed and emotionally out of control on a recurrent basis--weekly, daily, or hourly: 54 percent of women and 47 percent of men. Younger people report feeling this way more frequently than older people--59, 55, 38, and 30 percent for the four age groups. In terms of the three educational levels, the respective percentages are 26, 20, and 19 percent respectively. (Item 31)

About 38 percent of women and 47 percent of men feel angry on a regular basis (weekly, daily or hourly) because someone tries to stop them from doing what they want. Younger people report this more frequently than older people--65, 46, 28, and 31 for the four age groups. For educational level, adding all three categories--weekly, daily, hourly, the number of people who report feeling angry because someone tries to stop them from doing what they want is: 58 percent (high school background), 39 percent (college background), and 36 percent (graduate school background). Education seems to provide somewhat of an antidote for feeling the frustration of being interfered with on a regular basis. (Item 34).

10.1.1  Negative Emotions and the Vertical Community

Whether by survey data, case histories, or self-witnessing, the evidence is clear. People are immersed all day long in a multitude of negative emotions like anger and depression. Various contributing factors are suspected such as stress, childhood abuse, failed relationships, hormonal imbalance, social conflict, immaturity, and false belief systems. Theistic psychology views these factors as correlations of each other rather than causative. All negative emotions must have their origin in the vertical community (see Section xx).

There is a general relationship between civilization on earth and the people who dwell in their hells. When we descend to the hell in our mind we use negative emotions as a vehicle for our consciousness in feelings and thoughts. Human beings on earth are maintained by God in perfect balance of choice between hell and heaven (see Section xx). But once we are resuscitated in the world of spirits this balance ceases and we are inexorably immersed in either our hell or our heaven, a process which is complete at our second death (see Section xx).

Those who are permanently immersed in either their hell or their heaven are not in balance. They are no longer in the world of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell in our mind, where balance of choice is maintained. What does it mean to descend to our hell? We do this by using the vehicle of negative emotions, also called "evil loves," "evil affections," "lusts," and cupidities. Our conscious awareness is immersed in an evil love when we appropriate as our own the evil affections of some people who are permanently in their hells. Appropriating a negative emotion means that we think that the negative emotion we are experiencing is our own. By this identification we are opening a channel of communication or influx from that hell society.

It's very important right from the outset to distinguish between non-theistic psychology and theistic psychology when the word "spirits" is used. In non-theistic psychology the concept of spirits has no status except as part of the delusions of schizophrenics who report talking to "spirits" and other "beings." In theistic psychology it is known that no one can talk to real spirits because direct communication across the two worlds has been suspended after the Fall. Spirit possessions ceased after the Incarnation event to allow for the development of rational consciousness of God (see Section xx). Swedenborg was a unique modern case but he did not talk to spirits across the two worlds--he was actually present in both worlds (see Section xx). Spiritism, psychic powers, magic, exorcisms, etc., are all activities not recognized as legitimate or real phenomena in theistic psychology (see Section xx).

Instead, theistic psychology recognizes the vertical community by influx.

Influx does not allow for direct communication. Our emotions moment by moment are caused by spirits in the vertical community with which our mind is associated in the world of spirits. Our mind is born in the world of spirits and is immortal there. Our consciousness of earth is cut off at the death of the physical body. We are immediately resuscitated in the world of spirits and continue our immortality in either heaven or hell (see Section xx). Heaven and hell are both states in our mind. Our consciousness can be in either, but not simultaneously. Swedenborg reports that once we undergo our "second death" and enter either heaven or hell in our mind, we are unwilling to exit form that state. We just go deeper and deeper into that state forever (see Section xx).

We are therefore "spirits" tied to a physical body while living on earth. Before losing this tie we are called "earthlings" ("man" in the Writings). After resuscitation, we are called spirits. After our second death, we are called angels, if we dwell in our heavenly states of mind, or devils if we dwell in the hells of our mind (also--satans, genii, demons, dragons, sirens, etc.).

The awesome discovery in theistic psychology is that while we are earthlings our mind is unconsciously under the influence of the spirits, namely all the people who have undergone their second death in the afterlife, and have reached their final destination in the heavens or hells of their mind. We have not reached our final destination since we are still on earth, but the day will come when we too join the vertical community and we will then be spirits. Hence it is important for us to know in advance what that will be like and how we can influence that final state for ourselves. The key is to do self-witnessing of our daily emotions (see Section xx). With this self-knowledge we inform ourselves of the character of the spirits to which we are associated. It is they who influence or determine what kind of emotions we have.

Those who already dwell in the heavens or hells are thrown together in community life with others who have similar loves and doctrines. Heaven and hell appear to them as cities and societies, each with their specific character or genius, arranged and sorted according to the hierarchy of their affections and intentions (see Section xx).

All this is managed by God since it is obviously pretty complicated to sort out!

God also manages the connections in the vertical community. Moment by moment we are connected and disconnected many times an hour, changing mood guards, so to speak. Our mood fluctuates in quality depending on which of these spirit communities God connects us to second by second. As we are connected with a particular spirit society we instantly experience their chief loves. Of course we attribute these feelings to ourselves since we have no perception of the influx. Only schizophrenics can claim to be aware of influx, and I do not believe that they are actually perceiving the influx, as stated in several places.

Just as we are unaware of the spirits from whom we receive influx, they are not aware who they are connected to here on earth since no communication is allowed. But they are instantly aware of the fact they are connected to earthlings and it is from this that they derive the satisfaction of their loves, either evil and weird or heavenly and orderly. Evil spirits feel alive only when they are connected to the minds of earthlings since they shut out all influx from heaven and the Spiritual Sun where all orderly influx originates from. When we are having a negative emotion or desire or intention from them--that's when they feel utmost satisfaction and excitement of life in themselves. This is how the vertical community works. It's a fascinating aspect of theistic psychology.

The vertical community exists because the human race is always fully interconnected and networked. No person can be born without inheriting personhood from the parents, and the immortality of those who are already in their afterlife depends on their remaining connected to the network of humanity. Since the Fall, the nature of influx has changed because of our inherited evil and resistance to regeneration. Prior to the Fall the human race on earth did not have a split-brain, which reflected the fact that they were celestial human being in Divine order as created. They did not have to study and learn to know whatever they needed to survive on earth. Like animals, they lived by a kind of human instinct whose origin was the vertical community of their heaven. They were thus in full conscious communication in both worlds, as was Swedenborg in the modern era.

Eventually however, the subsequent generations of these celestial people on earth corrupted themselves by trying to use their spiritual knowledge and consciousness to pursue selfish and anti-social purposes. As a result that race died out. A few of the remnants underwent anatomical evolution leading up to the birth of the present human race which I call the "split-brain race" to indicate the evolution from a whole brain to a split brain--left and right.

The mental capacities of the new race were very different. The Writings uses the expression "spiritual race" to distinguish us from the original "celestial race." The methods needed for our regeneration were entirely different. The split brain is a physical consequence of a spiritual cause, which was that the mind's two organs--affective and cognitive--be separated so that they could work independently to some extent. The celestial race were straightforward--whatever they desired or intended, that they also thought and expressed in outward behavior. They were incapable of lying, simulating, or of hypocrisy and deception of any kind. The spiritual split-brain race on the other hand had the will (affective organ) and understanding (cognitive organ) separated so that we can easily simulate, lie, and deceive. We can put on a show of ourselves and hide our true feelings and thoughts. We can thus be split human beings--angels on the outside and devils on the inside.

The purpose of separating the affective and cognitive organs was to allow for the regeneration of the affective organ which was corrupted. Every individual of the spiritual split-brain race is born with a corrupted or disorderly affective organ from inheritance. The issue now became that of how God can give us the ability to reach the heavenly portion of our mind and dwell there in our immortality. This was not an issue for the celestial race--until the Fall, which refers to the corrupted state of the affective organ. Now God had to create or initiate a new method for the spiritual race. This new method was not fully in place until the Incarnation event, when God caused Himself to enter the natural plane of life in the form of the Divine Child who then grew up on earth (see Section xx). During this process the Incarnate Divine Human was able to create the mental pathways that the spiritual human race can use for character reformation and regeneration of the affective organ for heavenly life.

The vertical community plays a crucial role in this method of regeneration. God has made Himself to be a Divine Psychologist to every individual without exception and uses all sorts of psychological  techniques to rebuild our love hierarchies. The principal method God uses for our regeneration is putting us into specific experiences in which we are tempted to follow our inherited loves while at the same time we are aware that they violate the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. God had to give the spiritual human race a written form of Divine Speech called Sacred Scripture in a natural language in order to allow us to extract from it the doctrine of truth by which we can make ourselves follow the right thing instead of the evil thing. We are thus regenerated gradually over many years during which we are faced with daily temptations, battles and victories.

Our Divine Psychologist uses the vertical community to give us the experiences of temptation battles and victories. The function of temptations is to bring evil loves we have into our conscious awareness, from where we can judge them by means of our doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. We thus use our rational consciousness to counteract and resist our sensuous consciousness from the inherited affective organ. The instant we are willing to reject an evil love or intention, God cuts the connection with the particular spirits that sustain that specific evil. Too bad for them, for now they have one less earthling to seduce and instigate. But they can continue to live their hell with other earthlings who have not yet been cut off from them.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

TCR 613. each evil in the person has a link with those in hell who have the same evil, and on the other hand each good in the person has a link with those in heaven who possess similar good. (TCR 613)

It's amazing to note this fact: When God brings particular spirits into connection with an individual on earth, the spirits receive that individual's memories as their own! There is therefore an exchange going on. The individual has the experience of an operation in the affective organ, which is felt as one's own feeling or impulse. The spirits on the other hand experience an operation in their cognitive organ. Whatever is in the memory and thinking of the individual is experienced by the spirits as their own. In other words the spirits feel themselves to be the individual. What is amazing is that they do not at the same time have the feelings and emotions of that individual. They retain their own feelings, motives, intentions, and obsessions. The exchange of influx affects both the earthling and the spirits but in different parts of the mind. Should all influx be blocked, both earthlings and spirits would instantly cease to exist. Since human beings are all born immortal, it's clear that influx can never cease once the human race was created. It also means that the physical universe where earthlings are born will also never cease, for the spiritual world cannot exist without the natural as its ultimate basis of existence. Once we move into the afterlife we are all spirits. Therefore our immortality depends on continued influx with earthlings.

The Writings reveal that the Grand Plan of God in creating the universe is to increase endlessly the population of the afterlife. The more immortal human beings enter the afterlife the more perfect the human mind evolves, and the more happiness and intelligence exists in each individual (see Section xx). But remember this: Our mind has both a heaven and a hell and the intent of God is to increase the heavenly portion of the human mind and to maintain the hell portion as small as possible, working with earthlings before they enter the afterlife, to help them regenerate into a new affective organ that can live in their heaven. You can see the importance of self-witnessing our emotions all day long so that we have the data to map out objectively the character of our vertical community.

We want to take charge of who God brings us into connection with!

It is our job to cooperate with our Divine Psychologist who desires to connect us with only good spirits. We are stopping Him by being unwilling to resist our evil enjoyments and habits. As we hold on to evil things in our emotions and satisfactions, we are holding on to evil spirits since these are their emotions and satisfactions that we feel as our own. We are thereby forcing God to connect us to evil spirits. He has no choice, for if He refused, we would have no life left. If then He were to connect us to good spirits while we refuse to let go of the evil emotions, what would happen? Our instant annihilation in supreme agony, like scattering our parts to the whole universe. For what is evil and what is good annihilate each other when brought together.

This is why the Divine Psychologist cannot connect us to both evil and good spirits at the same time in the same portion of our conscious awareness. Instead we have the experience of oscillating between the two states. You can see why God must be in charge of how the whole process progresses since otherwise it would not go far before collapsing, meaning that the human race would cease to exist. The interconnections of networks between all human beings is so complex that only God's infinite mind can take care of it.

All the negative emotions we experience are caused by an influx from one or more hell societies that are connected to us by heredity. We know that we inherit hellish traits from our parents (see Section xx). What is the mechanism of this inheritance? It is influx from multiple hell societies. God permits this influx for two main reasons.

First, it maintains the life of those who are permanently immersed in their hells. All they have is their loves, and if you deny satisfaction to these loves, they have nothing left of life. God saves them from lapsing into a kind of death or coma, which is what happens when the mind is deprived of all its loves. Since in the hells we have only evil loves, God finds a way of allowing satisfaction to these loves so that the people in them do not lapse into death.

Second, God uses the evil loves in the hells to maintain balance of choice for people on earth. This balance is maintained by allowing influx from both the hells and the heavens into our mind, though in different portions or levels of the mind, since the two cannot be mixed. Nevertheless, as we identify with all the emotions and feelings we have, it appears to us that we are both evil and good, both hellish and heavenly, depending on the times and the conditions.

Why is it necessary for the hells to communicate their negative emotions to us on earth?

It's because the satisfaction of their loves depends on our feeling it as our own.

In other words, the people on earth form an "ultimate plane" of existence for the people in the hells and the heavens. If all the inhabited earths of the universe were to be destroyed, the people in their immortality in heaven and hell would also be destroyed. The natural and spiritual worlds are so connected that they depend on each other for existence and survival. It is not possible to have emotions on our own, but only communally with the human race as a whole (see section xx). such is the nature of human love and of humanity. To God the entire human race is perceived as one individual (see Section xx). The entire human race acts as one, or, is acted upon as one.

