A Man of the Field
Forming The
Volume 1: Reformation
The
Struggle Against Nonduality
Volume 2: Enlightenment
The
Spiritual Sense of the Writings
Volume 3: Regeneration
Spiritual
Disciplines For Daily Life
Volume 4: Uses
The New
Church Mind In Old Age
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By Leon
James
October
2002
(draft 17a)
Author
information appears at the end. This document is in the process of being
revised. Please note the draft version marked on top. To print this document,
see Printing Note at the end.
A ìfieldî means doctrine (AC 368)
A "man" signifies faith and
truth (AC 427; 4823)
Volume 1
Reformation
The
Struggle Against Nonduality
Chapter 3
Table of Contents
Access to other Chapters
and Volumes here:
2. The New Testament does
not contain any nonduality.
1.
Who Runs The Universe: The Divine Father Or The Divine Human?
3. Trinity of Persons
versus Unity of Three Aspects in One Person
1.
Spiritual Unity Is Different From Nonduality
4. People are saved apart
from their religion
1.
Everyone Can Be Regenerated
2.
Regeneration Leads To Enlightenment
5. Mind-Body Nonduality and
God-Cosmos Nonduality
1.
God Is Separate From Creation
6. Christian Science
Nonduality
7. Secular nonduality in
Objectivism, Skepticism, and the Aquarian Conspiracy
8. Rudolf Steinerís Christian
Occult Science
9. Anti-semitism and
Holocaust Theology
1.
Tenets Of Holocaust Theology
2.
The Victims In The Afterlife
3.
The Spiritual Meaning Of Anti-Semitism..
4.
The Old Testamentís View Of The Chosen People
5.
All Old Testament Details Represent The Lord
6.
The Meaning Of ìJewsî In The New Church Mind
7.
Anti-Semitism Is An Evil Love of the Unregenerate Mind
Titles for the Abbreviated
Citations in the Book
Full Text Free Online Access to All Swedenborgís
Writings:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Falsities ought by
all means to be rooted out (INV 16)
Chapter 3, Section 1
New-age
belief systems in the
q God is the only reality.
q Creation is the splintering of the
God-consciousness into individual minds filled with temporary qualities that
appear to have real existence--good and evil, true and false.
q Salvation consists in remembering
oneself as the only God and emptying oneself of all that is good or evil, true
or false.
q This can only be accomplished by
becoming a disciple to a self-realized ìLiving Masterî who has divine-like
powers for appearing unconsciously to the disciples and effecting healing,
forgiving, and setting things right.
q Without this intervention people are
compelled to live the life of karma through many reincarnations.
q Progress towards liberation from
this life of illusion is possible through meditation, vegetarianism, and the
abandonment of moral and intellectual distinctions and struggles.
q At one point one experiences
enlightenment and cosmic consciousness. One discovers and remembers oneself as
the one God. In that highest state one is capable of omnipresence and
omnipotence and one shares the bliss with others, helping them to the same
realization.
Regarding
reincarnation, the mystery was forever solved and laid to rest in the
revelations of the Writings:
God's
omnipotence shines forth also from the heaven that is above or within our
visible heaven, and from the globe there that is inhabited by angels, as ours
is by men. There are wonderful testimonies there to the Divine omnipotence; and
as these have been seen by me and revealed to me, I am permitted to mention
them. All men that have died from the first creation of the world are there;
and these after death continue to be men in form, but are spirits in essence.
(AE 1133)
Imported
ideas of nonduality are harmful when Christians adopt any of them because they
weaken the fundamental love they must have for the Lordóthe First and Greatest
Commandment. The Writings teach that one cannot love an unknown and invisible
God (TCR 339). Salvation and eternal life depend on allowing the Lord to
regenerate us. This is possible only to the extent that we cooperate and suffer
ourselves to undergo spiritual temptations (NJHD 197; AC 227). We cannot
accomplish this without acknowledging in our mind the Lord as the Divine Person
to Whom we must go for every step in our regeneration (AR 750). Any nonduality
that removes the duality of a Divine Person, distinct and separate from self,
interferes with our ability to think of God as Divine Person. This is a form of
Christian paganism (AR 750).
