This is Volume 1
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
By Leon
James
October
2002
(draft 18)
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A “field” means doctrine (AC 368)
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truth (AC 427; 4823)
Volume 1
Table of Contents
1.
The Writings Are A Divine Scientific Revelation
2.
The Writings Are The Lord’s Second Coming
3.
Heaven Is Created From Rational Love
4. A
Divine Revelation That Surpasses All Others
5.
Swedenborg’s Scientific Experiments In The Spiritual World
6.
Swedenborg’s Dual Citizenship—Natural And Spiritual
7.
This Book Is About Regeneration
REFORMATION: THE INWARD STRUGGLE AGAINST NONDUALITY
The New Church Mind is to
be Formed by the Writings Exclusively
3.
Spiritual Truths Understood Naturally and Spiritually
4.
The Great Battle Of Nonduality Vs. Duality
5.
Enlightenment From The Lord
7. At
The Threshold Out Of Hell Into Heaven.
8.
Cooperation in our Regeneration
9.
The Lord’s Relationship to All Religions
10.
The Writings As The Exclusive Source For Spiritual Truths
11.
Separating Nonduality and Duality in the Mind
12.
Reformation by Means of the Writings
13.
Old and New Testament From Perspective Of The Writings
14.
The Writings Are The Last Revelation
15.
The Writings Are For The Rational Mind.
17.
The Birth Of The Interior-Natural
18.
Reformation And Regeneration Begin In Early Adulthood
19.
Nonduality Fills The Culture Around Us.
20.
Two Methods For Fighting Nonduality In The Mind
Absolute Opposition Between
Duality and Nonduality
1.
Religious Membership Not Required For Salvation
2.
Revelation Is Necessary For Spiritual Truths
3.
The New Rational Consciousness of God.
4.
Nonduality is from Self-intelligence
5.
Nonduality In The Mind Opposes Regeneration
2. Incompatibility with the
Writings
4. Duality is the only
reality
1.
The New Age Of The Second Coming
5. The natural and
spiritual mind
1.
Nonduality Is In The Unregenerate Natural Mind
2.
The Spiritual Begins With The Rational
3.
The Spiritual In The New Testament
6. Why nonduality can be
attractive
Eastern Nonduality in
Western Thinking
1. The Writings do not
contain any nonduality
2. No
Overlap Between Nonduality And Duality.
3. The notion of
”experiencing nonduality”
4. “Sacred Tantric Sex”
versus Conjugial Love
1.
Nonduality Between The Physical And The Spiritual
3.
Hell Is A Choice, Not A Punishment
7. The Writings are not
like other books or systems.
1.
Rational Versus Corporeal Spirituality.
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 Steiner’s
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 Testament’s View Of The Chosen People
5.
All Old Testament Details Represent The Lord
6.
The Meaning Of “Jews” In The New Church Mind
7.
Anti-Semitism Is An Evil Love of the Unregenerate Mind
2. The Secular Spirituality
of Gurdjieff
1.
Debunking Psychology Concepts
2.
Commingling Secular Psychology With New Church Dualism
3. The secular
Swedenborgianism of Henry James, Sr.
1.
Nondualities In Henry James
4. Spiritual Christianity
of Charles Augustus Tulk
5. Duality between good and
truth
1.
When Good And Truth Are Disunited
2.
The Duality Or Distinctness Of All Things
6. Psychological Nonduality:
Near Death Experiences
2.
The Unregenerate Natural Mind Is Entirely Nondualist
3.
Increase In The Number Of NDE Reports.
4.
NDE As A Medical Phenomenon
5.
Theistic Science Research Is Needed
6.
The Rational Nature Of Genuine Spiritual Experience
7.
Shamanism And Technologies Of The Sacred
1.
The New Age And The New Church
Overcoming Intellectual
Impediments to Reformation and Regeneration
2. The Rational Is The
Entry Way To The Spiritual
2.
The External and Internal Understanding of Spiritual Ideas
3.
Sin And Spiritual Punishment
3. Deconstructing Nonduality
In Our Mind
1.
Acquiring Rational Truths From the Literal Language of the Writings
4. Development From
Sensuous Rational Consciousness
2. To
Love God We Must Understand Him Rationally
3.
The Rational Is The Entry Point To The Spiritual
4.
The Spiritual Power Of Rational Concepts
5. The New Church Mind And
Other Religions
1. No
Continuity Between Truths And Falsities
6. The Nonduality Of
Persuasive Faith
7. The Doctrine Of Discrete
Degrees
1.
Knowing About Correspondences
8. The Formation Of The
Internal Marriage
2.
Religious Justification For Dominion Over One’s Wife
3.
The Wife Is The Will Of Her Husband’s Understanding
5.
Facing One’s Wife Instead of Turning Away
Disconfirming Nondualist
Propositions In The New Church Mind
1.
Only The Writings Have Spiritual Truth.
2. The Notion That “Self Is
An Illusion”
3.The Notion That ”All Great Religions Are Equivalent”
1.
The Lord’s New Revelation Regarding All Religions
4. The Notion That “Meditation Is Spiritual”
6. The Notion That “We Are Already Perfect”
7. The Notion That “Being
One With Nature Is Spiritual”
8. The Notion Of
“Unconditional Love”
1.
Spiritual Events In The Inner Mind
2.
Everyone Is Born Into The Slavery Of An Addiction
3.
Good Loves And Genuine Truths
4.
What’s Wrong With Unconditional Self-acceptance
5.
Spiritual Dualities From the Writings Are To Be Loved And Lived
7.
What Is Loving The Neighbor?
9. A
Poisonous Serpent And Cockatrice
9. The New
Church View On Forgiveness.
1.
Forgiveness Is Always Granted Immediately by the Lord
10. The
Secular View On Forgiveness.
11. The
Christian View On Forgiveness
2.
Willing And Thinking According To The Letter
Introduction: Key Concepts
In the New Church Mind
2.
Constructing Integrated Concepts
3. A
Few Key Concepts From The Writings
2. Discrete Degrees In Successive
And Simultaneous Order
Ghosts,
Vampires, Aliens, “Energies” And “Vibrations”
1.
“After The Completion Of This Book”
4. The Idea of “Salvation is by Means Only”
5. The Idea of “Conjugial Love”
1.
Achieving An Internal Union
2.
Discrete and Reciprocal Relationship Between Man And Woman
3.
Conjugial Love Vs. Pornography And Adultery
6. The Mind Is In The Spiritual World
1.
The Corporeal Sensuous Mind Tends Toward Hell
2.
Only Rational Loves Exist In Heaven
3.
Revelation Of Interior Rational Truths.
5.
Genuine Images and Maps Of The Spiritual World
7. The Vertical Community: Spiritual Influx From Heaven And Hell
1. We
Are Created Dual Citizens In Two Worlds
2. A
More Effective Self-Management Technique
3.
Spirituality Is Not Visible In The Letter
4.
Spirituality Reenters The Human Race
5.
Hearing But Not Understanding
6.
Spiritual Meaning Of Parables
7.
Building Up Spiritual Doctrine In Our Mind
8. The Idea of “Earths in the Universe”
1.
The Lord Would Not Want To Mislead Us.
Titles for the Abbreviated
Citations in the Book
Full Text Free Online Access to All Swedenborg’s
Writings:
Volume 2 is
located at this address:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality2.html
Volume 3 is
located at this address:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality3.html
Every
spiritual truth in the Writings
is a Divine Commandment
|
“The
manifestation of the Lord, and intromission into the spiritual world, surpass
all miracles. This has not been granted to anyone since the creation, as it
has been to me.” Emanuel Swedenborg (INV 52) |
This book
presents the perspective on reality given in the Writings of Emanuel
Swedenborg (1688-1772).
It is intended
for all those, regardless of religious or intellectual background, who want to
form a new mind in themselves that is based exclusively on the Writings. The
book’s purpose is to assist them in undergoing reformation and regeneration in
preparation for a conjugial life in heaven.
1. The Writings Are A Divine
Scientific Revelation
In today’s
intellectual climate revelations from God, His Name, the Bible, heaven and
hell, Church Doctrine, and the like are automatically considered religious
issues. When I started reading the Writings I was well into my career as a
psychology professor, writer, and scientist. I knew that the two-dozen books of
the Writings that I was studying were categorized as religious books, since I
found them in our university library in the section on Bible Commentaries. But
the books were written by Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish scientist of repute in
his days, and known to many influential intellectuals in
Swedenborg
was a fully rational thinker with a passion and commitment for explanations of
phenomena that span the entire chain of their existence from ultimates to
firsts. And since it is irrational to think that firsts can be from nothing or
from chaos, rationality requires that the first of all phenomena be a rational
Human God.
Swedenborg’s
science was therefore inclusive and centered on a Human God who runs the
universe in a rational way that is discoverable by intellectual investigation.