When we are in our heavens or our hells our immortal existence there is dependent on the people still on earth or the world of spirits. Another way of saying this is that those who are passed their second death depend for existence on those who are prior to their first death. So there always must be people on earth having emotions and thoughts, and attributing them to themselves.

What happens when people on earth attribute their positive or negative emotions to themselves?

The people in their heavens or hells, from whom these emotions in us initiate, experience a satisfaction or completion of their love. Love is nothing unless it is satisfied or completed. Loves is two stage process that starts with desire, want, or attraction, and ends with being united to the object of desire, want, or attraction. For instance, when you are thirsty you have an urge to drink, and when very thirsty, the urge is very strong. This urge comes down to us from the heavens in our mind where there are others who experience this urge. They are unable to satisfy this urge since they cannot drink physical water and they do not have physical bodies to experience the need. Unless we on earth, feeling their urge as our own, get to act by drinking, their urge cannot be satisfied. But as we drink, the urge is satisfied in them and we feel it in us.

We have a short-circuited view of this process when we attribute the urge and the satisfaction to ourselves, leaving them out of the picture. But when you complete the full picture, you can see that they depend on us to have loves satisfied, which is their only life, and their only existence.

Similarly with an emotion like anger or depression. They have the hatred and the anger and the depression and the fear and the hopelessness. They communicate it to us, and we attribute them to ourselves. This is the general source of negative emotions to us here on earth. And of course as well, the source of our positive emotions is the heavens.

Quoting from Hugo Lj. Odhner's book Spirits in Human Life which I highly recommend for your study, It is a valuable contribution to theistic psychology based exclusively on the Writings of Swedenborg. It is available online (see Reading List).

"The Lord's mediate influx, or His mediate government of a person’s mind and body, is effected through the spiritual world - through the heavens and the hells. We have already stressed the teaching that all a person’s states draw their causes from the spirits and angels who attend him or her. We are creatures of changing moods. But we are usually able, on reflection, to account for the states into which we have imperceptibly drifted, by tracing them to natural causes. To excuse our frailties or our impatience, we complain that we are tired, are unjustly treated, are bored or homesick, etc. We tend to blame our rebellious moods, our moral lapses, or our indulgence in self-pity upon deficient health or other natural circumstances.

Yet common experience tells us that the same apparent natural causes do not always produce the same moods but serve merely as an occasion favorable to their appearance. The Writings convert this vague perception into a clear doctrine which teaches that there would be no conscious life, no realized affections or distinct thought with us, except for the influx of spirits and angels; and that the real meanings which we attach to our sensations and experiences in this world are derived from the moods which spirits instill into us - moods of delight or aversion." (www.swedenborgdigitallibrary.org/hh/shl/sm13.htm)
Hugo Lj. Odhner

In the course of our daily round of living we experience negative and positive emotions, intentions, feelings, affections, and loves. We feel attracted to evil enjoyments as well as to good. But the preponderance of negative emotions is due to our inherited ties to the people in their hells. This is the general cause of negative emotions.

Besides their dependence on the natural mind of human beings on earth, people in their hells are also kept alive by an influx into the natural minds of animals. This is what makes some species wild and ferocious because these animal emotions are like the emotions of those who immerse their human consciousness in what is corporeal, sensuous, and animal in us. Noxious, poisonous, and destructive species likewise correspond to the beastly and cruel emotions that are so delightful to those who immerse their consciousness in those things. This total immersion is achieved by their love and longing for hellish things and their hatred and aversion for heavenly things.

In a less direct way, people in the hells are also dependent on material things that cause pain and suffering to human beings--natural disasters, deserts, barren lands, darkness, cold, harmful chemicals, diseases, freak accidents,  etc.

Everything that was discussed with the hells is also true for the heavens, but in the opposite valence. Those who spend their immortality in the heavens of their mind are dependent for their well being and survival for the correspondences of their loves in the natural world. There are many categories of "uses" which they depend on. For instance, the proper functioning of our body requires billions of individual properties and steps form the largest (like an organ) to the smallest capillaries and operations of our cell biochemistry. Every one of these physical operations must be supported by the loves of some heavenly society. Each "use" or function corresponds to a different heavenly society upon which they are most dependent on. Every heavenly society specializes in some particular love which requires a particular operation in the natural world that corresponds to that love.

You can explore the details of this relationship in the following book by John Worcester www.theisticscience.org/books/worcester/index.htm  and the following Web directory of articles on the "Human Organic":  www.humanorganic.org/HO/titles.shtml

The general causes of negative emotions discussed above are made up of a collection of particular causes that center in particular individuals. Everyone inherits particular associations with some of the societies in the hells. Individuals are distinguished form each other by the particular spiritual associations they maintain. This constancy is responsible for all our recurrent behaviors called habits. We maintain habits of emotions, habits of loves, habits of thinking, and habits of style and expressiveness. Whatever is constant in an individual is due to the constancy of the influx from particular societies. Specific causes of emotions apply to unique events. When I get mad a another driver who tailgates me I'm experiencing a situational influx from a particular society of evil spirits. Every event on earth is a unique situation in time and place.

There are therefore general, particular, and specific causes of every reaction and behavior that we have in the course of our daily living. Cultural factors are general contributors to behavior. Personality factors are particular contributors, while situational factors are specific.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 272. Man lives like a wild animal when his internal man is so separated from his external as to operate upon it only in a most general manner, for man is man from what he receives through his internal man from the Lord, and is a wild animal from what he derives from the external man, which, separated from the internal, is in itself no other than a wild animal, having a similar nature, desires, appetites, phantasies, and sensations, and also similar organic forms. That nevertheless he is able to reason, and, as it seems to himself, acutely, he has from the spiritual substance by which he receives the influx of life from the Lord, which is however perverted in such a man, and becomes the life of evil, which is death. Hence he is called a dead man. (AC 272)

AC 6411.The will and the understanding are so distinct in man that nothing could be more distinct, as has been given me also to know with certainty from the fact that things of the understanding of spirits and angels flow into the left part of the head or brain, and things of the will into the right; and it is the same with respect to the face. When angelic spirits flow in, they do so gently like the softest breaths of air; but when evil spirits flow in, it is like an inundation into the left part of the brain with dreadful phantasies and persuasions, and into the right with cupidities, their influx being as it were an inundation of phantasies and cupidities. (AC 641)

This was written in 1744 long before scientists knew about the left-brain/right-brain distinction. Swedenborg was able to observe that the left brain operations correspond to the cognitive organ of the mind ("phantasies and persuasions"), while the right brain operations to the affective organ ("cupidities"). There is a distinction also between influx from heavenly societies, which is gentle and mild, and influx from hellish societies, which is sudden and intense.

AC 657. There are three degrees of things intellectual in man; the lowest is that of knowledge [scientificum]; the middle is the rational; the highest, the intellectual. These are so distinct from each other that they should never be confounded. But man is not aware of this, for the reason that he makes life consist in what is of sense and knowledge only; and while he cleaves to this, he cannot even know that his rational part is distinct from that which is concerned with knowing [scientificum]; and still less that his intellectual part is so. And yet the truth is that the Lord flows through man's intellectual into his rational, and through his rational into the knowledge of the memory, whence comes the life of the senses of sight and of hearing. This is the true influx, and this is the true interaction of the soul with the body.

Without influx of the Lord's life into the things of the understanding in man-or rather into things of the will and through these into those of understanding-and through things of understanding into things rational, and through things rational into his knowledges which are of the memory, life would be impossible to man. And even though a man is in falsities and evils, yet there is an influx of the Lord's life through the things of the will and of the understanding; but the things that flow in are received in the rational part according to its form; and this influx gives man the ability to reason, to reflect, and to understand what truth and good are. (AC 657)

This passage talks about the fact that influx activates three distinct levels of the cognitive organ -- intellectual level (highest), rational level, and knowledge level (lowest). The influx is directly into the affective organ, and from there indirectly into the cognitive organ. If God were to influx our cognitive mind directly we would lose our sense of as-of self and freedom. This was the method used to influx the prophets of the Old Testament, and also the angels who spoke with those mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. They were conscious of a "living voice" in their mind so that they knew it was from God. But ordinary influx is not conscious hence not directly into the cognitive organ of the mind. It is this indirect influx that keeps us thinking rationally. When we are immersed in evil enjoyments and intentions we would not be able to think rationally were it not for this influx. Hence it is that people think raitonally even when they plot evil against others.

AC 660. That by the "flood" is signified an inundation of evil and falsity, is evident from what has been stated before concerning the posterity of the Most Ancient Church: that they were possessed with foul cupidities, and that they immersed the doctrinal things of faith in them, and in consequence had persuasions of falsity which extinguished all truth and good, and at the same time closed up the way for remains, so that they could not operate; and therefore it could not be otherwise than that they would destroy themselves. When the way for remains is closed, the man is no longer man, because he can no longer be protected by angels, but is totally possessed by evil spirits, whose sole study and desire it is to extinguish man. Hence came the death of the antediluvians, which is described by a flood, or total inundation. The influx of phantasies and cupidities from evil spirits is not unlike a kind of flood; and therefore it is called a "flood" or inundation in various places in the Word, as of the Lord's Divine mercy will be seen in what is premised to the following chapter. (AC 660)

It is said here that the Fall of the human mind occurred when people of the "most ancient" civilization on earth "immersed the doctrinal things of faith" into "foul cupidities." Doctrine refers to their understanding of the truths of revelation. They tried to misuse this knowledge by putting it to selfish ends called "foul cupidities." This led them to false belief systems that destroyed their understanding of what is good and true. At the same time, they lost the ability to receive influx from the heavenly societies. The resultant state of mind is called a "flood" in Sacred Scripture because this is how it subjectively feels to be "inundated" by evil emotions that bring a flood of fantasies and "persuasions" of false beliefs.

AC 905. The Lord's presence entails freedom; one follows the other. The more the Lord is present the more free a person becomes, that is, insofar as love of good and truth is in him he acts in freedom. Such is the Lord's influx by way of angels. On the other hand, the influx of hell by way of evil spirits brings with it a force and impulsion to dominate. Their whole intention is to subjugate a person to the point of making him nothing and themselves everything. When they are everything a person is one of them. Yet he is scarcely one of them but in their eyes a veritable nobody. Consequently when the Lord is freeing a person from their yoke and dominion, conflict arises. But once he has been set free, that is, been regenerated, he is led by the Lord through angels so gently that no yoke or dominion exists at all, for he is being led by what is joyful and pleasing, he is being loved, and he is being shown respect. This is what the Lord teaches in Matthew,

My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. Matt. 11:30.

It is quite the reverse with evil spirits. With them, as has been stated, a person is reckoned as nothing, and if they could they would be tormenting him from one moment to the next. This I have been given to know from considerable experience, which will in the Lord's Divine mercy be presented later on. (AC 905)

The Divine Psychologist influences our mind by bringing us into communication with those who are in the heavens of their mind. This is called heavenly influx and keeps our mind in freedom of choice between good and evil. But God also brings us into contact with influx from those who dwell in the hells of their mind. This works against our freedom and tries to subjugate and dominate us to act acceding to the delights of the evil spirits who have no regard for us. As we progress in our character reformation (or "regeneration") we are able to think the truths that are effective in opposing the emotional slavery which the influx of hell tries to impose on us.

In order that Swedenborg may understand how influx works he was exposed to direct influx from people in all sorts of hells. On one occasion he described the experience this way:

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

AC 1270. Soon after this some were let out of that hell, but the Lord so arranged it by means of spirits and angels in between that those let out could do me no harm. From that place deep down they moved to a forward position. To themselves they seemed to be pressing forward towards the front, so to speak through caverns in the rock, and in this way up to the top. They at length appeared up on the left so that from there, and so at a distance, they might flow into me. I was told that they were being allowed to flow into the right part of my head but not into the left, and then from the right part of the head into the left part of the chest. They were altogether prevented from flowing into the left part of my head, for if that were to happen I would be destroyed since they would in that case be flowing in with their own persuasions that are dreadful and deadly. But when they were flowing into the right part of the head and from there into the left part of the breast, they were doing so by means of evil desires. This is how it is with influx.

[2] Their persuasions are such as to destroy everything true and good. As a consequence those into whom they flow are unable to perceive anything, or after that even to think. This also was why the spirits were being removed. When they started to flow in I fell asleep. Then while I slept they flowed in by means of evil desires, so powerfully in fact that had I been awake I could not have withstood them. In my sleep I felt a pressure upon me which I cannot describe, only that I subsequently remembered that they had attempted to kill me by a stifling exhalation, which was like a terrible nightmare. At that point I woke up and noticed that they were near me. But when they realized that I was awake they fled to their own position higher up and flowed in from there.

[3] While they were there it seemed to me as though they were being rolled up in a cloth, as in the incident described in 964. I thought that it was those evil spirits who were being rolled up in it, but in fact it was they who were doing it to others. This is achieved by means of delusions, yet the spirits against whom they act in this way by delusions are not aware of anything other than of being actually rolled up. It seemed that those whom they were rolling up in this way rolled down the slope of some rock, but those who had been so rolled up were released and set free. They were spirits who did not wish to leave and so were preserved by the Lord or else they would have been suffocated. Although they would have revived they would have done so after much suffering. At that point those who had been allowed out from the hell below went back by way of the slope on the rock. From that place came a drilling sound as though many large drills were at work, and I perceived that the sound was the product of extremely painful delusions against the Lord's existence. Subsequently they were sent down through the gloomy caverns beneath the rock enveloped in mist into their own hell. While they were in the world of spirits the whole constitution of the sphere there was altered. (AC 1270)

The persuasive thoughts of some evil spirits are so powerful that it takes away the ability to think from those into whom they are allowed to inflow. Obviously it is extremely dangerous to expose ourselves to false belief systems that justify doing evil. The spirits involved in the episode described above are kept segregated so that they cannot influence people except from a distance, meaning, only mildly. The Divine Psychologist maintains absolute control over which spiritual societies are allowed to influence which person when and how much. By this control God keeps the person in spiritual freedom at all times from birth to eternity.