This
potential danger also applies to
These
attempts at connections may not pose a serious danger when it is left at the
broadest general level of comparison such as these assertions: Religion is
essential, there is God, there is the spiritual, there is evil, there are
spirits, there is heaven and hell, there is revelation. But as soon as one is
led to unpack the more specific concepts that make up these ideas of God,
spirit, and evil, a whole new ideational world comes to view. This is a strange
world that serves a strange God and can lead a Christian to spiritual
confusion. There is far more danger for those who confirm themselves of these
opposing ideas through comparisons and justifications from the Writings. It is
prudent to examine under what conditions such connections are beneficial or a
hindrance to understanding the rational ideas of the Writings.
A neighbor
acquaintance recently told me that a Hindu man regularly attends her Bible
study class. At first she thought this was odd but she changed her mind as he
kept pointing out similarities between the Bible and Hinduism. She was
especially impressed by his idea of ìone-mindednessî which she explained was
the notion that God is the actual power behind good and bad events that happen.
If you worry about the bad things happening you are dual-minded but since there
is only one Power the bad things are just as much Godís doing as the good
things. This gave her a sense of relief since she no longer had to worry about
anything happening since all is Godís doing.
She didnít
use the word nonduality but itís clear that thatís what she admitted into her
mind. Itís the nonduality between good and evil as having the same source. To a
Christian mind this thinking is pernicious and insidious, and if admitted,
spiritually injurious. The idea is attractive to the unregenerate mind because
it hides oneís responsibility in distinguishing between falsities and truths
and, hating evil and loving good. The Writings teach
that only good can come from God and that evil comes from self, hence hell,
which is turned away from God and in opposition to Him (AC 4997). Truth from
God flows into the soul and mind of every human being and then each individual
adapts it and sometimes turns it this way or that, and at last into the
opposite of truth. This falsity (or falsified truth) in the mind is better
suited to oneís evil loves, and the two couple each other in the infernal
marriage (HH 377). Once this is accomplished (or confirmed), hell rules the
mind. The evil never comes from God (DLW 264). Good and evil are dualities in
relation to each other and in relation to God.
The idea
that evil comes from God (nonduality), when admitted into the
Chapter 3, Section 2
Hindu
nonduality is affecting how some Christians may come to view the Lordís
revelations in the New Testament concerning Himself as being one with the
Father. Here is one example of how some New Testament verses are being commingled
within nonduality:
From: Christmas Thought: The Nondual Teachings Of Christ by Pieter Schoonheim Samara (Web document accessed
April 2002 at: www.nonduality.com/1208ps.htm
"All things were made by him, and without him was not
anything made that was made." John I: 3 "That (Christ) was the true
Light, which lighteth every man that is born into this world." John I: 9
Christ to John in Revelations, Ch I: 8: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the ending" sayeth the Lord, "which is, and which was,
and which is to come, the Almighty." "For I have not spoken of
myself, but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should
say, and what I should speak." John 12: 49
(Ö) One might think from reading these passages that Christ
always speaks as the Atman and of the Father as Brahman, or as the Self
realized being One in relation to the All pervasive
and timeless Self. Just as
This
non-dual teaching is easily paraphrased as follows: The part of you that sees
(the seer, one's Self) is your true light. Therefore, if you hold on to (i.e.,
abide as) the seer (subject-"I"), singly or exclusively (i.e.,
relinquishing attention to thoughts), you will have illumination - or what some
call the "enlightenment of the whole body". This is said to be the
exact instruction given in the non-dual Vedanta tradition, with the same
described outcome, as already discussed above.
It is known
from the Writings that when the Lord referred to Himself and the Father as One,
He was referring to the identity of Personhood between Himself and the Father.
No one was able to comprehend this at that time, or later, until the new
revelations of the Second Coming effected in Swedenborgís Writings (completed
in 1771). No one today comprehends the Divine Father/Son relation save those
who acknowledge the Writings as the Lord in His Word of the Second Coming, as a
result of which they receive enlightenment from the Lord, in proportion to their
willingness to suffer themselves to be regenerated by Him. The Writings
themselves assert this idea as a central tenet (De Verbo 12).