Swedenborg
relied on the revelations of the Bible for the scientific facts about the
spiritual world. Since he had no direct access to the spiritual world (until
age 57), he extracted the facts from the Bible using both its literal meaning
and spiritual meaning. The Bible reveals many scientific facts about the
spiritual world in relation to the natural world, as for instance:
q
that there is a God who forms and
runs the universe
q
that God is Human
q
that God’s personality is motivated
by Divine Love
q
that God runs the universe by means
of rational laws
q
that there is a spiritual world and
life after death
q
that we are immortal
q
that in the afterlife we live in either
heaven or hell
q
that the spiritual world is within
the mind, thus that the mind is in the spiritual world
q
that spirit and mind are the same
q
that those who make it to heaven are
then angels
q
that those who make it to hell are
then devils
q
that heaven and hell are within us
q
that our character is what
determines whether we are to live in heaven or hell within us
q
that we inherit a degenerate
character that must be regenerated
q
that regeneration consists in
following conscience, not doing evil to the neighbor, loving to do good
q
that our mind or spirit is in
unconscious communication with those who are already in the spiritual world
q
that God manages the smallest
details of our willing and thinking so as to facilitate regeneration
q
that God manages the details of
every event or outcome at the macro and micro levels, including fortuitous
events, accidents, the laws of chance, randomness, regularity
q
and many others
The above
list of scientific facts about the universe is based only on the literal meaning of the Bible.
Swedenborg
also extracted many scientific facts from the spiritual meaning of Bible verses, as for example:
q
that the Bible is the Word and
therefore it is Divine Truth
q
that parts of the Bible are written
as accurate history, while other parts are spiritual visions
q
that spiritual visions are universal
phenomena brought about by correspondences
q
that correspondences are revealed by
God to the human race
q
that correspondences are Divine
Truths accommodated to human intelligence
q
that correspondences are ordered in
discrete degrees or levels in a hierarch of truths from external to inmost
q
that regeneration of one’s character
is achieved by the applying the power of correspondences to one’s daily willing
and thinking
q
that the universe is managed by a
hierarchical order of correspondences that are represented in the spiritual
meaning of the Bible
q
that individual regeneration and
biography recapitulates history and evolution
q
that the Bible reveals the
intellectual history of the human race within the spiritual meaning of the details
regarding names, places, numbers, and descriptions
q
that we live in heaven as angel
couples
q
that in the afterlife we have
spirit-bodies allowing us to live in society, marriage, and an active creative
life
q
that the human race extends beyond
this planet to the entire universe
q
and many more
At age 57
the Divine Human appeared to Swedenborg, held him affectionately in His arms,
and announced to him the mission for which he was prepared by God since early
childhood. Swedenborg was to be the revelator by whom the Second Coming of the
Lord was to be effected. Swedenborg was going to write and publish a series of
books called the Writings. The Writings were to be the Divine Rational of the
Lord which was to be revealed to the human race as a rational and scientific
system of thinking. The Divine Human was to effect its Coming within these
rational truths. Any individual who read these truths and understood them,
taking them to be the guides of life, would be regenerated and conjoined to the
Divine Human by means of this new rational consciousness of God. Henceforth
this will be the orderly method of regeneration for the human race.
In order
for the revelations of the Writings to be scientific and rational it was
necessary that Swedenborg have direct access to both worlds simultaneously.
Swedenborg had to be given the means to make empirical and experimental observations
in the spiritual world, such as the following:
q
to be present in heaven and hell and
to interview the people there
q
to watch the resuscitation process
during death and how the spirit emerges from the physical body
q
to talk to people whose body was
being buried
q
to interview various authors well
known from history and the Bible
q
to conduct experiments involving
spirits and their mental abilities
q
to compare the language and script
of the Word on earth and in heaven
q
to interview angel couples in their
homes
q
to travel in spirit to distant
planetary regions in the universe and to investigate the character of spirits
from those planets, and even, to see certain physical scenes on those planets
through the eyes of spirits associated with the people there
q
to be given visual observation posts
from which to describe the shape or form of the land masses of heaven and hell
q
to witness demonstrations of the
spiritual power of truths from the Word
q
to attempt therapy on those in hell
q
to interview new arrivals in the
afterlife and what memories they bring with them
q
to observe the education and raising
of children who arrive from the many earths
q
to experiment with correspondences,
seeing which produces what visual appearance
q
and many more
From all
this you can see that Swedenborg’s Writings constitute theistic science. The
Writings of Swedenborg are rational scientific works written in Neo-Latin by a
Swedish scientist and engineer in the 18th century. They are unique in the history of humankind
because they present a fully rational comprehensive scientific account of all
of reality, God, and human beings.
Prior
accounts in the history of literature were never fully scientific, and never
fully complete and comprehensive. If Swedenborg had merely written what his own
genius figured out, the Writings would remain one of the greatest collections
of rational philosophy, science, and theology anywhere. But the Writings are
not books from the genius of Swedenborg, but much more, something entirely
different, unparalleled in the history and evolution of the human race. The Writings are God’s Rational and
Scientific Revelation now given to the human race for the first time. They
present a fully rational and scientific account of reality, such as God has
created it. If the content of the Writings were merely Swedenborg’s ideas of
reality and God, they would form part of the literature of the world. But if
the Writings are from God, then the Writings are unlike all other books that
could be written.
No one
should decide between these two possibilities without examining the Writings. I
have examined them in detail, like I would a scientific collection of books
which I intend to evaluate. Having done this, I have come to the conclusion
that the Writings are the work of God, the last of the great revelations
intended for the human race and called “the Word.” What is astonishing is that the Word of God in this new revelation is a
science encyclopedia of the spiritual world! Since the spiritual world is
within the natural, and is the cause of all natural phenomena, you can see why
the Writings are a total and full scientific revelation of God. The human race
now possesses two sets of scientific encyclopedias, one natural, the other
spiritual; one about the natural world, the other about the spiritual world and
how it animates the natural.
Now in the
Writings, the human race has before it a full integrated rational description
of God, creation, the universe, heaven and hell, history, truth, love,
marriage, and regeneration.
This new beginning in science and rationality
may be called the new age of THEISTIC SCIENCE.
The
Christian tradition since the Lord’s First Coming has been that He is to come
again to complete the world’s makeover called the salvation of the human race.
They expect the Second Coming of the Lord to take place physically, appearing
in the clouds, calling on those who believe in Him, gathering them together in
one place, and giving them eternal life and happiness in Him. No one can tell
you exactly what this means in terms of details—except those who have read and
understood the Writings. For the Lord has effected His predicted Second Coming.
This Second Advent was to complete the creation of the human race. He had
already appeared physically in history and science, giving sensuous proof of
Himself. When He foretold that He must come again, He did not mean that He is
to come again in His glorified Divine Natural. He was actually saying that He
must come again in His Divine Rational. Then we can know Him fully, by knowing
the Divine Rational that is within the Divine Natural. A Second Coming in the
physical would retard still further the evolution of rational consciousness in
the human race.
The Lord is
Divine Truth, which means that the new heavens He creates are made of rational
loves, and these exist only in rational consciousness. The human race must
evolve rational consciousness to become spiritually enlightened and live in
heaven in eternity. This rational consciousness is brought about by forming our
mind to reflect the order described in the Writings. This rational order is the
Divine Rational of the Lord. From creation this is what the Lord intended, a
human race that would evolve into rational consciousness and capable of having
a celestial mind that lives in heaven. Now these rational truths have at last
been revealed in the Writings. This rational revelation of Divine Truth is the
Lord in His Second Coming.
Can a
neighbor of yours know you if he only knows what you look like but not what you
believe in and how you think? Christians got to know the Divine Natural of the
Lord in a sensuous way, tangible, touchable. Even after the first generation
passed on, the ensuing generations of Christians knew the Lord in this sensuous
way because they believed that He was real, that He had indeed been here on this
earth as God Incarnate. But this is relatively speaking, knowing the Lord like
a neighbor whom we can see with our eyes every morning exiting from the
apartment building, but whom we do not know because we do not know his beliefs
and attitudes.
The Divine Rational
of the Lord is within His Divine Natural, which makes sense because the Lord is
Human. All humans consist of a rational mind within a body. In this world, we
are a rational mind within a physical body, and in the afterlife, we are this
same rational mind, but now in a spirit-body. The Lord is always within His Divine Natural
Sensuous Body, as humans are always within their sensuous body. The sensuous
body is the outward casing for the spiritual rational mind. The Lord’s Divine
Natural Body is the outward Casing for His spiritual-rational mind called the
Divine Rational. This Divine Rational is the origin and source of Divine Truth,
the substance from which all is created. So the Lord’s Divine Rational is the
true Divine Human that we are to love and know. This Divine Rational is what has been revealed in the Writings.