AC 1917. In temptations there are vastations and desolations, and there are states of despair, and of consequent grief and indignation, besides other interior painful emotions; and this with variety and alternation, according to the states of evil and falsity which are excited by evil genii and spirits, and against which the combat is being waged. The diabolical spirits desire nothing more than to find some falsity, in fact it is common with them to induce a falsity from themselves, and then at the same time to make it the subject of accusation. (AC 1917).

"Vastations and desolations" refer to extreme states of depression or anxiety during which we are tempted to believe that we are hopeless and cannot improve, or that our situation is hopeless. We doubt or ignore our doctrine or knowledge of truth from Sacred Scripture. People who dwell in the hells of their mind specialize in various types of evils. "Evil genii" specialize in exciting in us false beliefs and persuasions.

AC 741. Temptations are nothing other than conflicts between evil spirits and angels who reside with a person. Evil spirits activate all the dishonourable things the person has done or even thought which have been with him since early childhood, thus both evils and falsities; and in so doing, the spirits condemn him, for nothing gives them greater delight. Indeed the very delight of their lives consists in doing just that. But the Lord protects the person by means of angels and prevents the evil spirits and genii from overstepping the mark and overwhelming him with more than he can cope with. (AC 741)

It is said here that evil spirits delight in exciting in us memories of things we've done we are ashamed of or feel guilty about. You can see that if they were allowed to keep us in these thoughts, we would get hopelessly depressed--which is what they enjoy since they are hateful of everyone. But they are not allowed to exert the influence they desire. The Divine Psychologist keeps the person in the balance of choice by approaching the counteracting influences of good spirits or angels.

10.1.1.1  The Sting and Torment of Conscience

There are evil spirits who at that time [during temptation] activate a person's falsities and evils, as has been stated. Indeed they draw out of his memory whatever he has thought and carried out since early childhood. Evil spirits can do this so cleverly and wickedly as to defy description. But the angels who are with him draw out his goods and truths, and in this way defend him. This conflict is what the person feels and perceives in himself and is what causes the sting and torment of conscience.

[2] There are two kinds of temptation, the first involving things of the understanding, the second those of the will. When a person's temptation involves those of the understanding, evil spirits activate only the evil deeds he has carried out, which are meant here by 'unclean beasts'. And with these they accuse and condemn. They even activate his good deeds as well, which are also meant here by the 'clean beasts'; but these they corrupt in a thousand ways. At the same time they also activate his thoughts, which are also meant here by 'bird', and in addition they activate the things meant here by 'things creeping over the ground'. This kind of temptation however is mild and is perceived only through the recollection of such experiences, and a kind of mental anguish resulting from this.

[3] When however someone's temptation involves things of the will, it is not so much his deeds and thoughts that are activated. Instead there are evil genii, as evil spirits of this type may be called, who inflame him with the evil desires and the foul loves in which he is steeped, and in this way direct their attack through the person's very desires. They do this so wickedly and secretly that one cannot possibly believe it is they who are doing it. In fact they worm their way in no time at all into the life of his desires, and almost instantaneously twist and convert the affection for good and truth into the affection for evil and falsity. They act in such a way that the individual inevitably thinks that these things come from himself and flow forth of his own free will. This kind of temptation is very severe, and is felt as inward pain and burning torment. This subject is dealt with later on. I have been allowed from much experience to know and realize that this is true, and to know also when evil spirits or genii were flowing in and overwhelming, and from where, who they were and how they did it. In the Lord's Divine mercy these experiences will be described in detail later on. (AC 751)

The Divine Psychologist uses two basic types of temptations as a means to bring our conscious awareness to some evils we should get rid of in order to progress in our character reformation. One type of temptation involves our belief systems, hence the cognitive organ. The other type of temptation involves our will and intentions, hence the affective organ. Both our cognitive and our affective organs must be regenerated or rebuilt since they are associated to the hells by inheritance.

Evil spirits are allowed to activate our thoughts about things we did in the past, and thereby arouse anxiety, guilt, shame, depression, self-doubt, worthlessness. But these emotions are relatively mild forms of temptation since they have to do with things we did in the past. But evil genii are allowed to excite  and "inflame" our current desires and longings for evil enjoyments. These are severe temptations because they involve the present, not the past. It is stated here that we are not conscious of the fact that these evil desires are excited by the spirits, even if we know of their existence from theistic psychology. Because it appears to us that these evil desires are from ourselves, we are filled with severe anxieties knowing that these loves are evil and contrary to our doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. We feel "inward pain and burning torment." However, Swedenborg was allowed to be conscious of them so that he could observe and describe their operation.

It has been stated already that spiritual temptation when it takes place in someone is a conflict between the evil spirits and the angels residing with that person, and that he ordinarily feels that conflict in his conscience. As regards such conflict it should be recognized in addition that the angels are protecting man constantly and are warding off the evils that evil spirits direct against him. They protect even the falsities and the evils with a person, for they are fully aware of where the person's falsities and evils come from - from evil spirits and genii.

Man in no sense produces any falsity and evil from himself. Instead it is the evil spirits residing with him who produce them, and as they do so they also convince him that these originate in himself. Such is the nature of their wickedness. And what is more, the moment they instill this into him and convince him, they also accuse and condemn him. This I can confirm from a multitude of experiences.

Anyone who has no faith in the Lord is incapable of being enlightened in the matter; he inevitably believes that an evil is from himself. Consequently he makes the evil his own and becomes like those evil spirits residing with him. Such is the situation with man. And as the angels are aware of it they protect even a person's falsities and evils while he is undergoing the temptations that are part of regeneration. Otherwise he would go under, for with man there is nothing but evil and derivative falsity, so that he is just a heap and conglomeration of evils and derivative falsities. (AC 761)

The above passage once more confirms that the ties we inherit to evil spirits in hell cannot be resisted ("we would go under"), because we believe that these evils are from ourselves which "makes the evil our own." Every evil enjoyment or tendency we have is associated with multiple falsities we believe. The false ideas we believe is due to the evil loves we have. All the evil emotions and feelings we experience while on earth, are never ours, but always belong to the evil spirits in hell. It becomes our own when we join those hells after our resuscitation. We then become evil spirits and genii trying to infest others on earth because this is then our delight and our life. Hence we don't want to end up there!

The passage also informs us that we cannot be regenerated without temptations and that we are not brought into temptations unless we possess doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. Obviously, when we reject Sacred Scripture or deny God's existence, we cannot be regenerated and our character remains such as it is from inheritance. Without doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture we do not possess the wherewithal to oppose and resist evil desires and intentions.

This raises an important issue that has been frequently debated. Can we be moral people when we are still atheists and materialists? The answer is yes because everyone can act from moral principles regardless of religion, philosophy, or culture. Further, many who are religious commit immoral acts, as is well known. What then makes a difference? How do we interpret the assertion that "Without doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture we do not possess the wherewithal to oppose and resist evil desires and intentions"?

The answer is that all overt behavior can originate from either hellish or heavenly motives.

We can cling to a hellish character while we are being very active and prominent in a religious group, maintaining a good reputation for being just, honest, and charitable. Or, we can cling to a heavenly character while we are still tied to immoral behaviors we have not yet given up. Over behavior is indicative of the presence of a motivation to appear moral and tolerant. Note well that the motive is "to appear tolerant," and not necessarily to actually to be tolerant in the privacy of our mind.

The assertion above that "Without doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture we do not possess the wherewithal to oppose and resist evil desires and intentions" therefore applies not to overt moral behavior but to morality in the privacy of the mind. This inner morality is impossible when we are in a state of mind in which we do not have doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture. Consequently, their inner character cannot be reformed, rebuilt, and regenerated. When they get to the afterlife, they can no longer continue in the motive to appear moral and decent. They feel an irresistible urge to express their loves, so that they abandon the former appearances and now appear who they really were all along--lacking morality and restraint in the relentless pursuit of compulsive desires, harmful intentions,  and evil enjoyments. They are thus drawn into their hells where they meet others like themselves with whom they are compelled to live.

Men in the other life are not such as they are during the life of the body, for they cannot then dissemble, they cannot say one thing and do another, and by the good conduct of their intellectual mind they cannot feign what is good when they are evil. Their nature then remains such as is the quality of the will. The intellectual things which have not been inscribed upon their nature pass away, so that no one can pretend to be other than he is in his will, and he acts accordingly. There are also deceitful spirits who can put on the outward appearance of angels, but these are the worst spirits; and it is still made manifest that cunning is implanted in their nature. Few such spirits were admitted to me, for they have been removed from the company of others lest these others should be defiled, and this for many reasons. 1747, Aug. 31, o.s. (SE 191)

10.1.1.1.1      How We are Regenerated

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

TCR 610. I will add to what I have already said the following point. A person's regeneration does not occur in an instant, but successively from the beginning to the end of his life in the world, and after this it continues and reaches higher perfection. It is because a person is reformed by struggles and victories over the evils of his flesh that the Son of Man says to each of the seven churches, that He will grant gifts to him who overcomes. Thus

To the church at Ephesus:
To him who overcomes I will grant to eat of the tree of life. Rev. 2:7.
To the church of the people of Smyrna:
He who overcomes will not suffer harm in the second death. Rev. 2:11.
To the church in Pergamum:
To him who overcomes I will grant to eat of the hidden manna. Rev. 2:17.
To the church in Thyatira:
To him who overcomes I will grant power over the nations. Rev. 2:26.
To the church in Sardis:
He who overcomes will be clothed in white raiment. Rev. 3:5.
To the church in Philadelphia:
Him who overcomes I will make a column in God's temple. Rev. 3:12.
To the church of the people of Laodicea:
To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne. Rev. 3:21.

One final point: to the extent that a person is regenerated, that is, in so far as his regeneration advances towards perfection, to that extent he ceases to attribute to himself any good or truth, that is, any charity and faith, but attributes these to the Lord. For the truths that he absorbs one after the other plainly teach that lesson. (TCR 610)

TCR 611. In so far as a person is regenerated, so far are his sins removed; this removal is the forgiveness of sins.

The reason why so far as a person is regenerated, so far are his sins removed, is that regeneration consists in controlling the flesh so that it does not take control, in taming the former man and his lusts so that he cannot rise again and destroy the faculty of understanding; for if this is destroyed, there is no further possibility of the person being reformed. This reformation cannot occur, unless the person's spirit, which is above the flesh, is instructed and advanced towards perfection. No one, whose understanding is still unimpaired, can fail to conclude from this that such events cannot take place in an instant, but do so one after another, just as a person is conceived, carried in the womb, born and brought up, in the sequence demonstrated above. The properties belonging to the flesh or the former man are inherent from birth. They build the first home for his mind, the dwelling-place of lusts, which are like wild beasts in their cages. They live at first in the forecourts, and little by little creep into the rooms of that house below ground level, and afterwards climb the stairs and make rooms for themselves. This happens by stages as the child grows, becomes a boy and then a youth; then he begins to use his own understanding to think and his own will to act.

[2] Anyone can see that a house built thus far in the mind, where lusts like ochim, ghoim* and satyrs hold hands to dance, cannot be destroyed in a moment, and a new house built in its place. Of course the lusts holding hands and so disporting themselves must first be banished, and new desires for good and truth be brought in to replace the lusts for evil and falsity. Any wise person can see that such things cannot take place in an instant from the single consideration, that every evil is the product of countless lusts, resembling a fruit that below the surface is full of maggots with black heads and white bodies. Evils too, he will realise, are numerous and closely linked, like the offspring of a spider just hatched from its belly. So unless one evil after another is brought out, and the process continues until the link is broken, a person cannot become new. These considerations have been presented in order to make it known that in so far as anyone is regenerated, so far are his sins removed. (TCR 611)

TCR 612.  From birth everyone has a propensity to evils of every kind, and this makes him long for them and do them so far as he is free to do so. For from birth he longs to control others and possess other people's property, the two things which shatter love toward the neighbour. Then he hates anyone who opposes him, and his hatred breathes revenge, a feeling inwardly nursing thoughts of murder. This too is why he makes light of adultery and cheating, which is secret theft, as well as of blasphemy, which includes false witness. Anyone who pays no heed to all these is an atheist at heart.

That is what a person is like from birth, and it is plain from this that he is a hell on the smallest scale. Now since a person is born, as far as the interiors of his mind are concerned, to be spiritual, as animals are not, and since he is consequently born to go to heaven, yet his natural or external man is, as I have just said, a hell on the smallest scale, it follows that heaven cannot be planted in hell, but this must be removed. (TCR 612)

TCR 613. If anyone knows the relationship of heaven and hell, and how one is removed from the other, he can tell how a person is regenerated, as well as what a regenerated person is like. To make this intelligible I must first make the brief revelation that all in heaven turn their faces towards the Lord and look at Him, while all in hell turn their faces away from the Lord. So if one looks down from heaven into hell, one sees nothing but the backs of heads and people's backs. Indeed they even appear upside down like the people of the Antipodes, who have their feet up and their heads down, despite the fact that they walk upon their feet and can screw their faces round. It is the reverse direction in which the interiors of their minds face that produces this appearance. I can report these surprising facts from my own observation.