This
identity of Personhood is not to be considered a form of nonduality, as is done
in the Schoonheim quote above. Those who think within the Eastern philosophy
system interpret the Father/Son relation as a nonduality in the sense that the
illusory self of the individual can end, leaving behind God alone as the one
only reality. Transferring this reasoning to the New Testament, they see Jesus
as the illusory Self (Atman) that is to be transcended or eliminated at
illumination, leaving only the Father. This nonduality is entirely opposed to
the
1. Who Runs The Universe: The Divine Father Or The Divine Human?
Sixth: This
One Only and the Self is the Lord from eternity, or Jehovah. It was shown in
THE DOCTRINE OR THE NEW JERUSALEM CONCERNING THE LORD that God is One in
essence and in person, and that this God is the Lord; and that the Divine
itself, which is called Jehovah the Father, is the Lord from eternity; that the
Divine Human is the Son conceived from His Divine from eternity and born in the
world, and that the Divine Proceeding is the Holy Spirit. (DP 157:9)
This
passage indicates how the Divine Rational can resonate by correspondence in our
interior-rational perception. The passage is describing a spiritual truth about
the Lord. We can resonate to it by allowing the Letter to stand for this
spiritual truth, only by correspondence. This orientation to the passage allows
the literal meaning to recede somewhat so it doesnít dominate and become opaque
instead of translucent. The expression is used, ìthe Lord from eternity, or
Jehovah.î At first the literal meaning dominates the internal truth, and so
makes itself opaque, hiding the spiritual tucked within it. But then we ask the
question: How do we take this expression as a correspondence for its spiritual-rational
truth?
ìThe Lord from eternity, or Jehovah.î Who is the Lord from eternity? In the
literal meaning this refers to the contrastive expression ìthe Lord born in
time.î We are familiar with the idea that ìthe Lord born in timeî is Jesus, who
glorified His Human and made it one with the Divine (xx). We are familiar with
the Divine as the Father, or Jehovah. So in the Letter we have the idea that
the identity of Personhood was an achieved identity. Therefore, this important rational
truth follows: We are not to think that it was Jehovah who descended from the
Heaven under the assumed name and identity of Jesus. This truth is proven by
the distinction the passage makes between ìThe Lord from eternityî vs. ìthe
Lord born in time.î The Lord born in time, namely the Child Jesus, was not born
glorified. The Child Jesus was Divine, as specified in the New Testament and
the Writings. But we have to enter into a more spiritual view of how this is
true. So the literal must recede, as the spiritual comes to the fore.
This more interior rational
perception is that Jesus and Jehovah are not the same, though they are the same
Person.
Looked at
from the literal, this sentence sounds like a contradiction or a metaphor for
something vague, not specified. But look at it from the idea that the sentence
is a correspondence for the interior-rational idea. In this new orientation,
the literal becomes less opaque allowing us to perceive the interior, to some
varying extent. The sentence is an instance of the spiritual Doctrine discussed
throughout the book. By looking at it as a correspondence, we can reflect of
how it applies to our willing and thinking every hour of the day. This makes
sense since the glorification series recapitulate how we are to be regenerated
(xx). Jesus had a threefold self as we do, meaning He had inherited and
acquired affections in the will, He had memory-knowledges from the Old
Testament that He acquired by studying it as the Word, and He had a
sensorimotor mind that served to exert control over His corporeal functions. The
Writings explain that, as Jesus grew He experienced a
revelation from within that He was the Word He was reading (xx). This happened
at an early age in childhood and the details of it are explained Arcana
Coelestia when discussing the Call of Abraham and Abramís first realization of
the existence and presence of Jehovah (xx).
Now Jesus
knew who He was and how He is to redeem the human race. He was the same Person
as Jehovah, the Lord from eternity, but He was not the same conscious
awareness. Applying this to ourself: If you have undergone reformation you can
ask yourself: Was this the same me before and after? As I look back on myself,
I shudder at how I was. But I can also look at myself today and have plenty
things to be aghast about. Myself who is feeling
ashamed, aghast, and repentant is myself from eternity because it is my
conscience, and my conscience is the Lord (xx). Myself
from eternity is as different from myself born in time, as heaven is different
from earth, or as an angel is different from a man on earth. Yet it would be
foolish to say that Iím not the same person.
When I get
to heaven and I become an angel, what happens? It is an image of the
glorification series. My self born on earth is united to myself born from
eternity, and thus I am an angel. The same Person as Jehovah is not the same
willing, thinking, and sensing by Jesus. Myself born from eternity is my
rational consciousness as my conscience. This is the correspondence to the
Divine. When you read about conscience in the Writings you are being told
something about how the Divine of the Lord is within His Human. This is what we
call the Divine Human, namely, how the Lord from eternity is within the Lord
born in time.