2. The Writings Are The Lord’s
Second Coming
The Second
Coming refers to the revelation of the Divine Rational. This revelation was
completed and published on
The
Writings are God’s revelation to the human race of how He creates the universe
and how He runs and manages every detail. This includes the revelation that the
universe is created for a human purpose by means of truth within which is love.
And it also includes the revelation of the existence of two worlds, one being a
natural world where human beings are born and raised, the other a spiritual
world, where human beings awaken a few hours after death and continue
individual life eternally in either a celestial existence in heaven or an
infernal existence in the hells. I mention these things here as general topics
that have been of interest to the human race since the beginning of literature.
But the Writings deal with these spiritual, philosophical, and religious topics
in a rational way that give a scientifically precise and dynamic account of
them. This is what I found so attractive in the Writings the minute I started
reading them in 1981 at age 43, having discovered them in our university
library while I was searching for Bible Commentaries.
Subsequently
I also found out that the Writings of Swedenborg have had a distinguished but
small following, that his books have been translated in a dozen languages, and
that several communities have been created by people who call themselves the
Well, if
the Writings do not spring from Swedenborg’s genius, what is their origin?
God has
created the human race to evolve to ever higher powers of life and being. The
perfecting of the human race is a gradual evolution in which our conscious
cooperation with God is required to increase as we evolve to higher states of
life and consciousness. The method by which the human race cooperates ever more
consciously in its own evolution, is the method of truth and love. God is a
Divine Rational Being whose essence is love and truth in an infinite degree.
Divine Rational is the same as Divine Human, because the human is defined by
the rational. The spiritual is nothing but the human rational in its essence.
God creates
the universe not out of nothing, for this is irrational. God is infinite in
quantity and complexity, and this infinite quantity is in God as one, that is,
as one coherent whole. Nothing can exist that is not created from this infinite
Divine Rational Substance called love and truth united as one. All things that
exist are kept in existence by God’s substance of truth, within which is love.
3. Heaven Is Created From Rational
Love
Since the
universe is created from truth and into the order of truth, reality is a rational
reality. God is a rational entity and our idea of God is a rational idea. All laws
of the universe are rational laws. The spiritual world and the natural world
are both rational worlds, by necessity of creation. Heaven is a rational
creation. The suns and earths in the universe are rational entities. The human
race is a rational creation and event, with a rational goal, and a rational
method of evolution. The ultimate goal of this evolution is to reach perfection
as a rational being.
Truth
belongs to love. Love is the creating, driving force, power, and goal. When love creates something, it does that by
means of truth. Truth is the exteriorization of love. Love is the
substance, while truth is the form of this substance. Truth can do nothing by
itself, but only from love. Love can’t do anything except by means of truth. Since
all things are created from love by its truth into truth, the human mind is the
highest element of all creation. Only the human mind is created capable of
conscious understanding of truth, which can also be called rational love. The
human mind is to evolve into the ability to understand ever more interior
truths or rational loves, of which the most interior, is God. All things of creation are in God, yet God
is separate from this creation. It would not be rational to think that God
has created Himself! Neither that reality has created itself! God has created
reality, which means that God is outside reality, able to create it and run it.
The method
by which the human race is to evolve to ever more interior understanding of
infinite Divine Truth, is the method of Divine Revelations. This has been the
case since the first generation of the human race. Literature has preserved the
long record of Divine Revelations to the earlier generations. Each Divine
Revelation was given by God as a stepped up evolutionary leap for the human race.
Each new revelation took hundreds of generations to fully digest and incorporate
into the fabric of human understanding. In this way there has been steady
progress in the evolution of human consciousness, as reflected by a world that
has left barbaric savagery behind and has developed for itself an advanced
civilization based on rational principles of mutual cooperation and treatment.
4. A Divine Revelation That
Surpasses All Others
The
Writings are the latest new revelation given by God to the human race.
This is a
special new revelation that surpasses all other Divine Revelations.
These new revelations are for the
first time fully rational and scientific. The human race had to evolve a modern scientific
mind before these new rational scientific revelations could be given. At last,
in the Age of Reason of the 18th century in Christian Western
Europe, the human mind was ready to receive, understand, and accept a full
unqualified and total revelation of God and reality in rational concepts and
terms that the modern mind could readily understand. This was done through the
mind of Emanuel Swedenborg, recognized as one of the great geniuses in the
history of literature and science.
At age 57
Swedenborg was at the height of his scientific and professional career. His
achievements have been well documented in several fields, including metallurgy,
chemistry, anatomy, psychology, theology, education, and legislation. He tells
how the God of His childhood and country, in the image of Jesus Christ, appeared
before him and held him affectionately in His bosom for a little while. He
writes that the Lord then told him that he was being prepared since early
childhood for the mission of Revelator and that the time has now come, in 1741,
for him to begin his Divine mission.
Swedenborg’s
awesome mission was to write the 30-volume collection of books called “the Writings”
or “the Writings of Swedenborg.” These Divine Revelations are going to be the
last in the series of Divine Revelations that were to be given to the human
race. They were therefore going to be a full and total rational disclosure of
reality and its workings. Prior Divine Revelations of the Word, such as the Old
and New Testaments, were given in a language of authority and mystery, but the
final portion of the Divine Word for the human race, are given in a language of
rationality and science. No mystery is left standing. No appeal is made to authority,
but only to the individual’s rational understanding.
A Divine
Revelation is given for the purpose of raising the consciousness of the race.
This is accomplished by means of the truths in the Revelation. It is necessary
therefore that people be able to understand the revelation. To make this
possible therefore, all Divine Revelations are given through the mind of an individual
human being, a capable representative of the rest of the race. The man whose
mind was prepared for issuing this last of Divine Revelations had to be a
product of the Age of Reason in Christian Western intellectual culture. It had
to be a modern scientific revelation because the human race had evolved to this
level of rational and spiritual consciousness. The modern mind was unwilling to
believe in a God of mystery and authority. It needed a rational scientific
account of God, reality, and our position in it. Even a sensuous God was no
longer enough. This sensuous God had to have a rational explanation or else He
could not be understood, and what the modern mind cannot understand, it won’t
love. Without love for God, we cannot be regenerated and saved for life in
heaven.
The Age of
Reason in
The
Christian religion was given as both a sensuous and rational revelation to the
human race. The sensuous revelation was the unprecedented event of
Incarnation--God born in history as a human being of flesh and blood. This
event took the human race forward into rational consciousness. Now there was scientific
physical empirical historical evidence and proof of God’s existence. Besides
the sensuous revelation of the New Testament, a rational revelation is also
made there, namely, that God is Human. This was the first time that the human
race had proof that the universe was a rational universe created for a human
purpose by a Human God. God was Human and Rational, thus, Love and Truth. And
He created the universe out of Truth into truth, hence in a rational order.
God’s Laws were rational laws. The presence of God with the human race was
through rational consciousness, rational understanding, rational loves, not
ecstatic emotions or animal sacrifices and ceremonies.
The First
Coming was the Incarnation of God in a physical body. It was a momentous
forward step in the evolution of human consciousness because the human race had
never had this proof before, had never been able to face God in a physical and
natural presence. Now God was part of our history, part of our science, part of
our rational understanding of reality. Prior to God’s Incarnation the relationship
of the human race to God was an indirect one. God could make an appearance in
the sensuous human world by taking over the mind of a celestial individual and
speaking through this person like a mouthpiece. The prophets and various
individuals to whom God appeared in the Bible saw God through such an
appearance, thus not God, but a human being possessed by the Spirit of God. But
since God’s Incarnation, He can appear to human beings as Himself in His Own
Divine Natural Body. This allows a far closer contact with God, hence a far
higher level of consciousness and life for the human race.
The New
Testament Revelations also revealed that there is going to be one more Divine
Revelation necessary to complete the creation of the human race into its full
perfection. This full perfection is the state in which we can cooperate
consciously with God in our preparation for heavenly life in eternity. Full conscious cooperation cannot be done
while there are mysteries left in religion, science, and reality.
The Last
Divine Revelation, or the Last Testament of the Word, has been laid down in
Latin through the mind of Swedenborg, and now we have it, I, you, and the rest
of the endless generations to come. A copy of the Writings as the New Word is
also to be found in every society of the numberless heavens in the spiritual
world.
The Divine
Rational Revelations in the Writings could not have been constructed and
delivered through Swedenborg’s mind if Swedenborg had merely to take Divine
dictation and to write down sentences in that way, without understanding them,
without having constructed them out of his understanding. Therefore in order to
have Swedenborg write those sentences he had to first understand all of reality
and God in relation to the human race. He had to understand rationally so that
he could compose those sentences from which others could extract the rational
truths.
5. Swedenborg’s Scientific
Experiments In The Spiritual World
How was Swedenborg’s understanding
to be enlightened so that he could rationally and scientifically describe
reality and God in relation to the human race?