[2] By this means it was revealed to me how regeneration takes place, exactly as hell is removed and is thus separated from heaven. For, as I said before, a person as regards his first nature, which he has from birth, is a hell on the smallest scale, and as regards his second nature, which he gets from being born again, is a heaven on the smallest scale. It follows from this that the evils in a person are removed and separated just as hell and heaven are on the large scale. As evils are removed they turn away from the Lord, and by stages turn upside down. This happens to the extent that heaven is planted in the person, so that he becomes a new man. For the sake of illustration I shall add that each evil in the person has a link with those in hell who have the same evil, and on the other hand each good in the person has a link with those in heaven who possess similar good. (TCR 613)

TCR 614. What has been said can serve to establish that the forgiveness of sins is not their rooting out or wiping away, but their removal and so separation. All the evil remains that a person has by his deeds made his own. Since the forgiveness of sins is their removal and separation, it follows that a person is held back from evil and kept in good by the Lord. This is the gift he receives by regeneration.

I once heard someone in the lowest heaven say that he was free from sins because they had been wiped away, 'by the blood of Christ' he added. But since he was inside heaven, and made this mistake through ignorance, he was plunged into his own sins, and as they recurred to him, he acknowledged them. This led him to accept a new belief, that everyone, man as well as angel, is held back from evils and kept in good by the Lord.

[2] This makes it plain what the forgiveness of sins is, not an instantaneous event, but the consequence of regeneration, advancing in step with it. The removal of sins, what is called their being forgiven, can be compared with the casting out of filth from the Children of Israel's camp in the desert, which lay all around them; for their camp represented heaven, the desert hell. It can also be compared with the removal of the nations in the land of Canaan by the Children of Israel, and the removal of the Jebusites from Jerusalem; they were not cast out, but separated. It can also be compared with the fate of Dagon, the god of the Philistines; when the Ark was brought in, it first of all lay face down on the ground, and afterwards lay on the threshold with its head and the palms of its hands cut off; so it was not cast out, but removed.

[3] It can be compared with the demons the Lord sent into the swine, which afterwards drowned themselves in the sea; here and elsewhere in the Word the sea stands for hell. It can also be compared with the dragon's crowd, which when separated from heaven first invaded the earth, and afterwards was cast down into hell. Another comparison can be made with a wood full of wild beasts of many kinds; if it is cut down, the beasts take refuge in the surrounding thickets, and then when the ground has been levelled, the area contained within it is cultivated to make agricultural land. (TCR 614)

TCR 615. Regeneration is impossible without free will in spiritual matters.

Anyone who is not stupid can see that without free will in spiritual matters no one can be regenerated. Without that he could not approach the Lord and acknowledge Him as Redeemer and Saviour, and as the God of heaven and earth, as He Himself teaches (Matt. 28:18). Can anyone without that free will believe, that is, look to and worship Him from faith, devoting himself to receiving from Him the means to and benefits of salvation, and co-operating in receiving them from Him? Can anyone without free will do any good to his neighbour and show charity, not to mention absorbing into thought and will many other features of faith and charity, and drawing upon them to put them into effect? Otherwise regeneration would be nothing but a meaningless expression which dropped from the Lord's lips (John chapter 3), something which penetrates no further than the ear, or if it falls from the lips as the result of the thought which is closest to speech, is merely an articulate sound composed of eleven letters*. This sound has no meaning by which it can be raised to any higher level in the mind, but it falls upon empty air and is lost.

* The Latin word regeneratio, 'being born again' or 'regeneration' has eleven letters. (TCR 615)

TCR 616. Tell me, if you can, whether there can ever be such blind stupidity about regeneration as that displayed by those convinced of present-day faith. This is a belief that faith is poured into a person while he is like a block of wood or a stone, and that infusion is followed by justification, which is the forgiveness of sins, regeneration and many other gifts; and that any activity on the person's part is to be utterly ruled out in order to avoid doing any damage to Christ's merit. To establish this dogma even more securely, they have snatched away from people any free will in spiritual matters, making them totally powerless in this respect; as if God would then act alone on His part, and no power would be given to the person to co-operate on his part, and so to link himself with God. If that were so, what would a person be as regards regeneration but tied hand and foot like the slaves chained in galleys?* If he got free from his manacles and leg-irons, he would, like the slaves, be punished and condemned to death - that is, if he used his free will to do good to his neighbour, and believed in God of his own accord so as to be saved.

[2] If a person were to convince himself of such beliefs, although he piously hoped to go to heaven, he would be nothing but a ghost, standing waiting to see whether that faith with the benefits it conveys had been poured into him, or if not, whether it was being poured in; and likewise whether God the Father had shown mercy, or whether His Son had interceded, or whether the Holy Spirit was too busy elsewhere to act on him. In the end he would in his total ignorance about this go away and console himself with this reflexion: 'Perhaps that grace may be present in the moral behaviour I adopt in life and in which I continue as formerly, so that in me it is holy, but in those who have not acquired that faith, unholy. So to ensure that holiness remains in my moral behaviour, I shall take care in future not to exercise faith or charity of my own accord' - and more of the same sort. Such a ghost, or if you prefer such a pillar of salt, is what everyone becomes who thinks about regeneration unaccompanied by free will in spiritual matters. (TCR 616)

TCR 617. A person who believes that regeneration is possible without any free will in spiritual matters, and so without any co-operation, becomes as regards all the church's truths as cold as a rock; and if he is hot, he is like a blazing log on a fire, which burns because of the combustible material it contains, because of his lusts. To employ a comparison, he becomes like a palace sinking into the ground up to its roof and being flooded with muddy water; after this he lives on the bare roof, and there builds himself a shelter of reeds from the marshes. Finally the roof too sinks below the surface and he is drowned.

[2] He is also like a ship laden with precious goods of every kind taken from the treasury of the Word. But these are gnawed by mice and grubs, or thrown overboard by the sailors, so that the merchants are cheated out of their wares. Those who are learned or rich in the mysteries of that faith are like salesmen in shops selling statues of idols, fruit and flowers made of wax, sea-shells, vipers in bottles and such like. Those who, because of the lack of any spiritual power applied and given by the Lord, are unwilling to look up, are in fact like animals which keep their heads down to look, as they seek their food in the woods. If they come into gardens, they are like caterpillars which eat the leaves of trees: and if they catch sight of fruits, and more so if they handle them, they fill them with maggots. Finally they become like scaly snakes, for their fallacies rustle and glitter like the scales of snakes. And so one might continue with comparisons.

TCR 618. Regeneration is impossible without truths through which faith may be formed, and with which charity may link itself.

There are three means by which a person is regenerated: the Lord, faith and charity. These three would lie as deeply hidden as the choicest gems buried underground, if they were not exposed by Divine truths from the Word. In fact they would be hidden from the sight of those who deny man's co-operation, even if they read the Word a hundred or a thousand times; yet there they stand out in bright light.

As regards the Lord, can anyone who has convinced himself of present-day faith open his eyes to see the following doctrines in it: that the Lord and the Father are one, and that He is the God of heaven and earth, and that it is the Father's will that people should believe in Him, as well as countless similar statements in both Testaments? The reason is that they are not in possession of truths, and so not in light which could make things of this sort plain to see. Even if they were given light, still their falsities would snuff it out, and then the truths would be passed over like phrases deleted, or like subterranean passages which people walk over and cross. These remarks have been made to make it known that without truths this first step towards regeneration could not be seen.

[2] As regards faith, neither is that possible without truths, for faith and truth make a single entity. Good is like the soul of faith, and truths make up its body. So to talk of believing or having faith without knowing any of its truths is like pulling the soul out of the body and carrying on a conversation with that invisible object. Moreover, all the truths which make up the body of faith emit light, illuminating it and making its face visible. It is much the same with charity. This emits heat, with which the light of truth combines, just as in the world heat is combined with light in springtime, and this combination makes animals and plants on earth resume reproduction. It is much the same with spiritual heat and light. These likewise combine in a person, when he is in possession of the truths of faith and at the same time the kinds of good which make up charity. For, as I said before in the chapter on faith, there flows from each truth an illuminating light, and from each kind of good a heat which sets on fire. Spiritual light is in its essence intelligence, and spiritual heat is in its essence love. It is the Lord alone who combines these two when He regenerates a person. For the Lord said:

The words which I speak are spirit and life. John 6:63.

Believe in the light, so that you may be sons of light. I have come a light to the world. John 12:36, 46.

In the spiritual world the Lord is the sun, the source of all spiritual light and heat. That is the light which illuminates, the heat that sets on fire; and a person is quickened and regenerated by them both being combined.

TCR 619. These facts can establish that there is no knowing the Lord without truths; and without truths there is no faith and so no charity. It follows that without truths there cannot be any theology, and in its absence there cannot be any church either. Such at the present time is the case with the mass of peoples who call themselves Christians, claiming to be in the light of the Gospel, when in fact they are in utter darkness. For the truths lie as deeply hidden under falsities as gold, silver and precious stones buried among the bones in the valley of Hinnom.* This was made plain to me from the spheres in the spiritual world which flow and radiate from the Christians of the present day.

[2] One of these spheres concerns the Lord. It spreads its influence from the southern quarter, where the learned among the clergy and educated laymen live. Wherever it reaches, it sneaks into people's ideas, and in many cases carries away their belief in the divinity of the Lord's Human; in many other cases it weakens it, and in many others turns it to foolishness, The reason is that it introduces at the same time a belief in three Gods, and this produces confusion.

[3] A second sphere which carries away** faith is like a dark cloud in wintertime, which darkens the day, turns rain into snow, lays bare the trees, freezes waters and deprives sheep of all pasture. This sphere combined with the previous one injects a sort of lethargy concerning one God, regeneration and the means of salvation.

[4] A third sphere concerns the linking of faith and charity. It is so strong as to be irresistible. But at the present time it is appalling, and like a plague it infects anyone who catches a breath of it, tearing apart every bond between the two means of salvation established from the creation of the world and made whole by the Lord. This sphere also attacks people in the natural world and quenches the torches*** which celebrate the marriage between truth and good. I have felt this sphere, and then when I thought about the linking of faith and charity, it intervened between them and attempted violently to separate them.

[5] The angels complain about these spheres, and pray the Lord to have them dispersed. But they received the reply that they cannot be dispersed, so long as the dragon is upon the earth, since they proceed from the followers of the dragon. For it is said of the dragon that it was cast out into the earth, and then

For this reason rejoice, heavens, and woe to those that live on the earth. Rev. 12:12.

[6] These three spheres are like atmospheres driven by a gale and coming from the air-holes of dragons; and because they are spiritual, they attack people's minds and compel them. The spheres concerned with spiritual truths are up to now few there, at any rate in the new heaven and with those below heaven who are separated from the followers of the dragon. This is the reason why those truths are at the present time so hard to see among people in the world, just as ships sailing the eastern ocean are to the ship-masters and navigators sailing the western ocean. (TCR 619)

TCR 620. Some comparisons may be made to illustrate the fact that regeneration is impossible without the truths by means of which faith is formed. This can no more exist than a human mind without an understanding, since the understanding is formed by means of truths and so can teach us what should be believed and done, what regeneration is and how it is effected. Regeneration without truths is no more possible than it is for animals to have life or trees to grow without sunlight. For if the sun did not give light at the same time as it gives heat, it would become like a sack made of hair, as described in Revelation (6:12), and it would be darkened (Joel 2:10, 31). Thus there would be total darkness on earth (Joel 3:15). The same would happen to a person if he were without truths that emit light. The sun from which the light of each truth radiates is the Lord in the spiritual world. If spiritual light from this source did not flow into human minds, the church would be in total darkness or in the shadow of a permanent eclipse.

[2] Regeneration, which must take place through faith and charity, without truths to teach and guide would be like sailing on a broad ocean without a tiller, or without a ship's compass and charts. It would also be like riding a horse in a dark wood by night. The internal vision of the minds of those who possess not truths but falsities, which they believe to be true, can be compared with the sight of people whose optic nerves are blocked; the eye appears to be intact and seeing, while in fact it sees nothing. This is the form of blindness physicians call amaurosis or gutta Serena. Their rational or intellectual faculty is blocked above and only open downwards. As a result the light of reason becomes like the light of the eye, so that all judgments are mere imagination and strung together out of pure fallacies. Then people would stand around like astrologers with long telescopes, standing in public squares issuing empty prophecies. This is what would happen to all students of theology, if the Lord did not open to them genuine truths from the Word. (TCR 620)

10.1.1.2  The Vertical Community: Laws of Social Interaction Among Spirits

SE 192. Evil spirits continually desire to excite enmities amongst themselves, and when it is permitted, simply by phantasy they represent their companions under various shapes of animals, as serpents of various kinds; nor can their companions, who are thus represented, liberate themselves from that phantasy before such permission is withdrawn. Thus they are turned into various kinds of animals, simply by representation, which is also the reason why in stories of olden times it was fabled of the devil and others that they were transformed into so many forms of animals, and why in the Word of God Messiah also they are thus represented, as by serpents, dragons, wolves, etc. This is done according to the cupidities and states of cupidities in which they are. (SE 192)

Swedenborg wrote the above in his "spiritual diary" in 1747. He was just beginning his 27 years of dual consciousness and did not yet elaborate the scientific implications of what he was able to observe. He was very involved in the new experiences, not unlike a biologist who was visiting a tropical island rich in unknown and uncatalogued species. In the diary entry above (of which I quote only one paragraph), Swedenborg discovers the origin of old fables in which animals are actually transformed devils, vampires, demons, etc. Those who spend their immortality in the hell of their mind find themselves thrown together in the company of other people who dwell in their hells, and the associations are selective in accordance with the particular evil loves in which they have immersed their consciousness.