Note
further, that it would be foolish to think that Jehovah does things by means of
Jesus, as many people believe who pray the Father in the Name of Jesus (xx). It
would be equivalent in saying that myself from eternity does things by means of
myself born in time. In other words, everybody sees that we cannot go around in
our daily activities and claim that we are not doing the things, but our
conscience is. This is speaking foolishly. Instead, we say that we are doing
the things from conscience, or in accordance with conscience. Jehovah does not
act by means of Jesus, but rather, Jesus acts from Jehovah, or in accordance
with Jehovah (xx). ìThe expression, ìI and the Father are oneî refers to the
idea that, since the Lord glorified Himself, it is the Human of the Lord that
now acts. It acts from the Divine, or in accordance with the Divine.
The mind
that thinks that the Father acts by means of Jesus, or for the sake of Jesus, is
in the Letter, which is natural. The mind that thinks the Jesus acts from the Father, is a
The mind in
the natural of the Letter cannot see a distinction between the two ways of
phrasing it, and whatever difference there may be, it cannot see it. What you
canít see, you canít understand, and what you canít understand you canít love,
and what you canít love is not yours, hence useless for salvation. So the Lord
gives us to see the distinction. We do not see distinctly or clearly, to be
sure. This is a matter of further and further enlightenment about something we
already have implanted within the initial perception of it. Think
how you would feel if someone persisted in addressing your conscience instead
of you. It would be ludicrous and could not support normal social relations, hence all of society would fall. This is why the
There is a
resistance in us to the idea that it is not the Divine Father who runs things
in the universe, but the Divine Human as Jesus, who runs the universe from the
Divine Father. Our evil affections have a hope of surviving in us if it is the
Divine Father who runs things, but they are annihilated and banished in us if
it is the Divine Human who runs things. The reasons for this will be confirmed
one day by the Letter as the men of the Church are gradually regenerated. We
need the idea of the Divine Human running the universe, in order to regenerate.
We cannot regenerate as long as we hold on to the notion that it is the Divine
Father who runs things.
To the
Western Christian Church there is an indigenous nonduality between Father and
Son. The Athanasian Creed asserts that Father and Son are of ìone substanceî
but of ìtwo Persons.î Both propositions are false and led to the vastation of
that Church (AE 114; xx). The idea of one substance is a nonduality and was
forced upon the mind by the necessity to maintain the idea of ìTwo Divine
Persons from Eternity.î Without knowledge of discrete degreesÝ (DLW 173-281) the mind can only think
of one substance for both Father and Son. Nonduality is what the mind falls
back on again and again without the knowledge of discrete degrees (to be found
only in the Writings). The duality in all of the Writings applies here as well:
The Father is the substance called Esse or Divine Love; the Son is the form of
the substance, called Existere or Divine Truth. This duality of substance and
form is also a duality in aspects of function because function or use arises
from substance in a particular form (DL 4).
Chapter 3, Section 3
The concept
of ìunityî is entirely different from the concept of nonduality. In unity
dualities do not change or lose their absolute and permanent distinctiveness,
but rather contribute to a new function (or use), so that the function possible
when there is a union is higher or more perfect than the function possible when
the two or more are single and are not united into one. In God, infinite
dualities are united into one (DLW 17, 22). The Lord sees the entire human
raceópast, present, and future, as one Grand Human in which numberless
dualities and distinctions function together in an integrated whole (HH 59).
Each elements in such a union contribute something diverse and unique to the
whole as is communicated mutually to every one else, thus enhancing the
perfection of the whole. In contrast, a collection of homogenous elements
cannot function as a unity.
The
Writings teach a view of the Holy Spirit that is compatible with this rational
idea of unity. The Lordís management of the universe has three universal
aspectsócreating, preserving, and re-creating. ìCreatingî refers to bringing
the physical and spiritual worlds into existence. ìPreservingî refers to
managing every event so that the whole doesnít break down and keeps growing and
being perfected. ìRe-creatingî refers to new creations within whatís already
been created, so that the perfection of the whole can continue to eternity. In
ancient times these three universal functions of God were represented by
different Names given to God. For creating, the Name
of Creatoróin Christian tradition Jehovah, or the Father. For preserving, the Name of the SonóJesus Christ or the
Messiah, in Christian tradition. For re-creating,
the Name of the Holy Spirit. In religious terms, the three functions are
Creator, Savior, and Holy Spirit.
These three functions represent three evolutionary steps in the human raceís capacity to relate to God more and more spiritually, rather than naturally. For instance, Jehovah the Creator was revealed in the Old Testament thousands of years ago. Then, Jesus Christ the Messiah was revealed in the