The answer
is surprisingly simple: Swedenborg had to be given access to a spiritual laboratory
so that he may conduct his experimental and empirical observations by which he
might discover the rational truths of reality and God in relation to human
beings.
These
laboratory facilities were given him as part of the Divine mission, which is
why Swedenborg wrote that the Writings represent the greatest miracle and
wonder ever bestowed upon the human race by God’s Love. Swedenborg’s
experiments with spirit subjects and geographical explorations in the spiritual
world were effected through the intermediary of many people in the spiritual
world. The people who inhabit the celestial regions in their mind are called
angels and have many powers that Swedenborg did not have, being still a man on
earth. These angels intervened of his behalf, protected him from harm, and
arranged for conditions Swedenborg needed to make his observations and to write
them down in a natural language (Neo-Latin and Swedish). He not only wrote down
what happened but was also given the capacity to provide a scientific and
theological context for his observations and reports. Thus, nothing is wanting
in the Writings for fulfilling its role as the greatest intellectual boon the
human race has ever received, or will ever receive again.
Within a
matter of a few weeks since the Lord’s appearance to Swedenborg, he began to
experience new perceptions as he was reading the Bible. His practiced genius
was able to make detailed indexes of the Holy Book which he read in the
original Hebrew and Greek. To his amazement he discovered that within the
literal meaning of the Old and New Testaments there lay hidden a spiritual
meaning that was not apparent to the reader until each word and phrase was
taken as a correspondence for some deeper spiritual meaning. For example, by
collating many corresponding passages from both Testaments, Swedenborg showed
how any rational and educated person could discover the spiritual message in
each verse. The content of these
spiritual meanings hidden within the literal had to do with the rational
exposition of reality and God in relation to the human race.
This systematic
work of discovery was most important and impressive, and will be a benefit to
humankind for all the ages to come. And yet, this work would not have been sufficient
to constitute the final, total, and thus last, Divine Revelation by which
everything the human race can know and understand. There also had to be a
science to it. Where was the science of it? Extracting a rational system from
historical Divine works in the Bible is admirable, but it is not a scientific
work. The only way Swedenborg could
produce a scientific report of the spiritual world was to be there when he
describes it!
This was
granted to him by Divine intervention as the greatest miracle in human history.
6. Swedenborg’s Dual Citizenship—Natural
And Spiritual
A few
months after his momentous encounter with the Lord, Swedenborg began to have
flashes of conscious presence in the spiritual world. He did not know what is
the spiritual world. From his initial flashes it looked like a version of the
natural world, with people walking about in cities and in the country side
where there were forests, deserts, mountains, and lakes. It took just a few months for him to get adjusted to a full time
permanent conscious awake state in both worlds simultaneously.
Never
before in history has anyone ever claimed to be fully conscious in both worlds simultaneously
and uninterruptedly for 27 years while carrying on their profession and normal
duties and in society. This was especially a significant development because
Swedenborg was an impeccable scientist of the modern Age of Reason in Christian
Western Europe. He was able to connect all his vast modern knowledge of natural
science and biology to his new life in the spiritual world. He wrote daily
notes, forming a coherent description of the relationship between the two worlds.
He was given access by the Lord to any society or individual in the spiritual
world that he desired to investigate. He was given the means by which to
conduct experiments, such as for example, what happens to the mind when you
experimentally remove from it this or that idea or belief. Also, what happens
when you supply this or that truth to an individual, or how people with
different genius communicate with each other through others, in an information
network, what the language of communication is in the spiritual world, how people
form different cultures and civilizations can co-exist, and many such things.
He kept
notes of his meetings and interviews in the spiritual world with thousands of
people in all categories that were relevant to his science and culture. He was
thus able to compare the understanding and state of life of many categories of
people, comparing their demographics with their spiritual character. He was
able to talk to authors from the ancient Greeks whose books he had read and
studied, so that he could compare what happens to the author’s mind when he
goes to the afterlife with these ideas. He was able to speak and travel with
people in the spiritual world who had been born on other planets and thereby he
gained an empirical knowledge of the varieties of the human race. He was able
to visit the high places and the low places of the spiritual world,
encountering there the highest level of the human, and the most depraved.
Because humans retain their ideas and attitudes when they pass on, they can be
explored as to the details of their life and conduct. Swedenborg was able to
make precise cause-effect observations between the ideas and loves we
accumulate as our personality, and the quality of our life and experience in
the spiritual world.
You can see
from all this that no other writings can be compared with the Writings of
Swedenborg.
Now that
the modern scientific Divine Rational Revelations have been given to the human
race, it will take many generations before they are recognized and acknowledged
by many. Since 1771, the year the last work of the Writings was published,
there have been thousands of individuals who have recognized them and
acknowledged them as Divine Revelations. Today, in the computer age of the
Internet, the Writings have become available to anyone who desires them. The
Lord manages every detail in the universe, hence also, who and when anyone gets
to see the Writings, and then, what of it one can understand, love, and
assimilate for life.
No one can
see anything special and spiritual in the Writings who is not led by the Lord
to do so. This is not some special favoritism or sectarianism of this or that
new religion. The Writings are a complete work of rational science. The only
requirement for access to higher human consciousness is to read the Writings as
the Divine Word given to humankind for the enlightenment of rational
consciousness.
No religion
is necessary, no teacher or guru, no initiation ceremony, no prior
qualification of personality, orientation, or character. Nothing is required except a modern scientific mind able to figure our
and comprehend rational ideas laid down in a rational and scientific manner.
In this
book I have taken the rational arguments and proofs in the Writings and applied
them to my understanding of reality and science. As a trained professional
scientist all my life I have carried my profession and science into the
analysis and confirmation process of all that is in the Writings for anyone to
verify. I have then taken this new understanding of reality and myself and
applied it to what is every individual’s principal tasks in life: regeneration.
7. This Book Is About Regeneration
The human
race has been for a long time in a “Fallen” or degenerate state by heredity.
This is because all new human loves and tendencies accumulate in the mind and
are passed on by hereditary mechanisms to one’s offspring. Today as each of us
is born into the modern world and culture, we have the potential of becoming a
celestial mind by means of regeneration, which goes on throughout our life in
the physical body. Once we awaken in the spiritual world, a few hours after the
physical body dies, we begin a new life in a spirit-body that contains our will
and understanding. These two organs are filled with our experiences, knowledge,
and affections or loves. We are then to continue forever being the kind of
individuals we became while maturing on earth. Clearly then, it’s a matter of survival and rational self-interest to
see to it that we arrive in the afterlife with a personality and character that
can live in a heavenly sphere, by which we can avoid the eternal misery of
those who sink down into hell because of their distorted and insane character
or personality.
In the
spiritual world all individuals feel totally free to be who or what they are in
their loves and interests. In fact, they are compelled by the laws of the spiritual
world to be on the outside what their affections or loves are on the inside.
While tied to a physical body, our inner madness, rage, and insanity do not
show, being inhibited by society and consequences. But as soon as we awaken in
our spirit-body, nothing that is within can be kept from coming out. Therefore
by necessity there are Divine laws of reality in the spiritual world that keep
the order and make continued life possible in that order. And so, regions and
habitations are set up in the endless expanse of the spiritual world, in order to
accommodate the life for every type of human beings that enter the world of
spirits from the numerous earths in the universe. There are heavens and there
are hells, reflecting the character of those who live there. And within the
heavens and the hells, there are innumerable sub-regions and societies, each
made up of people of a similar character who live together and share one
another’s fate.
This book is about regeneration,
which is the conscious discipline of character change based on the scientific
principles revealed in the Writings.
When we
read the Writings we begin to understand regeneration in a medial,
psychological, and educational perspective that is unique and new. Our prior
understanding is based on the fundamental principle of nonduality, which is
that all things exist in one continuum of the universe or reality. When we begin
to see things from the perspective of the Writings, we can replace every concept
of nonduality into a duality. Every duality is by reference to the natural and
the spiritual as two separate and distinct worlds, tied together by rational
laws of correspondence that have now been revealed by God.
In Volume 1
I show how rational analysis can be used to debunk and deconstruct concepts and
notions of nonduality that are opposed to the dualities in our mind from the
Writings. Once our mind is rearranged in this new mode, we can begin
regeneration, which requires us to cooperate with the Lord by shunning evils as
sins because sins prevent the preparation of our mind for eternal life. This
cooperation must be in all the specifics of our willing and thinking hour by
hour, every day. In Volume 3 I explain how to do this systematically and
effectively by means of spiritual disciplines. These “regeneration disciplines”
consist of doing ordinary things in our daily life from a new motive, which is
that we are striving to obey the Lord’s Commandment that we monitor our willing
and thinking, that we evaluate every particular in the light of the truths from
the Writings, that we desist from willing what is evil and thinking what is
false, and at last, that we detest these things that are in us from hell by
heredity, culture, and unregenerate habits.