Swedenborg was allowed to appear as well in these communal hells so that he could make his observations of that dreadful portion of the human mind.

Note this very important consequence of Swedenborg's discovery. That we are not alone in our mind!

Our consciousness can dwell at three distinct general levels -- our heaven, our world of spirits, our hell. While we are alive on earth our consciousness is restricted to the world of spirits. Nevertheless, we can experience vicariously what it's like to raise our consciousness to heaven, or lower it to hell.

Swedenborg's discovery is that the mind of the entire human race overlaps. He called this overlap--the spiritual world. If every human mind did not overlap with all the others, there would be no way of being together in the afterlife. No social life. No community. Just dreadful loneliness, alone in the universe. The afterlife is an expanse called rational ether--like the places in our dreams are mental, not physical. There is no place to go to or to move around in our mind. There is no motion, no space, no matter. Everything in it is instantly created and suddenly gone from existence. The mind in the afterlife has come into its own. It can create anything, just like we can in our imagination--but in the afterlife, or the spiritual world, what we can create is real. It can be seen and used by others.

There is a communal life in the mind, though we only become aware of it perceptually when we start our life as "spirits" after resuscitation (see Section xx).

It's obviously important for us to know and understand the laws of interaction that govern this very active afterlife state of mind. We become conscious of other spirits who look like ordinary people like those we knew back on earth. Furthermore, not only do they have a body, but so do we. And we discover the wonderful properties of our spirit-body which is far more sensitive to the sensory experience than what we knew in the physical body.

We discover that others appear and disappear according to our desires, emotions, and thought processes. The same with cities, houses, palaces, animals, caves, lakes, paintings, clothes, food, jewels, carriages that move on their own, etc. etc. These are all instantaneously created by your desires and thoughts. But they are actually real. You can touch them, eat them, wear them, and so can others who are around.

Obviously, it makes a total difference whether we are surrounded by heaven or by hell. Swedenborg describes both in detail in his book titled Heaven and Hell (1758), as well in his major earlier work called Arcana Coelestia (=Heavenly Secrets in Latin). The passage above describes how evil spirits interact in the hells of their mind where they meet and are thrown together according to their obsessions and persuasions. One of the many dreadful ways they interact is described in this passage, namely that certain spirits are able to turn other spirits into animals by means of the power of correspondences which governs all causes in the universe.

They do this by fantasizing certain things which inflows into the other spirits and in them becomes the representation of this or that animal. In other words, the victims act as if they've been hypnotized into believing that they were a particular animal. The power of their own delusion is such that it actually turns them into an animal. Others can see the animal and they themselves believe they've become that animal. In this way the dominant spirits can enslave submissive spirits.

This may sound unfair. How can God allow this, and cooperate with it, supplying the power to the bully spirits to torment the victim spirits?

The answer is that God allows it in a totally controlled manner. Every detail of the torture is either allowed to go forward or forbidden and stopped before it starts. This is a form of Divine Therapy for those who refuse to exit from their hell. For instance, the victim spirits get to take their turn to be dominant, and for this intensely loved experience they are willing to endure taking turns. (See also Section xx).

Swedenborg was able to observe various kinds of mental states that has puzzled psychologists and theologians for centuries. These include the visions and voices seen and heard by the prophets and various other people described in the Old Testament. Swedenborg was allowed to experience all the kinds of visions and consciousness raising states that human beings are capable of so that he may contrast them and integrate them into a coherent rational account. Here is one of many such examples.

SE 192. With regard to the second kind of imaginations which are present in those to whom it is granted to separate externals from internals: they are representations which are as vivid when the eyes are closed as in full wakefulness, like those seen in lucid dreams, and sometimes as in a moderate light. Indeed, there is then usually presented a morning light, as it were, with flaming fire, and in that light, and apart from it, there are presented various objects, such as men and other things, as in a moderate light; and during the time there is for the most part conversation with the spirits who are representing those things.

A third kind of imagination is vivid as in semi-wakefulness, conjoined with every sensation, so that there is no difference whatever; but in me this kind existed when the interior man was for a long time separated from the external.

There is also given another state of active or living imagination, which should in particular be called the vision of the prophets, when single spiritual objects are represented by such things as are contained in the letter or the literal sense of the Prophets. It has also been granted me to perceive more subtle and purer representations, but rather imperceptible to me in this state; yet in the former state the objects were in some measure perceptible to me, but not to the spirits.

That the ancients, especially the sons of the Ancient Church, were in that state, and they thus perceived various representations of spirits and angels, can be concluded and known for certain from very many indications, but for many reasons [this state no longer] exists. (SE 192)

In other words, all things in the spiritual world of immortality are created by means of "representations" which obey the laws of correspondences between mental things and their external manifestations as objects and surroundings. The ancients were still able to be conscious of the presence of spirits in their mind because they were socialized to think in terms of correspondences. So when they saw a tree of certain species, they traced it to the presence of the particular spirits whose loves and thoughts correspond to that species of tree. They saw this in the weather, the taste of the food, who happened to show up, the smells in the air, etc. These people were also able to perceive the presence of spirits with them in various other ways, as described above--visions, voices, separation of internal and external consciousness and thus simultaneous reception of stimuli from both the physical and the spiritual worlds.

The action of spirits on other spirits and on us on earth is precisely and totally controlled by God. Here is one description of it:

SE 193. From much long continued experience it was observed that evil spirits could sometimes work or exercise much, sometimes little, malice. The cause of this was disclosed to me today more clearly than before, namely, that so far as their bond is slackened and relaxed by God Messiah through the angels, to that extent do they act evilly; but so far as it is exercised by the angels, to that extent the bond is as it were tightened, that is, the power of acting is taken away, so that at length they are unable to do anything, and do not even know what they are going to do. There is a certain precise and exact weighing, as in a balance, of this loosening and tightening according to the state of the license which God Messiah is willing that the man should be allowed; the balance is so exact that it cannot be described on account of its indefinite varieties. It is the same when they are permitted to speak: in the state in which the bond is slackened, they speak dreadful and filthy things, but in the state of the tightening or as it were contraction of the said bond or license, they speak either from themselves or from others; when they speak from others, which is also of indefinite variety, they then say things which they do not will, thus speak truths contrary to their nature, or else they are entirely ignorant of what they are saying. 1747, Sept. 2, o.s. (SE 193)

This kind of Divine moderation is necessary to maintain balance and order for the sake of the good of all. It's interesting to note that God moderates the operations in our hells by means of operations in our heavens. The operations in the heavenly portion of our mind control every operation in the hell of our mind through the action of correspondences, in other words, mentally. The "angels" control and moderate the "devils" by means of representations and correspondences. This explains why evil spirits can influence us strongly at some times, and not at all at other times. Impulsive behavior that is destructive, such as rage, is an example of the oscillation between two opposed states. We are in a peaceful rational state when the angels "tighten the bond of license" and neutralize completely the inflow of the evil spirits, and when they turn them loose on us, we lose our peace and rationality, and behave aggressively and irrationally.

Another amazing feature of our spiritual world is that we can speak from others instead of from ourselves. Think of ambassadors who are assigned to deliver massages to foreign governments. When the ambassadors speak, whatever they say must conform to their own government's message, and hence they speak not from themselves, as in private exchanges, but from the government they represent. Similarly, spirits can speak from the societies in which they dwell. Or, one spirit can speak from another spirit, so that this other spirit is actually speaking through the mediating spirit who then becomes a mere medium or passive subject. In such passive states spirits can speak things they do not believe or even know about.

In the various quotes from the Writings Sacred Scripture, the words "angel" or "devil" refer to the consciousness or life we experience in our spiritual mind after the second death (see Section xx). The word "spirit" refers to the life we experience after the first death when we are resuscitated and become conscious in our spiritual mind, which begins our conscious life in the mental world of eternity. The word "man" refers to our consciousness or life as we experience it in the natural mind right now, and in which we operate mentally all day long. The word "conjunction" refers to the vertical community of which we are part (see Section xx). This "vertical" or mental membership does not consist of conscious communication, as we do in our physical horizontal community here on earth. The interactions in our spiritual community are purely correspondential and there is no conscious "contact" or sensuous awareness of any kind between them in eternity and an individual on earth still tied to the physical body in time. In general, the operaitons in our affective organ (desires, intentions, loves) determine which "spirits" get to influence the operaitons in our cognitive organ (thoughts, imaginings, conclusions). Our thoughts are therefore influenced through correspondence by the feelings of the spirits to the extent that we share those feelings and attribute them to ourselves as our veryh own. Let's look at some of  the empirical observations about the vertical community that can be found in the Swedenborg Reports.

Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture:

HH 255. That the nature of the conjunction of angels and spirits with man may be understood I am permitted to mention some notable things by which it may be elucidated and verified. When angels and spirits turn themselves to man they do not know otherwise than that the man's language is their own and that they have no other language; and for the reason that they are there in the man's language, and not in their own, which they have forgotten. But as soon as they turn themselves away from the man they are in their own angelic and spiritual language, and know nothing about the man's language. I have had a like experience when in company with angels and in a state like theirs. I then talked with them in their language and knew nothing of my own, having forgotten it; but as soon as I ceased to be present with them I was in my own language. (HH 255)

Here Swedenborg reports that when he was consciously talking to people who were in their hevenly life in eternity ("angels"), he was conscious in his spiritual mind, like they are, but unlike us who are unconscious of the operations going on right now in our spiritual mind in eternity. It's not that we have an alter ego that lives in eternity and has his or her own life. Not like that for that would be irrational since an individual is one person. So we cannot have one individual living in some other world, and another living on earth. It must be the same one and only individual. Although our spiritual mind is operational since our birth, it is not part of our conscious life, conscious experience of self here on earth. Swedenborg, at age 57, suddenly and unexpectedly became conscious in his spiritual mind. This allowed him to see and speak with all those people who are already in the afterlife and are living their eternity conscious in their spiritual mind. After the resucitation process, which occurs a few hours after death, we undergo rapid psychological changes which open up the spiritual consciousness more and more, and at teh same time, closes down the consciousness of the natural mind more and more (see Section xx).

Continuing with how interactions take place in the mental world of eternity:

HH 255 [2]. Another notable fact is that when angels and spirits turn themselves to a man they are able to talk with him at any distance; they have talked with me at a considerable distance as audibly as when they were near. But when they turn themselves away from man and talk with each other man hears nothing at all of what they are saying, even if it be close to his ear. From this it was made clear that all conjunction in the spiritual world is determined by the way they turn.

[3] Another notable fact is that many spirits together can talk with a man, and the man with them; for they send one of their number to the man with whom they wish to speak, and the spirit sent turns himself to the man and the rest of them turn to their spirit and thus concentrate their thoughts, which the spirit utters; and the spirit then does not know otherwise than that he is speaking from himself, and they do not know otherwise than that they are speaking. Thus also is the conjunction of many with one effected by turning.# But of these emissary spirits, who are also called subjects, and of communication by means of them, more will be said hereafter.

# Spirits sent from one society of spirits to other societies are called subjects (n. 4403, 5856).
Communications in the spiritual world are effected by such emissary spirits (n. 4403, 5856, 5983).
A spirit when he is sent forth, and serves as a subject thinks from those by whom he is sent forth and not from himself (n. 5985-5987). (HH 255)

HH 256. An angel or spirit is not permitted to speak with a man from his own memory, but only from the man's memory; for angels and spirits have a memory as well as man. If a spirit were to speak from his own memory with a man the man would not know otherwise than that the thoughts then in his mind were his own, although they were the spirit's thoughts. This would be like the recollection of something which the man had never heard or seen. That this is so has been given me to know from experience. This is the source of the belief held by some of the ancients that after some thousands of years they were to return into their former life, and into everything they had done, and in fact, had returned. This they concluded because at times there came to them a sort of recollection of things that they had never seen or heard. This came from an influx from the memory of spirits into their ideas of thought. (HH 256)

HH 257. There are also spirits called natural and corporeal spirits. When these come to a man they do not conjoin themselves with his thought, like other spirits, but enter into his body, and occupy all his senses, and speak through his mouth, and act through his members, believing at the time that all things of the man are theirs. These are the spirits that obsess man. But such spirits have been cast into hell by the Lord, and thus wholly removed; and in consequence such obsessions are not possible at the present time.#
# External or bodily obsessions are not permitted at the present time, as they were formerly (n. 1983).
But at present internal obsessions, which pertain to the mind, are permitted more than formerly (n. 1983, 4793).

Man is inwardly obsessed when he has filthy and scandalous thoughts about God and the neighbor, and is withheld from making them known only by external consideration, which are fear of the loss of reputation, honor, gain and fear of the law and of loss of life (n. 5990).

Of the devilish spirits who chiefly obsess the interiors of man (n. 4793).
Of the devilish spirits who long to obsess the exteriors of man; that such are shut up in hell (n. 2752, 5990). (HH 257)

HH 254. I have been told how the Lord spoke with the prophets through whom the Word was given. He did not speak with them as He did with the ancients, by an influx into their interiors, but through spirits who were sent to them, whom He filled with His look, and thus inspired with the words which they dictated to the prophets; so that it was not influx but dictation. And as the words came forth directly from the Lord, each one of them was filled with the Divine and contains within it an internal sense, which is such that the angels of heaven understand the words in a heavenly and spiritual sense, while men understand them in a natural sense. Thus has the Lord conjoined heaven and the world by means of the Word.