Others may also
have an interest in the book, especially the wives of the men who are
undergoing reformation and regeneration by means of the Writings. Women are
also going through the gradual process of regeneration and have to cooperate with
the Lord in that process in order to be saved for heavenly life. They may find
it useful to learn what their husbands are going through from a Doctrinal point
of view. Men and women have categorically different patterns of regeneration because
there can be no overlap of interior nature between men and women (xx). Also,
this book discusses the content and quality of everyday thoughts and feelings
of husbands who are undergoing reformation and regeneration. And since husbands
resist conjugial love from hereditary antipathy, often fiercely and cruelly,
their wives have to endure much abuse and unhappiness in the process of their
regeneration. Knowing the details of their husband’s mental struggles may be of
interest and use to their wives, and to women generally.
Also, all
who are interested in Swedenborg’s Writings and ideas may find much useful
details and spiritual applications to daily life. People who have not read the
Writings may be interested in how I analyze important lifestyle concepts such
as God, religion, spirituality, heaven and hell, love, truth, personality, and
especially, the process of deepening marital relations.
The
No
religious or spiritual mystery is allowed in the
For it is the
case with the life of charity (which is the heavenly life itself) that with
those who are being reformed and regenerated it is continually being born and
growing up and receiving increments, and this by means of truths; therefore the
more of truth there is insinuated, the more is the life of charity perfected …
(…)
In truth, however, there is no life, but in good. Truth is
only a recipient of life, that is, of good. Truth is as the clothing or garment
of good; therefore also truths are called in the Word "clothing," and
also "garments." But when good constitutes the rational, truth
disappears and becomes as if it were good.
(AC 2189)
The
Writings explain why reformation is necessary. The reason given is that we are
born with a natural mind and with the potential of developing also a spiritual
mind. This new mind becomes functional only through reformation and
regeneration of one’s old mind and inherited character. The spiritual mind is
required for a life in heaven after the life in the physical world. Regeneration is the process of character
self-modification and it goes on throughout one’s life here, and hereafter to
eternity (AC 47, 233, 1712, 2877, 5664, 10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82;
SE 5958; LJ 299; AE 864). The
This book presents practical methods for husbands who want to form the
All
citations in parentheses are to Swedenborg’s books which collectively, are
called the Writings. The places marked by (xx) are still to be filled in. If
you have any of these citations at hand, please email them to me. The standard
Title of the Work referred to in these citations is given at the end.
The Word is the Divine Truth which is in the Lord and from
the Lord … Divine Truth has power in itself, and such power that, by means of
it, heaven was created and the world with all things therein. (HH 137).
Without the Lord's coming into the world no one could have
been saved. It is the same today; and therefore without the Lord's coming again
into the world in Divine truth, which is the Word, no one can be saved. (TCR 3)
In the
spiritual sense, a “man of the field” signifies “the faith and truth of
doctrine” (AC 368, 427, 4823). This book is about the spiritual Doctrine that
each man is to extract from the Word of the Writings, by applying the literal
sense to oneself, to the hundreds of willing and thinking acts we perform every
day in the course of our normal activities. This use of the literal sense is
required for our reformation, regeneration, and salvation for eternal life in
heaven. Every time we apply in this way one of the literal sentences from the
Writings, we are enlightened by the Lord so that we can perceive the spiritual
sense within the literal. This conscious process counts as cooperation with the
Lord in our regeneration. Without this active conscious daily habitual
cooperation with the Lord, we cannot be regenerated. This will be proven in the
book by many citations from the Writings. It is the spiritual understanding of
Doctrine that constitutes faith and truth. The Lord infills true faith with
Divine Love, and from this union we have closeness with Him, love unto Him, and
new interior celestial truths that make us wise like an angel, and capable of
conjugial union with the wife.
To my wife
It is
her internal wisdom that led me to write this book as-of myself. She brought
into our marriage the conjugial love she has in her from the Lord, inborn from
nativity
An inclination to love one of the opposite sex, and with it
a capacity for receiving that love, has been implanted in Christians from
birth, for the reason that this love comes from the Lord alone (CL 466).
Wives are by birth forms of love, so
that it is innate in them to wish to be one with their husbands … But it is
different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but
designed to receive that love from their wives (CL 216)
The intelligence of women is by
nature modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and gentle, while the
intelligence of men is by nature critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and
given to intemperance. Evidence that
this is the nature of women and the nature of men is clearly apparent from the
body, face, tone of voice, speech, bearing and behavior of each sex. (…)
From this I could clearly see that a
man is born a form of the intellect, and a woman a form of love. I could also see what the nature of the
intellect is and what the nature of love is in their beginnings, and thus what
a man's intellect in its development would be like without conjunction with
feminine love and eventually conjugial love. (CL 218)
|
The Word is the only doctrine which teaches how a man must live in the
world in order to be happy to eternity. (AC 8939) |
Quoting from the Writings:
There are two states that man must enter upon and
pass through, when from being natural he is becoming spiritual. The first state
is called Reformation, and the second Regeneration. In the first man looks from
his natural to his spiritual state and longs for that state; in the second
state he becomes spiritual-natural. The first state is formed by means of
truths, which must be truths of faith, and through these he looks to charity;
the second state is formed by means of the goods of charity, and by these he
enters into the truths of faith. Or what is the same, the first is a state of
thought from the understanding, and the second a state of love from the will.
When this latter state begins and is
progressing, a change takes place in the mind; the mind undergoes a reversal,
the love of the will then flowing into the understanding, acting upon it and
leading it to think in accord and agreement with its love; and in consequence
so far as the good of love comes to act the first part and the truths of faith
the second, man is spiritual and is a new creature; and he then acts from charity
and speaks from faith; he feels the good of charity and perceives the truth of
faith; and he is then in the Lord, and in peace, and thus regenerate.
The man who while in the world has
entered upon the first state, after death can be introduced into the second;
but he who has not entered into the first state while in the world, cannot
after death be introduced into the second, thus cannot be regenerated.
(TCR 571)
The
This
means that every spiritual truth found in the Writings is to be taken as a
Divine Commandment. Every idea and concept we acquire elsewhere must be kept
separated in the external of our knowledge or memory and not allowed to
commingle in the mind that is to be formed exclusively by the Writings. The
Without the Lord's
coming into the world no one could have been saved. The situation to-day is
similar. So unless the Lord comes into the world again in the form of Divine
Truth, that is, the Word, no more can anyone now be saved. (TCR 3)
You
can see from this that the
All Christian
people draw their doctrines from the Word as being their one and only source.
(TCR 629)
God's Word is the
source whence all theology must be derived (Letters 7).
What in particular concerns the
doctrine that now follows, is that it also is out of heaven, because it is from
the spiritual sense of the Word; and the spiritual sense of the Word is
identical with the doctrine which is in heaven. (NJHD 7)
The existence of
writings in the heavens is a provision of the Lord for the sake of the Word;
for the Word in its essence is Divine truth, and from it is all heavenly
wisdom, both with men and with angels; for the Word was dictated by the Lord,
and what is dictated by the Lord passes through all the heavens in order and
terminates with man. Thereby it is adapted both to the wisdom of angels and the
intelligence of men. Thereby, too, the angels have a Word, and read it the same
as men do on the earth, and also draw from it their doctrinals, and preach from
it (AC n. 221). It is the same Word; but its natural sense, which is the sense
of the letter with us, does not exist in heaven, but only the spiritual sense,
which is its internal sense. What this sense is can be seen in the small
treatise on The White
Horse spoken of in the Apocalypse. (HH 259)
These passages teach that henceforth,
from the Writings “is all heavenly wisdom, both with men and with angels.” All
Doctrine for the
The Word is the doctrine of Divine
truth, and …everything of doctrine must be from the Word (AE 612)
It is written that “the only source
of human regeneration is the Lord” (AC 10042) and the Lord is the Word (TCR
225; LORD 7; AC 2). Hence the only source of regeneration is the Word, which
for the
The Word of the Divine Human in the New
Heavens today is the Word of the Writings, and this Word is the same as the one
we have on earth:
It is the same Word; but its natural
sense, which is the sense of the letter with us, does not exist in heaven, but
only the spiritual sense, which is its internal sense. (TCR 1)
What in particular concerns the
doctrine that now follows, is that it also is out of heaven, because it is from
the spiritual sense of the Word; and the spiritual sense of the Word is
identical with the doctrine which is in heaven. For there is a Church in heaven
as well as on earth; for the Word is there, doctrine is there from the Word;
temples are there, in which sermons are delivered; because ecclesiastical and
civil governments are there. In a word, the only difference between the things
which are in the heavens, and those which are on earth, is, that all the things
in the heavens are in a state of greater perfection, because all who are there
are spiritual, and spiritual things immensely exceed in perfection those that
are natural. (NJHD 7)
The Word is to be found in all the heavens and is the
source of the angels' wisdom. (TCR 240)
The Word in heaven is written in a
spiritual style which is quite different from the natural style. The spiritual
style is composed simply of letters, each one of which denotes a particular
meaning; and there are dashes, curves and points above, between and within the
letters, which heighten the meaning. The letters used by the angels of the
spiritual kingdom resemble printed type in our world; the letters used by the
angels of the celestial kingdom are in some cases like Arabic letters, in
others like ancient Hebrew letters, but with curves above and below, and
pointing above, between and inside them. Even a single one of these points
conveys a complete meaning. (TCR 241)
It is
clear therefore that the angels read the Writings and this is their only source
of intelligence and wisdom—“doctrine is there from the Word”. Note that Doctrine is the same as the spiritual
sense of the Writings contained within the literal language—“doctrine is
from the spiritual sense of the Writings”
since the Writings are the Word. The spiritual sense cannot be written down in
a natural language, and neither can the spiritual Doctrine drawn from this
sense, since these two are identical. Note also that the spiritual sense of the
Writings in heaven also have a letter! Without an outward letter of the
Word there is no writing possible. So the outward containant of the holy truths
from the Lord, is the letter the angels have. The angelic writing mode varies
in accordance with the level of thinking in the three heavens, as the passage
above describes it (TCR 241).