How the Lord fills spirits with the Divine by His look has also been made clear. A spirit that has been filled by the Lord with the Divine does not know otherwise than that he is the Lord, and that it is the Divine that is speaking; and this continues until he has finished speaking. After that he perceives and acknowledges that he is a spirit, and that he spoke from the Lord and not from himself. Because this was the state of the spirits who spoke with the prophets they said that it was Jehovah that spoke; the spirits even called themselves Jehovah, as can be seen both from the prophetical and historical parts of the Word. (HH 254)

HH 250. But to speak with the angels of heaven is granted only to those who are in truths from good, especially to those who are in the acknowledgment of the Lord and of the Divine in His Human, because this is the truth in which the heavens are. For, as it has been shown above, the Lord is the God of heaven (n. 2-6); it is the Divine of the Lord that makes heaven (n. 7-12); the Divine of the Lord in heaven is love to Him and charity towards the neighbor from Him (n. 13-19); the whole heaven in one complex reflects a single man; also every society of heaven; and every angel is in complete human form, and this from the Divine Human of the Lord (n. 59-86).

All of which makes evident that only those whose interiors are opened by Divine Truths, even to the Lord, are able to speak with the angels of heaven, since it is into these truths with man that the Lord flows, and when the Lord flows in heaven also flows in. Divine truths open the interiors of man because man was so created as to be in respect to his internal man an image of heaven, and in respect to his external an image of the world (n. 57); and the internal man is opened only by means of Divine truth going forth from the Lord, because that is the light of heaven and the life of heaven (n. 126-140). (HH 250)

HH 249. But at the present day to talk with spirits is rarely granted because it is dangerous;# for then the spirits know, what otherwise they do not know, that they are with man; and evil spirits are such that they hold man in deadly hatred, and desire nothing so much as to destroy him both soul and body, and this they do in the case of those who have so indulged themselves in fantasies as to have separated from themselves the enjoyments proper to the natural man.

Some also who lead a solitary life sometimes hear spirits talking with them, and without danger; but that the spirits with them may not know that they are with man they are at intervals removed by the Lord; for most spirits are not aware that there is any other world than that in which they live, and therefore are unaware that there are men anywhere else; and this is why man is not permitted to speak with them in return. If he did they would know.

[Note: In theistic psychology we interpret "not permitted" to mean that the Divine Psychologist prevents the melchanism of communication from becoming active, which would otherwise be possible with anyone, as in the case of Swedenborg after age 57, when God allowed the communications.]

Again, those who meditate much on religious subjects, and are so intent upon them as to see them as it were inwardly within themselves, begin to hear spirits speaking with them; for religious persuasions, whatever they are, when man dwells upon them by himself and does not adapt them to the various things of use in the world, penetrate to the interiors and rest there, and occupy the whole spirit of the man, and even enter into the spiritual world and act upon the spirits there.

But such persons are visionaries and enthusiasts; and whatever spirit they hear they believe to be the Holy Spirit, when, in fact, such spirits are enthusiastic spirits. Such spirits see falsities as truths, and so seeing them they induce not themselves only but also those they flow into to believe them.

Such spirits, however, have been gradually removed, because they began to lure others into evil and to gain control over them. Enthusiastic spirits are distinguished from other spirits by their believing themselves to be the Holy Spirit, and believing what they say to be Divine. As man honors such spirits with Divine worship they do not attempt to harm him. I have sometimes talked with them, and the wicked things they infused into their worshipers were then disclosed. They dwell together towards the left, in a desert place.
# Man is able to talk with spirits and angels; and the ancient people frequently talked with them (n. 67-69, 784, 1634, 1636, 7802).
In some earths angels and spirits appear in human form and talk with the inhabitants (n. 10751, 10752).
But on this earth at this day it is dangerous to talk with spirits, unless man is in true faith, and is led by the Lord (n. 784, 9438, 10751). (HH 249)

HH 248. The speech of an angel or spirit with man is heard by him as audibly as the speech of man with man, yet by himself only, and not by others who stand near; and for the reason that the speech of an angel or spirit flows first into a man's thought, and by an inner way into his organ of hearing, and thus moves it from within; while the speech of man with man flows first into the air and by an outward way into his organ of hearing, and moves it from without. Evidently, then, the speech of an angel or spirit with man is heard within him; but as the organs of hearing are thus equally moved, the speech is equally audible.

That the speech of an angel or a spirit flows down from within even into the ear has been made clear to me by the fact that it flows also into the tongue, causing a slight vibration, but without any such motion as when the man himself by means of the tongue forms the sound of speech into words. (HH 248).

HH 246. THE SPEECH OF ANGELS WITH MAN.

Angels who talk with man do not talk in their own language, nor in any language unknown to man, but in the man's own language, or in some other language with which he is acquainted. This is so because when angels speak with man they turn themselves to him and conjoin themselves with him; and this conjunction of angel with man causes the two to be in like thought; and as man's thought coheres to his memory, and this is the source of his speech, the two have the same language.

Moreover, when an angel or a spirit comes to a man, and by turning to him is conjoined to him, he so enters into the entire memory of the man that he is scarcely conscious that he does not himself know whatever the man knows, including his languages.

[2] I have talked with angels about this, and have said that perhaps they thought that they were addressing me in my mother tongue, since it is so perceived; and yet it was I and not they that spoke; and that this is evident from the fact that angels cannot utter a single word of human language [meaning natural language] (see n. 237); furthermore, human language is natural and they are spiritual, and spiritual beings cannot give expression to any thing in a natural way.

To this they replied that they are aware that their conjunction with the man with whom they are speaking [this means by correspondence and not conscious communication] is with his spiritual thought [this means the unconscious spiritual mind]; but because his spiritual thought flows into his natural thought, and his natural thought coheres to his memory, the language of the man and all his knowledge appear to them to be their own; and that this is so for this reason, that while it is the Lord's pleasure that there should be such a conjunction with and sort of insertion of man into heaven, yet the state of man is now such that there can no longer be such conjunction with angels, but only with spirits who are not in heaven.

[3] When I talked about this with spirits also they were unwilling to believe that it is the man that speaks, insisting that they spoke in man, also that man's knowledge is their knowledge and not the man's knowledge, consequently that everything that man knows is from them. I tried to convince them by many proofs that this is not true, but in vain. Who are meant by spirits and who are meant by angels will be told further on when the world of spirits is treated of. (HH 246)

Communication and cooperation require that people overlap to some extent in their habits of feeling, thinking, and acting out. These standardized habit routines of the threefold-self can be categorized into four main types, which are here called "the four options." These are the four types of behavioral routines we can choose to run off at some particular moment in our daily round of activities. It's up to us which we choose at any one time.

Normally we just react automatically without having the impression that we are choosing our reactions. Nevertheless, these automatic reactions are just old habits that we chose to establish and reinforce in the past. We can consciously choose to modify them so that the new habits will then become our automatic reactions. These new habits are also standardized but they may suit us better, as for example when we choose to switch from negative to positive zones. This switching is indicated on the diagram by the red bridge and the blue bridge.

As discussed in the previous section, our emotions originate, not from ourselves, but from the vertical community to which we are connected moment by moment (see Section xx). It is revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg that God manages these connections, moment by moment, by connecting and disconnecting our mind to particular spirits whose emotions and intentions are felt as our own from ourselves. We may know from theistic psychology that God connects us to spirits and that consequently we experience their emotions as our own. But this knowledge does not change the experience which is that we feel alone in our private world within, and that what we experience seems very much our own. the knowledge from scientific revelation allows us to "rise above it"--above the level of the spin cycle habit. How? By revealing to us what we didn't know or suspect. Namely, that the spin cycle emotions are not our own but feel like our own.

What fundamental difference does this new knowledge make to us?

If we don't know this critical fact and we then believe that our emotions are our own, we then then also tend to believe that if we get rid of them we would have no life left. It would be like a tragic loss because we can no longer be and feel who we really are. Thinking this way makes us very resistant to giving up our negative emotions. In fact it is impossible to do for most people with most of their negative emotions. They just live a life immersed in negative emotions every day, as discussed in Section xx above. But this new knowledge from revelation gives us the choice of letting go hanging on to the old negative emotions. You can consider this as a predictive research idea for which you can obtain objective evidence by self-witnessing your daily emotional spin cycle.

The self-witnessing exercise to be described later will allow you to obtain the data that describes which of the four options you perform during selected days. This will inform you about the character of the spirits you are connected to in various situations during the day. By knowing this about yourself you are able to take charge of your emotional spin cycle in ways that will be described.

Taking conscious rational control of your emotional options will allow God to connect you to spirits that keep you in the positive zones. The Writings reveal that God cooperates with every person, supplying the actual power to perform an option, but the process requires that the individual make a free choice on the basis of the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture.

Positive emotional zones are associated with good spirits while negative zones are associated with evil spirits. As explained before, "spirits" refers to people in the afterlife who dwell permanently in either the heaven or the hell in their mind (see Section xx). Swedenborg confirmed by observation that when our consciousness goes up to the top of the mind called heaven, we see others who are also in their heaven in the mind, and we dwell together in social communities, each communicating their happiness to the others. This is our heavenly immortality. But the same applies to the state of mind in which we descend to the bottom of the mind called the hells. Then we make an infernal community together with others. There too the feelings of each is communicated to all, so that the misery of each never ends.

You have the option now as to which fate will befall you later. Swedenborg discovered to his amazement that those who dwell in a hell together are unwilling to give up their misery and by ascending to their heaven, which is also available to them. Those who tried were unable to support it for more than a few minutes, after which they felt rage and agony which ended only when they threw themselves back into the negativity of their insane emotions. This was the only life they felt comfortable living, even though they were in misery most of the time. Their only relief was to be able to exercise their lusts to the max, which only rarely occurred. The emotions and mental operations in the hells are strictly monitored and controlled by God so that the people there do not destroy each other or torture each other beyond allowable limits.

10.1.4  Getting to Know What the Options Are

How well do you know your own daily emotional spin cycle? There are two methods psychologists use to identify the personality habits of individuals. One approach is indirect and involves asking people to respond to various questions (or "personality scale items") and then to compare an individual's answers to other people's answers or to some standards already established. This indirect method raises reliability and validity issues since the data depend on how accurate people's responses are, or how well they represent what they really do.

A second approach is more direct and consists of having people monitor or observe their feelings, thoughts, and actions as they occur in the course of the day, and make some sort of record for later analysis. In some situations this direct approach offers a better promise of being valid and actual. It is the method of self-witnessing.

The self-witnessing exercise will instruct you to observe your threefold-self at certain challenging times you select during each day and to observe the negative options you are choosing in those situations. This is called "baseline observation week." The second part is called "intervention week" and consists of your attempt to modify your negative emotional spin cycle in that same situation by choosing a positive option instead. The change to a positive option is accomplished through the "bridge technique." This involves talking yourself into switching over from the current option you are using, which is negative, to the positive option that is also available to you.

Look at the diagram again:

Notice the option at the top left "negative about others and the world." Here the threefold self is running off the habit routine of RAGE or ARROGANCE. This affective feeling state or motivation in your mind, seeks and hooks up with a type of cognitive thinking that is called EMOTIONALLY IMPAIRED. When we are in an enraged or arrogant affective feeling state, a compatible cognitive thinking routine is triggered in our mind. This type of cognitive routine is not objective, realistic, or rational but is merely made to suit the negative feeling of rage or arrogance. The negative emotion and the impaired thinking then combine together to produce an overt behavioral routine that is called AGGRESSIVE or DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR.

 In this way the threefold self runs off a series of negative habit routines consisting of a negative feeling coupled with impaired thinking and acted out as destructive behavior. This is one option we have in many situations in which we find ourselves every day (top left option).

Now notice the option at the top right: "positive about others and the world." Here the threefold self is running off the habit routine of RESOLVE with COMPASSION. This affective feeling state or motivation in your mind seeks and hooks up with a type of cognitive thinking routine that is called EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT. When we are in a positive affective state of resolve with compassion, we are highly motivated to do something to solve a problem. The affective feeling habit of resolve (or determination) needs to be associated with the affective feeling habit of compassion. This is what makes it different from rage. When we choose the rage option, all sorts of negative affective feeling habits will come associated with it, such as cruelty, hatred, and insensitivity. But resolve with the compassion option comes associated with positive feeling habits such as compassion, empathy, fairness, and tolerance.

The positive affective feeling state seeks out and triggers a compatible cognitive thinking habit (see Section xx).

Positive thinking activity is objective, realistic, and rational. We are then able to understand the realities of the actual situation instead of misunderstanding it and replacing it with the subjective distortions in thinking caused by negative emotions. The positive affective feeling state of RESOLVE with COMPASSION then seeks out and combines with EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT thinking, and together they produce an overt behavioral routine that is called SUPPORTIVE and CONSTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR. The threefold self runs off a series of positive habits consisting of a positive feeling coupled with emotionally intelligent thinking and acted out as constructive behavior. This is the second option.

The "red bridge" (look at the diagram again) connects the negative and positive portions of the upper half of the diagram. The bridge is shown to connect negative thinking to positive thinking because we have voluntary control over our thinking process, and much less control directly over our feelings. The idea of this approach is that if you voluntarily change your negative thinking into positive thinking--a choice we always can make--then the negative feeling will soon turn into positive. Then the new positive feeling coupled with the positive thinking together will produce the new overt behavior. At that point you're living the new positive option and you've been successful in switching over from the negative option.