3. Spiritual Truths Understood Naturally and Spiritually
It’s
interesting to note what natural letters of the alphabet on earth are similar
to the spiritual writing alphabets in the heavens. The written letters of the
second heaven of the spiritual angels resemble visually the “printed type in our world.” The letters of the third heaven of the
celestial angels resemble visually “Arabic letters” and “Hebrew letters.” These
two correspond historically on this earth with the three religions of the
Western world--Islam and Judaeo-Christian. “
Those in heaven pay attention to the Word in the
letter and perceive things there in exactly the same way as anyone is
accustomed to perceive a person's thought as it presents itself in spoken
words, or in the inmost heaven as anyone is accustomed to perceive a person's
aims or end in view. (AC 9407)
Note therefore that the spiritual
sense of the Writings only exists in the understanding because it is impossible
to render it in the letter of the Word. If it were possible, the angels would
not need a letter of the Word within which they can see and receive spiritual
things! But the highest angels also need a letter for the Word, written in
visible script, as discussed just above. This is a rational matter to
understand and follows from discrete degrees in all things created (see Chapter
5 Section 6).
Clearly then, the natural literal
sentences in the Writings cannot be same as the spiritual truths.
Prior to our reformation, sometime
in adulthood, we read many things about heavenly secrets, which are knowledges
revealed from heaven. They are called secrets because no human being in all of history
and evolution, can ever discover a single spiritual truth from self, from
experience, or from another human being. Every
spiritual truth comes from the spiritual world which is in a discrete degree
above the natural world, so that one can never access the spiritual from the
natural.
This also means that there is no conscious
access possible to our spiritual mind from our natural mind. The spiritual mind
is tied to heaven because all its content is from heaven, and the natural mind
is tied to earth because all its content is from earth. All spiritual truths
that enter our spiritual mind from the angels, is unconscious to us in the
natural. But it has an effect by correspondence. The spiritual meanings enter
the natural meanings that we have obtained from the Writings. This
correspondential activity goes on in the interior-natural mind that is formed
within the natural-rational mind.
Note carefully: the
natural-rational mind reads and understand the Writings naturally, but it is
the interior-natural mind that understands it spiritually, by correspondence. It is the spiritual understanding that we need in order to be
regenerated and saved.
4. The Great
To be saved we must undergo reformation
first, and when that is completed, we begin regeneration. The unregenerate mind
prior to reformation is filled with nonduality. Nonduality is an orientation of
the mind in which we are motivated to prevent the entry into the mind of absolute
dualities such as compose every page of the Writings. For example, everything
in the Writings is based on the idea that God is separate from created things,
as He is infinite and created things are finite. Nonduality puts up a combat
against this absolute duality, preferring the idea that there is a continuum
between the finite and the infinite, so that if we could imagine ourselves to
grow more and more perfect, we could become like God.
Another example is good and evil. In
the Writings there is an absolute and eternal division between good and evil,
or between spiritual truth and falsity. But nonduality in our mind desires to
level them into a continuum so that evil is just a lesser form of good. Still
another example is the spiritual constitution of men and women. The Writings
describe the difference as an absolute duality so that nothing in a man can
ever be like something in a woman, and vice versa. Nonduality is motivated to
prefer a continuum between men and women that yields an overlap in traits.
While this may be the appearance for natural traits, it is not so for spiritual
traits.
There are many thousands of such
items of nonduality in our mind as we begin our reformation. The nonduality is
already ensconced, and receives the support of culture, science, and education.
We therefore are faced with a great and mighty struggle to clean out our mind
from these nondualities. If we leave them there, they destroy the absolute
dualities we take up from the Writings, and therefore, prevent our reformation,
regeneration, and salvation. The nondualities cannot be gotten rid off except
by means of dualities form the Writings, and this only if we acknowledge the
Writings as the Word. For only Divine Truth from the Word has the power to defeat
the hells, and all of the hells are involved in maintaining nonduality in our
mind.
We are in this sorry and precarious
situation by birth. Our spirit or mind is born corrupted by heredity, deformed,
injured, sick, and dying, on its way to hell. The most atrocious evils are
within a beautiful baby, kept suppressed for a few months or years, by the
presence of angels. But as soon as the child grows older, and begins to think
from self, the evils break out and surround the individual, pulling like a mighty
chain tied to hell. We can put on a facade of niceness for the sake of
self-preservation and acceptance by others, but within the heart breathes every
rage, hatred, deception, and obscenity. This sorry and troubling description is
one of the most important revelations of the Lord’s Second Coming in the
Writings. We must know our spiritual state in order to reform and regenerate,
thus be saved for life in heaven. No religious faith or worship can save us,
but only reformation and regeneration. The Writings have been given so that its
truths within our mind, may have the power to battle and defeat the hells
within us.
You can see that it is essential to
acquire in our mind the literal meaning of the Writings. Without this knowledge
of the Writings in sufficient detail, we cannot be reformed because we are unwilling
to give up the nonduality which is in our unregenerate mind. The only way we
have the motive power to reject our own nonduality is by reading,
understanding, and believing the literal sentences of the Writings, even as we
believe and worship Divine Truth or the Lord. This is the only way that the
Lord has provided for salvation in His Second Coming.
Once we imbibe the letter of the
Writings and honor it in our mind as the Word, we have developed into mature
adult minds ready to undergo rebirth and reformation. Now the literal sentences
that are in our mind become Doctrine of Life. We see each sentence as applying
to ourself, even though very obscurely, and sometimes seeing not even that. But
we accept rationally the idea that every sentence applies to us, in fact, is
the Lord speaking to our natural mind. Now we suddenly become aflame with the
desire to reform. We passionately seek out every nonduality in our mind,
deconstruct it, mark it, put it in a special bin, and substitute for it a
duality from those many sentences and ideas we imbibed from the Writings. Suddenly
we see clearly in the light of those sentences and concepts. This is spiritual
vision. For the first time we have a spiritual consciousness, the very
beginning of it because we are in the reformation phase, but much more brightly
when we progress in regeneration.
In the Writings, we read details
about correspondences, the Lord’s Laws of Providence and Permissions, conjugial
love, states of regeneration. All these subjects are spiritual topics, but they
are laid down in a natural language. The
literal meaning of the sentence is not the spiritual meaning that is
contained within it. Because this would be impossible! It is impossible on
earth as it is impossible in heaven, because the Word in both worlds is written
in a visible script with letters.
This is most important to
understand, and is repeated in different ways, in several places throughout this
book. At first this is hard to believe and accept, regardless of how much study
we have done on the Writings. This resistance is similar to the resistance
Christians put up to the idea from the Writings that the Old and New Testaments
have an inner sense, and the only this inner sense is actually spiritual. They
have difficulty believing this because they can hardly be expected to
understand it without the Writings.
Prior to our reformation in adult
life we are called Christians, but after reformation, when regeneration has
begun, we are called True Christians—as the title of the last book of the
Writings clearly indicate: The True
Christian Religion. And the last thing in a section of the Word
recapitulates all of the Word (xx). Hence The
True Christian Religion (TCR) is the special Work of the Writings that
embodies, recapitulates, and completes all that has been written in the Word
before it. All who are called “True Christians” are of the
After reformation, we develop a dual
relationship to the Writings. We continue to study the literal as essential for
the continued development of our natural mind. Remember that every word and
sentence of the literal in the Word contains infinite spiritual secrets (xx).
We need those sentences and ideas in our external memory-knowledges as an
endless source of new spiritual truths that enhance our happiness and
consciousness as angels to eternity. This is why the angels have the Word and
read it as the source of all their wisdom (xx). But remember again how they
access these spiritual truths each time they read the Word in script, or think
from it in their memory-knowledge. The wisdom does not lie in the letters and
sentences, but within them. This is a discrete degree above the script or
letter. Therefore it is impossible to express spiritual truths in the script of
the angels, even though that script is called “spiritual script” (xx).
This is the same for us on earth.
The literal sentences and their meanings in our mind, are not spiritual since
they are in the natural mind. We read the sentences and definitions about “the
heavenly doctrine” and the sentence, “This is the Heavenly Doctrine.” These are
indeed spiritual and heavenly subjects, but what’s written down is not the
spiritual meaning. The Lord has provided for this: that as we and angels read
the script, or think from it in our mind, He enlightens each of us. That’s how
it works! Only this enlightenment is the spiritual sense. It’s like a flash of
lightening in a meadow in the dark—our understanding breaks through the
darkness and for an instant, we see the terrain in clear vision. After that
instant we can describe what we have seen, but this description cannot recreate
the vision of the terrain, but only a representation of it in language.
5. Enlightenment From The Lord
When does the Lord give
enlightenment as we read the sentences of the Writings, or think from them in
our mind?
The answer is the same for us now and
later, when we are angels. The Lord gives enlightenment when we try to apply
the sentence or idea in the letter, to our life, that is, to our willing and
thinking moment by moment. This is the “work of charity” or the “life of good”
that we must perform in order be saved. Our willing and thinking moment by
moment consists of a sequence of acts we perform in our will and in our
understanding. Thousands of individual acts of willing, intending, thinking,
and reasoning, go on every day for every human being. Each one of these is either from hell or from heaven. Prior to our
reformation, all are from hell! (xx), and to be regenerated we need to get rid
of them as-of self, in our conscious mind, by a free choice motivated by the
spiritual truth that they are sins against the Lord and prevent us from
becoming angels. That’s a lot of work! But the Lord provides for the orderly
progress within this psychobiological growth process.
Enlightenment is the
flash of heavenly light the Lord sends into our conscious natural mind,
whenever we examine one of our numerous acts of the day or hour, and evaluate
them in the light of the sentences and ideas from the Writings.
The meaning of the flash that we try
to write down or express in words, is called the spiritual Doctrine in our
understanding (xx). This is the spiritual meaning of the Heavenly Doctrines now
seen spiritually, while before regeneration began, we only saw their natural
meaning, since we could not see what is within those sentences. Our mind was
locked into what was in the outside of the sentences, namely their natural
meaning. This natural meaning was essential to acquire so that we may use them
to evaluate our willing and thinking acts. But now that we have applied it to
ourselves, we are given to see what is within. Note carefully: the literal is till there, still true, still
holy. It is still essential to imbibe it and understand it naturally with
our rational understanding. NO progress can be made without this step!
But it must not be the last step!
Mere memory-knowledges of the literal scientifics of the Writings does not have
the power to save us, despite their holiness and essential condition for being
saved. Faith cannot save, but charity within faith, saves (xx). The charity is
the works of good we do by modifying our willing and thinking in accordance
with the faith, the Doctrine, the understanding. The spiritual meaning is then
revealed, first to the spiritual mind, of which we are unconscious, and second,
by correspondence, to the interior-natural mind, of which we are conscious like
a flash in the dark.
Prior to reformation, the Lord calls
the works we do as “a hunter of the ground.” We have the Writings, we
acknowledge it as the Word, we study and memorize it, but we do not apply it to
our willing and thinking in particular, but only in general, like a confession
or creed. It is in our mind for a few minutes a week or day, but then out of
our mind, as we carry on intending and willing in the absence of our thinking
about the Writings. But after reformation, we are motivated to change our
moment by moment intending and thinking, so that they conform to what we have
learned from our study of the Writings. In this new state, the Lord calls us “a
man of the field.” We don’t just put the heavenly doctrines into our
understanding, but into our will. This requires gradual regeneration, day by
day, like a gardener or farmer toiling in his field.
Then the Writings are no longer
merely the Word of our religion, but the Lord Himself in His Holy Spirit or
Divine Rational. This is because we can now perceive the Lord within the letter
in a way not perceivable until then. Our love for this Divine Truth develops
our spiritual mind all the way to the Second Heaven of the spiritual angels.
But if our love is for the Lord, and thence for His Truth, our spiritual mind
is developed all the way to the Third Heaven of the celestial angels. To love
the Lord’s Truth is to study the Writings and to make its concepts the
governing ideas in our mind. To love the Lord, and thence His Truth, is to use
this truth to modify our willing and thinking, so that we may become more
agreeable to the Lord, to His Order, and closer to Him in conjunction.
Those who consider themselves in the
UNLESS A MAN IS BORN AGAIN, AND, AS
IT WERE, CREATED ANEW, HE CANNOT ENTER INTO THE
That unless a man is born again he cannot enter into
the
We need to ask ourselves: How is the
The techniques fall into two categories:
critical analysis of ideas and concepts, and systematic methods of self-witnessing
or objective self-observation. Critical analysis by means of the Writings as
the only authority, is the work of reformation presented in Volume 1.
Everything in our mind from heredity, socialization, and culture must be
rearranged and subjected to critical evaluation in this heavenly light. Our
moment to moment intending and thinking, emoting and verbing, must be monitored
so that we may get to know the evils in our unregenerate character. In Volume 3
this is called self-witnessing and is the actual process of our cooperation
with the Lord in regeneration.
The Writings were given to humankind
universally, but also to each unique individual mind in particular, as pointed
out in this
The acceptance of the Writings is an individual
thing. The
The books claim to be the Lord speaking to man. It is
pointless for a man to decide whether they are or whether they are not until
the doctrines have had access to his mind. If his mind responds to them, he may
see that he is approaching a momentous decision. “Perhaps these doctrines
really are the Lord Himself speaking to me.” If they are, if he accepts them as
such, a complete change comes about, for they have Divine claim on his rational
mind. The reception of them becomes the supreme service to which the rational
mind can be turned.
(Rev. Donald L. Rose, Sermon titled
“The Colt Loosed For the Lord’s Service”
This book
is written for those who read the Writings as the Lord Himself speaking to them
through the rational ideas contained in them. Since the reception of the Heavenly Doctrine must be particular to each
individual, no one can escape the main issue presented here: What
effort is required of each of us to receive the Writings? As soon as
we begin to read the Writings as the Word, we learn that we must be regenerated
to be saved, and that this process is carried out gradually by the Lord, but
only to the extent that we cooperate in the process. Clearly then, reading and acknowledging the Writings as the Word is not
enough for anyone to be regenerated, hence saved. Worshipping in the
How are we to cooperate with the
Lord in our reformation and regeneration? This book presents some spiritual methods and disciplines that help us
to perform this required cooperation. In the Writings, this required cooperative
effort is called being “a man of the field”:
'A man of the field' means the good
of life that has its origin in matters of doctrine.
This is clear from the meaning of
'the field'. In the Word reference is made in many places to the earth (or the
land), the ground, and the field. … And since the Church is not the Church by
virtue of matters of doctrine except insofar as these have the good of life as
the end in view, or what amounts to the same, unless matters of doctrine are
joined to the good of life, 'the field' therefore means primarily the good of
life. But in order that such good may be that of the Church, matters of
doctrine from the Word which have been implanted within that good must be
present.
In the absence of matters of
doctrine the good of life does indeed exist, but it is not as yet that of the
Church, and so not as yet truly spiritual, except in the sense that it has the
potentiality to become so, like the good of life as this exists with gentiles
who do not possess the Word and therefore do not know the Lord.
[2] That 'the field' is the good of
life in which the things of faith, that is, spiritual truths existing with the
Church, are implanted, becomes quite clear from the Lord's parable about the
sower in Matthew …
[3] With regard to the good of life
which has its origin in matters of doctrine being meant by 'a man of the
field', the position is that those who are being regenerated first of all do
good as matters of doctrine direct them, for they do not of themselves know
what good is. They learn to do good from matters of doctrine concerning love
and charity; from these they know who the Lord is, who the neighbour is, what
love is, and what charity is, and so what good is. Those who have come into
this stage are stirred by the affection for truth and are called 'men (vir) of
the field'.
But after that, once they have been
regenerated they do good not from matters of doctrine but from love and
charity, for the good itself which they have learned about through matters of
doctrine exists with them, and they are in that case called 'men (homo) of the
field'. …
[4] The same also applies to
spiritual truths which are called doctrinal and are more interior Commandments
still. For matters of doctrine are interior truths which the natural man
possesses, the first truths there being sensory ones, the second truths being
factual, and interior truths matters of doctrine. The latter are based on
factual truths inasmuch as a person can have and retain no idea, notion, or
concept of them except from factual truths. But the foundations on which
factual truths are based are sensory truths, for without sensory truths nobody
is able to possess factual ones. Such truths, that is to say, factual and
sensory, are meant by 'a man skilled in hunting', but matters of doctrine are
meant by 'a man of the field'.