Of course this may not last long since a few minutes later a new situation or concern comes along and we can be thrown back into the negative spin cycle. But now we can use the bridge technique again and get ourselves moving in the positive spin cycle. Eventually, with daily practice, we will learn to switch to positive as soon as we observe ourselves in negative mode. In this way we change our life and our personality for the better. The bridge technique gives us a choice to customize our options to suit what's best for us and society.

You use the red bridge to cross from negative thinking to positive thinking, from emotionally impaired thinking to emotionally intelligent thinking. Our ability to use the bridge technique is part of the socialization process that produces all our habits. The red bridge technique consists of talking to ourselves in a certain way so that we stop thinking negatively about someone or some situation and start thinking positively.

We have the capacity to monitor our thinking and to note that it is emotionally impaired or biased. We can then replace this type of negative thinking routine with more objective and emotionally intelligent thinking routines. Of course to use the bridge technique we must be motivated to use the positive option available. Without that motivation we keep re-running or re-cycling the negative routines of the threefold self that we have acquired in the past.

What gives us this motivation for the positive options?

I'm proposing that you examine the prediction I've made that you can switch from negative emotions to positive if you know that the emotions are not your own but that you receive them from the vertical community. What determines whether you're in the negative or positive cycle is your desire to be connected to evil spirits from hell or good spirits from heaven (see Section xx). From inheritance everyone has strong ties to the hells. We adopt negative emotions as a habit and make them our own by holding on to them as our very life. Like a radio station,  television channel, or Web link, we can switch who we're connected to in our vertical community. God always honors our wishes expressed through freedom of choice.

Now look at the the third option of routines that is labeled "negative about the self" (at the bottom left). A general name for that category is DEPRESSION or INADEQUACY.  These associated negative feelings about ourselves seek out and encourage thinking routines that are called PESSIMISTIC or CYNICAL. Feelings of depression are actually feelings of rage turned towards ourselves. Similarly, feelings of inadequacy are actually feelings of arrogance turned against ourselves. Rage against others or the world alternates with rage against the self, and vice versa. The rage-depression spin cycle and the arrogance-inadequacy spin cycle, represent two very common options many people take every day. Note that the feelings of depression-inadequacy combine with pessimistic-cynical thinking to produce the behavioral outcome called SELF-DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR. This is the third option.

The fourth option is located at the bottom right of the diagram. It is labeled "positive about self." In this state we are opting for feelings of enthusiasm and self-confidence which we have available due to our socialization process. These positive feeling states would not last on their own because they need to seek out and be connected with positive thinking habits called here optimistic and realistic thinking. The positive feeling states of enthusiasm and self-confidence act together with the positive thinking routines called optimism and realism, to produce the positive outward routines called SELF-ENHANCING BEHAVIOR. The healthy growth of our personality and character depends on our choosing this fourth option. Self-enhancing behavior includes mental health, discipline, orderliness, mastery, and coping. The well-adjusted, happy, and successful individual chooses this option more than the negative counterpart.

Here is the diagram again. After looking at it, see if you can reproduce it from memory by drawing it on a piece of paper. You can change some of the wording in the diagram to reflect the variations within the same option. Memorizing the diagram is important to be able to keep track of your options. It also gives you a fixed map or reference point that you can relate to as your ideas become clearer and deeper. without memorizing the map the whole experience will be vague rather clear.

Note the "blue bridge" in the diagram allows us to cross from negative thinking about self to positive. The blue bridge represents our capacity to monitor our own thinking process and to recognize what is pessimistic and cynical in it. We can then question this pessimism or cynicism and substitute positive forms of thinking about self called optimism and realism. But optimism by itself could degenerate into unrealistic wish-fulfillment--which is in the negative category. This is why we need to combine optimism with realism to insure that we run off only positive thinking routines that correspond with reality. The blue bridge allows us to talk ourselves out of pessimism or cynicism and switch to more positive and more realistic thinking routines.

The idea of the spin cycle is that as we make ourselves think positive things about ourselves, the positive feelings we have lying dormant will activate themselves since now they can act together with positive thinking routines.

When we make ourselves think optimistically and realistically we create the conditions for bringing on positive feeling routines such as enthusiasm and self-confidence.

Self-enhancing behavior will be the result when positive feelings of enthusiasm and self-confidence combine together with positive thinking called optimism and realism.

The blue bridge may also help you flip-flop in positive zones. Just as rage and depression flip-flop or take turns in the negative zones, in the same way enthusiasm and self-confidence flip-flop with resolve and compassion, keeping us in the positive zones.

Your task in this exercise will be to monitor the negative options you tend to automatically select in particular recurrent situations every day, and then to use the appropriate bridge technique to switch to a positive zone. You will then observe to what extent the bridge technique worked out or not.

Often we seem unable to cross the bridge due to the grip of negative feeling and thinking routines that appear to hold us there captive, and we seem to ourselves unable to get free of them. But at other times we succeed in crossing the bridge and changing the option that our threefold self is performing. Your self-analysis data will indicate when you are more successful and when you are less so. This is the purpose of the project, to give you the objective knowledge of when you are being successful and when not.

What follows below describes and further explains the differences between the four options. The better you can understand these differences, the more you can gain by doing this self-witnessing exercise. So it's important to re-read and study these instructions several times until you are able to memorize and reproduce most of the material. A good way to practice is to explain it to a friend or group of people.

10.1.5  The Negative Spin Cycle

The diagram below summarizes what was said above about "the negative spin cycle." After looking at it, see if you can reproduce it from memory by drawing it on a piece of paper.

Note the one-way horizontal arrows showing the sequence of habits in the threefold self: the negative feeling states motivate you to select negative thinking sequences, and the two together produce the outward negative behaviors. The two-way vertical arrow on the left portrays the negative spin cycle that flip-flops between feelings about others/world, followed by similar feelings about the self, and then, recycling both ways keeping you in the negative zones.

Now let's summarize what was said above about "the positive spin cycle." After looking at the diagram below, see if you can reproduce it from memory by drawing it on a piece of paper.

10.1.6  The Positive Spin Cycle

Note what a wonderful life we would have if we kept recycling only between positive feelings towards others (resolve with compassion) and positive feelings toward self (enthusiasm and self-confidence). It's our choice. One of the topics you should discuss with your friends is why we don't make this choice all the time, or even most of the time. How can you explain this rejection of a happy and productive life? Think about that.

When I think about this I think about our inherited will which is tied to the hells. Not only do we have a predisposition towards selfishness and cruelty, but we are also socialized in a cultural environment that trains us with negative scripts and schemas for our normal behaviors. Since the negative emotions feel natural and habitual, we are well practiced in staying with them. Finally, because the emotions feel like our own, we are unwilling to give them up, fearing that we would lose our very life from which we are who we are.

Here is another view of the negative spin cycle, focusing more specifically on feelings states and how they connect with each other when we recycle them all day long.

10.1.7  The Others-Self Negative Spin Cycle

Note in the diagram above that rage and arrogance are both negative states towards others or the world, and similarly, depression and inadequacy are both negative states towards self. But there is also a specific relation between sub-elements. Feelings of rage flip-flop and are eventually followed by feelings of depression; then, feelings of depression flip-flop and are followed by feelings of rage. Similarly, feelings of arrogance are followed by feelings of inadequacy. It is the arrogance, when turned inward, that produces the feeling of inadequacy. When arrogance is turned outward, others are found to be inadequate in our mind and we want to criticize them and condemn them. When arrogance is turned inward, we make ourselves feel inadequate or flawed in some way. Raging against others eventually is followed by raging against ourselves, which is when we fall into a depressed modality. Then, raging against self is followed again by raging against others/world. To avoid repeating this negative spin cycle over and over again we must use the two bridges. If we succeed in crossing one of the two bridges we then enjoy life in the positive spin cycle.

Let's look at a diagram that summarizes what was said before about the positive spin cycle.

10.1.8  The Others-Self Positive Spin Cycle

The diagram above for the positive spin cycle shows that feelings of resolve towards others and the world can be applied towards the self, in which case we are in the affective state of self-confidence. We cycle between feelings of resolve and feelings of self-confidence. Similarly, we flip-flop between feelings of compassion for others with feelings of enthusiasm with one's life. Resolve refers to the determined motivation to do something about a situation. The flip side of this positive feeling is self-confidence, which is a kind of resolve towards our own inner world. Compassion for others is compatible with resolve. Compassion limits what your resolve is motivated to accomplish. Without compassion, resolve turns into rage or arrogance. When compassion is turned toward the self, it is called enthusiasm. The feeling of enthusiasm is the opposite of depression or dissatisfaction. Depression and dissatisfaction indicate the absence of enthusiasm. As soon as you cycle into the enthusiasm habit routine, depression and dissatisfaction vanish into a distant memory.

Now let's take a closer look at the two bridge-techniques.

10.1.9  The Two Bridges

Red is used to represent our spin cycle options involving others and the world. Recall the expression "I saw red" which refers to a negative feeling state of anger or rage. Red is also the symbol of passion and love. Anger is a negative passion towards others while compassion is a positive passion towards others. Both are red.

Now recall the expression "I feel blue" which refers to a negative feeling state of depression or inadequacy. Blue is the symbol for feelings towards the self. Negative blue for depression and feelings of inadequacy, positive blue for enthusiasm and self-confidence.

Note in the diagram above that the bridge technique is applied to the thinking or cognitive part of the threefold self.

This makes sense since we can control our thinking in a direct way while this is not as easy to do with our feeling or affective state.

Performing the bridge technique depends on two socialized abilities we all have. First, we are capable of observing or monitoring our thinking process, up to a certain point. Second, if we are motivated, we are able to activate what is in our memory in such a way as to run off new thought sequences that are INCOMPATIBLE with those going on at the time.

For example, when we become aware that we are ridiculing someone in our mind (a form of rage or arrogance--negative red feeling), we can remind ourselves that this is unkind and unjust, and going along with this may corrupt our good character (applying the red bridge).

We can also tell ourselves that if we ridicule someone now we are likely to ridicule ourselves later, which hurts, and may lead to depression or feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction (negative flip-flop cycle).

We can elaborate even further on this emotionally intelligent rationale (red bridge), until we are prepared to accept a new appraisal of the person or situation. This whole event may take just a second or two.  Now we no longer feel like ridiculing that individual. We may even experience a flip-flop into the positive blue zone, as we begin to feel good about ourselves, feeling new enthusiasm and renewed self-confidence.

In this way our feeling state changes from negative to positive, and our thinking from emotionally impaired to emotionally intelligent. This is the red bridge.

The red bridge allows us to change the situation that surrounds us. Rather than conflict with others and waste opportunity and productivity--which are the outcomes you obtain from emotionally impaired thinking, we can expect instead initiative, cooperation and productivity--these being the outcomes you obtain from resolve with compassion. The red bridge turns conflict into cooperation, and lost opportunity into productivity or success.

10.1.10  Self-Regulatory Prompts for the Red Bridge

The red bridge promotes productivity and leadership. As the diagram below shows, it consists in bringing up thoughts that are INCOMPATIBLE with emotionally impaired thinking. For example, you might become aware that you're thinking "He doesn't deserve my respect. I'm not going to get along with him." as this person makes a suggestion to you. You're thinking of denigrating things you can do to him as a way of pursuing your dislike for this individual.

But then you decide to apply the red bridge technique to combat your biased and hostile thoughts. From your memory you can bring up several favorable things about this person. The moment you convince yourself that you have no data to the contrary and that your hostile attitude is not justified, your feeling state may change from negative to positive, from feeling hatred or anger to feeling resolve with compassion. You tell yourself you're going to make the effort and see if this person deserves your compassion and good will rather than just assume he doesn't. Already you might feel better as a result of the flip-flop cycle from positive toward others to positive toward self.

We know from the Writings that our positive emotions come from the good spirits in our vertical community. The good spirits ought to be honored as an emotional resource. We can have their good emotions if we are willing to think positive thoughts, and we always have freedom to think as we wish. The only thing that stops us is that we are not thinking of our vertical community so that we don't know that we have a choice. Also, we are not thinking of the consequences to ourselves of exercising negative options. We cannot be happy now when we rage against others or against ourselves. Nor can we be happy in our immortality if we seal our ties to the hells through holding on to negative emotions. When we consider the stakes involved, we are more motivated to change, seeing it as a critical need in our life.

To cross the bridge in your mind you need to say to yourself appropriate self-regulatory sentences. You can prepare them ahead of time, write them on a reminder sheet, etc.

Here are some self-regulatory prompts for the red bridge. You can say them to yourself to strengthen your determination to do something constructive (resolve with compassion--option 2) rather than to remain in the destructive rage mode (option 1)--see if you can memorize them:

1. order yourself to stop ruminating (the compulsive rehearsal of how you're going to get even and retaliate)
    

2. question your cold logic or negative conclusion by qualifying it, saying to yourself:  "Not necessarily" or "Maybe, maybe not" etc. which help weaken the intensity of your negative persuasion
    

3.  make yourself think of relevant counter-information you've been ignoring so far
    

4.  restore balance by reminding yourself to think of both sides of the issue
    

5.  remind yourself that retaliation hurts people including yourself and it's not good
    

6.  remind yourself that all people have an inherent right to be treated with decency
    

7.  remind yourself that aggressive behavior won't bring you what you want
    

8.  consciously reject any fantasies of revenge as uncivilized and beneath you
    

9. reject violence as ineffective in bringing about your goal
    

10. reaffirm the human responsibility you bear to be fair and forgiving
     

11. think of the consequences you will have to deal with and how much trouble that will be
     

12. think of alternative options you have available
     

13. figure out a more effective course of action
     

14. communicate your ideas to the other person and try for reconciliation or compromise
     

15. convince yourself it's better for you to forgive and forget insults
     

16. put yourself in the other's shoes and try to picture their perspective (empathy)
     

17. decide to gather more information before you act
     

18. decide to consult someone before you act
     

19. remind yourself that the way you appear in face and tone of voice is a visible message and counts as acting or doing
     

20. act the opposite of what you feel and say nice things instead of not nice
     

21. decide you're going to pursue this without anger but with resolve or determination with compassion

etc. etc.

10.1.11  Self-Regulatory Prompts for the Blue Bridge

The blue bridge promotes emotional health and objective self-confidence. As the diagram below shows, it consists in bringing up thoughts that are INCOMPATIBLE with pessimistic and cynical thinking. For example, you might become aware that you're thinking "He doesn't like me" as this person turns down an invitation to lunch with you. You're thinking in a suspicious way about him, telling yourself that he is just giving an excuse for not wanting to be with you. But then you decide to apply the blue bridge technique to combat your pessimistic or suspicious thoughts. From your memory you can bring up several situations when your friend showed signs of liking you. The moment you convince yourself that you have no data to the contrary and that your suspicion is not justified, your feeling state may change from negative to positive, from feeling depressed or dissatisfied to feeling enthusiasm or self-confident.

Notice that you can't directly make yourself feel enthusiastic or self-confident when you're thinking pessimistically or cynically. Pessimistic and cynical thinking are compatible with feelings of depression, dissatisfaction, or inadequacy and incompatible with feelings of enthusiasm and self-confidence. You can only feel self-confident or enthusiastic when your thinking is optimistic and realistic. The bridge technique works because it depends on your ability to change your thinking, and it does not attempt to change your feelings directly. But once the thinking changes, more compatible feelings are then encouraged.

The blue bridge lets you cross from option 3 (negative blue thinking) to option 4 (positive blue thinking). Negative blue feeling is an emotional state in which you try to persuade yourself that there is something wrong with you and you should feel bad or unhappy about it. This negative routine includes depression, generalized anxiety, and a pessimistic or cynical outlook on yourself as well as on others. Negative blue thinking is activated, supported, and reinforced by negative blue feeling.

To make use of the blue bridge you need to use optimistic self-regulatory sentences that create resistance in your mind to continuing with the pessimistic and cynical thinking. These self-regulatory sentences move you across to positive blue thinking by creating psychological resistance in your mind against pessimistic or cynical thinking.

Here are examples of prompts you can use to create resistance to pessimism or cynicism, and to facilitate the opposite type: optimistic and realistic thoughts:

1. question your assumptions that lead to negative conclusions
    

2. tell yourself you're catastrophizing in an irrational way
    

3. tell yourself "Stop it!" when you witness yourself ruminating compulsively
    

4. do a scenario analysis of the situation, writing down all the versions
    

5. reject the idea that the worst is going to happen
    

6. do a re-appraisal of the situation and find some good things about it
    

7. go over in your mind what others have said to you
    

8. remind yourself there's a big difference between fantasy and actuality
    

9. remind yourself there's a big difference between possibility and probability
    

10. tell yourself you don't want to be known as a cynical person
     

11. tell yourself you don't want to be known as a pessimist
     

12. reject any idea that you don't need anyone's support or that you are self-sufficient
     

13. remind yourself that change is possible
     

14. reaffirm your belief that you deserve dignity and love
     

15. tell yourself you want to be civilized and not break things
     

16. tell yourself you're going to feel better about yourself by switching emotional style

17. tell yourself you're going to be more productive by switching emotional style
     

18. tell yourself you have the capacity to be successful and your turn has come
     

19. reassure yourself that you are capable and review your accomplishments

etc. etc.

Now let's take a look at the four options in detail to see how each actually consists of many habits that act together. By studying these lists you will be able to recognize and correctly categorize what your threefold self is doing in any situation you are observing. See if you can reproduce most of the lists from memory.

10.1.12  Option 1: Negative towards others and the world

feeling

        Negative affect against others can be summarized under the category of RAGE or ARROGANCE. This refers to a desire or motive to hurt someone or to damage and destroy something. This emotional option includes a large collection of negative feeling habits towards others and the world such as:

1. desire to harm or cause injury or loss to someone for the sake of vengeance
    

2. hatred or the desire to torture or kill someone, or to make them suffer
    

3. wanting to condemn someone as worthless or useless
    

4. wanting to discriminate against someone due to your prejudice
    

5. feeling like throwing something or punching out in blind fury
    

6. enjoying mocking someone or putting them down
    

7. wanting to get someone into trouble out of envy or jealousy
    

8. wanting to insult someone to make them feel bad
    

9. wanting to hurt someone's reputation
    

10. wanting to make someone feel dirty or ashamed
     

11. sabotaging a group activity to get back at someone
     

12. profiling people negatively on the basis of race, religion, age, or gender
     

13. being indifferent to how your actions affect others negatively
     

14. rejecting legitimate authority when you feel like it
     

15. not caring about others when you expose them to risk
     

16. allowing yourself to cheat or lie when you feel like it
     

17. losing your temper but not feeling like apologizing for it later
     

18. allowing yourself to loaf or not do your duties when you feel like it
     

19. allowing yourself to miss appointments, phone calls, or be late
     

20. feeling lack of sympathy for someone who needs your help
     

21. allowing yourself to misuse things or be careless and negligent

etc. etc.

thinking

        Negative cognitions towards others are made of emotionally impaired thinking routines. This type of thinking process is biased, inaccurate, and irrational. For example, we might assume that someone wanted to insult us when in fact there was no such intention. It's common to make mistakes and exaggerate when we think in this faulty manner. Emotionally impaired thinking is encouraged or facilitated by anger or arrogance. When you feel rage or disdain towards someone, you begin to think in an impaired fashion, making the wrong assessment of the situation, losing the sense of reality. Negative feelings and negative thoughts always function together and support each other. It's common to be aware of our thoughts but most people are less aware of their own feelings. This emotional option includes a large collection of negative thinking habits such as:

1. planning to take revenge or to retaliate no matter what
    

2. engaging in fantasies of violence or torture
    

3. thinking about all the things you're going to say to upset or insult someone
    

4. compulsively going over and over again some past conflict situation
    

5. using a biased train of thoughts called self-serving logic
    

6. conveniently ignoring relevant information
    

7. exaggerating or being inaccurate in order to justify our rage or arrogance
    

8. keeping blinders on to maintain one's skewed thinking
    

9. interpreting many things as insulting that are not meant that way
    

10. not considering alternatives  (rigidified thinking)
     

11. maintaining an attribution bias that favors self and makes others to be always at fault
     

12. putting things together in a false sequence that supports your side
     

13. justifying something wrong we did instead of accepting responsibility for it
     

14. discriminating against someone on the basis of their family, race, or religion
     

15. rejecting something because it comes from an authority
     

16. accepting something uncritically because it fits with one's prejudices
     

17. thinking in a stereotyped way even if it's irrational
     

18. maintaining views and attitudes without examining their logic, rationality, or consistency
     

19. being suspicious of people without rational cause
     

20. thinking badly of people from habit or amusement

etc. etc.

doing

        Negative sensorimotor behavior does not occur by itself. It is preceded by negative feeling and thinking. For instance, if you're feeling anger towards someone (option 1) and you become aware of negative thoughts, you frequently act out your anger by behaving aggressively or destructively. You may feel like being violent in some situation in which you feel rage and at the same time think thoughts that justify and reinforce the rage. You are experiencing the spin cycle of option 1 back and forth for minutes or hours. But in other situations it's dangerous to express your hatred and judgment in overt action such as saying something or making an insulting face or gesture, or throwing something. In that case we inhibit the overt doing and our rage remains private.

Here are examples of negative red doing (sensorimotor behavior):

1. hearing your voice as shrill or abnormal
    

2. attacking someone in anger using your body, an object or weapon
    

3. standing in a hostile or aggressive pose to threaten someone
    

4. yelling at people to make them feel bad
    

5. speaking with a sarcastic tone to insult someone
    

6. gesturing insults or using offensive, mocking, or ridiculing language
    

7. setting your face into menacing expressions
    

8. writing an insulting or hurtful letter or note
    

9. leaving an insulting message
    

10. driving off in a hurry, screeching your tires to show you're mad
     

11. driving fast to take out your anger on something
     

12. making an irate phone call
     

13. deliberately playing loud music to annoy someone or just due to lack of caring
     

14. damaging property to retaliate or get even
     

15. sabotaging something (throwing a monkey wrench) out of spite
     

16. breaking your promise or commitment because you're mad

 etc. etc.

Make sure you have the main diagram of the four options pictured in your mind as you go through these lists. For your convenience, here is the diagram again:

10.1.13  Option 2: Positive towards others and the world

feeling

Positive red feelings (upper right half of diagram) are perfect substitutes for negative red feelings. All red feelings are "hot" or intense and powerful, but it makes a difference if they are negative hot or positive hot. Negative red hot feelings are associated with rage or arrogance (option 1). Positive red hot feelings are associated with resolve and compassion (option 2). Resolve, or determination, is an intense motivation for protecting something valuable to society, like a cause or principle you feel strongly about. For instance, instead of complaining and getting mad, you decide to do something practical to change a situation. Sometimes the feeling of resolve appears to others as anger, but it's not. For instance, anger (or rage) is the strong desire to punish, destroy or injure by an aggressive act, whereas resolve with compassion is the strong desire to protect or support something by democratic or humanitarian means provided by law and conscience. The feeling of compassion has to be added to resolve so that you don't fall back on blind anger. Compassion is a feeling of support for someone who needs help. It is the desire to assist, rescue, and protect what we consider valuable or loved. The feeling of compassion includes the fear to injure someone, and so it is the opposite of anger (the desire to hurt someone). Resolve combined with compassion (option 2) is the perfect antidote to anger and rage (option 1).

Here are examples that can help you better observe and describe your <="color:red">feelings that fall in option 2, called resolve with compassion.

1. rejecting your impulse to be violent or to injure someone or something
    

2. promoting in yourself the feeling of compassion
    

3. promoting in yourself the desire for peace or the desire to forget and forgive
    

4. strengthening the desire to protect or promote something worthwhile
    

5. honoring your commitment to do something constructive and avoid conflict
    

6. not taking yourself too seriously when feeling offended
    

7. seeing the humor of your predicament and laughing at the whole thing
    

8. feeling sympathy or caring for the other person as a human being
    

9. wanting to resolve the problem and reconnect when feeling separated
    

10. not wanting to hurt the relationship by being angry or hostile
     

11. placing trust in the system and relying on it to work itself out
     

12. compelling yourself to act according to your higher values and principles
     

13. giving yourself permission to reconnect by forgetting your pride
     

14. feeling good about being fair-minded and civilized
     

15. being ready to be conciliatory for the sake of peace and order
     

16. feeling relief not to have to be angry any more
     

17. looking after other people's comfort and safety
     

18. exerting control over how much force is used when necessary
     

19. fighting to protect what's yours without hatred or malice
     

20. refusing to participate in activities that you consider harmful or unjust
     

21. feeling responsible to carry out our duties and promises

etc. etc.

thinking

        Positive red thinking has to be compatible with positive red feeling and the two mutually support and reinforce one another. Positive red thinking is the opposite of negative red thinking and can be used to counteract it. This is called applying the red bridge technique. The negative and positive thinking are incompatible and cannot exist simultaneously in our mind with the same force so that one wins and inhibits or suppresses the other. When the negative thinking is strong or pervasive in our mind, the positive is weakened and stays in the background, rendered ineffective for now. This is called seeing red--which refers to impaired thinking due to negative emotions.

We have the ability, from a higher motivation of self-interest and conscience, to perform positive thinking routines in order to counteract the negative thinking routine we are performing in some particular situation. Emotionally impaired thoughts (option 1) are personal, skewed, inaccurate, and unrealistic, while emotionally intelligent thoughts (option 2) are social, objective, realistic, and accurate. Emotionally intelligent thoughts include stopping your negative thinking routines and making yourself run off positive thinking routines such as considering better alternatives you have in a situation, and their positive outcomes. These positive thoughts interact and reinforce positive feeling routines.

doing

        Positive red doing is to act in a supportive and constructive manner. This is the sensorimotor outcome of positive feeling and positive thinking acting together. Feelings of resolve with compassion seek out and encourage emotionally intelligent thinking routines, and the two together produce constructive and supportive behavior such as cooperation, friendship, and sharing. Examples include:

1. hearing your voice as normal and sociable
    

2. acting safe and being careful of the safety of others
    

3. softening your stance or expression so it's not perceived as threatening
    

4. keeping your voice down and acting with civility
    

5. speaking with a neutral tone that would not be considered aggressive
    

6. finding something good to say, counteracting the negative
    

7. showing patience and being accommodating
    

8. keeping a pleasant expression on your face
    

9. removing any insult, sarcasm, or condemnation when writing a letter or note
    

10. leaving only polite and reasoned messages for others
     

11. inhibiting any overt show of being mad or acting in anger
     

12. driving carefully and lawfully even when you're upset
     

13. postponing making an irate phone call, never making it
     

14. controlling loud music (etc.) so as not to annoy someone
     

15. being careful with other people's property
     

16. cooperating for the greater good even when you feel like sabotaging
     

17. keeping your promise or commitment even if you're upset

etc. etc.