Such is the order in which those
kinds of truths stand in relation to one another in man. Until a person has
become adult therefore, and through sensory and factual truths possesses
matters of doctrine, he is incapable of being regenerated, for he cannot be
confirmed in the truths contained in matters of doctrine except through ideas
based on factual and sensory truths - for nothing is ever present in a person's
thought, not even the deepest arcanum of faith there, which does not involve
some natural or sensory idea, though generally a person is not aware of the
essential nature of such ideas. But in the next life the nature of them is
revealed before his understanding, if he so desires, and also a visual
representation before his sight, if he wants it; for in the next life such
things can be presented before one's eyes in a visual form. This seems
unbelievable but it is nevertheless what happens there. (AC 3310)
This passages teaches many things,
some of which may be summarized in relation to this book:
1. The “good of life” that the
2. The church in us is not made by
knowledge and understanding of the Writings, but by willing and thinking in
accordance with the spiritual Doctrine in our mind that we obtained from the
Writings.
3. Willing and thinking in
accordance with the spiritual Doctrine is only possible to the extent that we
study the Writings sufficiently to have articulated in our mind an accommodated
version that can guide our willing and thinking all day long. This accommodated
version in our mind is called the Doctrine, and it becomes more and more
spiritual as we advance in regeneration.
4. Church membership and worship do
not create the spiritual mind, but only the spiritual Doctrine in our mind, and
this only to the extent that we use it to guide our daily willing and thinking.
5. There are two stages we must
undergo. In phase 1 we do our willing and thinking from the literal Doctrine in
our mind. This is our state of reformation, of obedience to the truth. We do
not yet know the Lord as to His Love, but only the Lord as to His Truth. After
this phase is matured, we enter phase 2 in which we do our willing and thinking
from the love of the Lord and neighbor by means of the truth of Doctrine in our
mind. This truth of Doctrine is now spiritual, whereas before, it was only
natural. This is actual regeneration and salvation. We must not get stuck in
phase 1, for this does not lead to Heaven.
6. There are two levels of willing
and thinking in the natural mind. The lower level is called scientific, based
on natural truths from sensory observations and facts. The upper level of
thinking is called doctrinal, that is, based on the truths from the Writings.
The scientific level (“a man skilled in hunting”) is based on what’s below in
our mind and is purely natural, but the doctrinal level (“a man of the field”),
is based on what’s above and pertains to what is spiritual.
7. The doctrinal level of willing
and thinking must be founded on the scientific or literal level. Truths about
spiritual things remain rational abstractions, not genuine spiritual-rational
truths, unless they are grounded in sensuous actions from our willing and
thinking. The indescribable wisdom and intelligence of angels must rest in
sensuous things in them and around them, which is why heaven is so rich in external
life, in art and sublime conveniences (CL 12).
8. Regeneration is spiritual,
therefore it must take place within the outward level of willing and thinking in
our sensuous life. This outward level of life is where we can make decisions
and choices based on our own philosophy, beliefs, and rational faith. This
thinking from self normally starts in early adulthood. Until then we merely act
from the authority of others and the things we have learned since early childhood.
Regardless of the religion in which one is born, there is no reformation until
early adulthood and beyond. After reformation is matured, spiritual
regeneration can begin.
9. Reformation begins when we are
ready to acknowledge the truths from the Writings as Divine Commandments we are
required to perform daily for our salvation.
10. The Writings consist of natural truths
(“scientific truths”) and spiritual truths (“Doctrine”). Both scientific truths
and doctrinal truths appear or are contained in, the letter of the Writings.
Doctrinal truths about spiritual things are first taken up as the literal
language, understood literally or naturally. But later, we understand them
spiritually.
These ten
statements constitute the rationale and general content of this book.
7. At The Threshold Out Of Hell Into Heaven
The theme of the reformation techniques (Volume 1) is
how to identify and deconstruct nonduality in our mind, which we have taken up
from culture and self-intelligence. The theme of the regeneration techniques (Volume 3) is how to perform the daily
discipline of self-witnessing, which consists in monitoring our willing and
thinking moment by moment, keeping track of its ceaseless stream, and modifying
it in accordance with the Doctrine in our mind. We must undergo reformation
before we can begin regeneration.
At this point something will now be
said on how the internal man is reformed and how the external man is reformed by
means of it. The internal man is not reformed merely by knowing, understanding
and being wise, and consequently merely by thinking; but by willing what
knowledge, understanding and wisdom teach.
When a man knows, understands and
has wisdom to see that there is a heaven and a hell, and that all evil is from
hell and all good is from heaven; and if he then does not will evil because it
is from hell, but wills good because it is from heaven, he is in the first
stage of reformation, and is at the threshold out of hell into heaven.
When he progresses further, and
wills to desist from evils he is in the second stage of reformation, and is now
outside hell but not yet in heaven, which he sees above him. A man must have
such an internal in order that he may be reformed; but he is not reformed
unless the external as well as the internal is reformed. The external is
reformed by means of the internal when the external desists from the evils
which the internal does not will because they are infernal, and still more when
the external for this reason shuns them and fights against them. Thus willing
is the part of the internal and doing of the external. For unless a man does
that which he wills there is within him the failure to will which eventually
becomes want of will.
[2] From these few considerations it
can be seen how the external man is reformed by means of the internal. This
also is what is meant by the Lord's words to Peter:
Jesus said: If I wash thee not, thou
hast no part with me. [Simon] Peter saith unto Him: Lord, not my feet only, but
also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him: He that is washed needeth not
save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. John xiii. 8, 9, 10.
By washing is meant spiritual washing, which is
purification from evils; by washing the head and hands is meant purifying the
internal man; and by washing the feet is meant purifying the external man. That
the external man must be purified when the internal has been purified is meant
by this, "He that is washed, needeth not save to wash his feet." That
all purification from evils is from the Lord is meant by this, "If I wash
thee not, thou hast no part with me." It has been shown in many places in
the ARCANA COELESTIA that washing among the Jews represented purification from
evils, and that this is signified in the Word by washing; and that by washing
the feet is signified the purification of the natural or external man. (DP 151)
Reformation eliminates the many
nondualities in our mind and allows us to build up the
According to Rev. Rose:
Every person raised within the
church must come to the time of a possession of a rational faculty… Every
person raised within the church, although he has many times heard the Lord
speaking, must in the privacy of the chamber of his mind know what it is to
acknowledge this and say, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” … Even if we
have accepted the Writings, we can still have wrong ideas. …
Suppose that the new truth puts
light upon imperfections in our self. It exposes our evils and proves that our
thoughts have been false. Our pride resists it; the habitual thinking of many
years resist it. … But when we realize that it is the Lord Himself speaking,
our reluctance can give way to a thrilling sense of progress and change.
(Rev. Donald L. Rose, Sermon titled
“The Colt Loosed For the Lord’s Service”
Nonduality exists in the human mind
as a property of being unregenerate. Regeneration
is effected by the Lord through our persistent application of dualities from
the Writings to our daily willing and thinking. This is the commandment
of performing “works of charity:”
The proper and genuine uses of charity are the uses
of each one's function and administration, as has been said above. These then
become goods of charity, in which love to the Lord exists, or with which that
love is conjoined, when man does them from spiritual fidelity and sincerity,
which those have who love uses because they are uses, and who believe that
every good is from the Lord. But besides these there are other general uses, as
faithfully loving the marriage partner, rightly bringing up children, managing
the home prudently, and dealing justly with servants. These works become works
of charity when they are done from the love of uses; and in reference to a
marriage partner when they are done from mutual and chaste love; such uses are
household uses which are uses of charity. (D. WIS. 10)
The following two things are clear
from this passage. First, that the Lord is present with us nowhere but in our
love of uses, which love is called “works of charity.” Second, that works of
charity refers to our willing and thinking daily as we carry out our activities
and relationships. This motivation of uses in our willing and thinking cannot
be merely “uses of external charity” called “piety,” for this is not itself
spiritual or of our salvation:
To give aid to the needy, to widows, to orphans,
solely because they are needy, widows and orphans, and to give to beggars
solely because they are beggars, are uses of external charity, which charity is
called piety; but these are uses of internal charity only so far as they are
derived from use and the love of use. For external charity without internal
charity is not charity; the internal must be there to make it charity; for
external charity from internal charity acts prudently, but external without
internal charity acts imprudently, and often unjustly. (D. WIS. 10:5)
We are commanded to form the
8.
Cooperation in our Regeneration
This
motive for regeneration must involve all our willing and thinking, moment by
moment throughout the day, in our social, professional, and recreational
activities. How are we to accomplish this? We
need to learn the mental discipline of accomplishing this ceaseless activity
every day. This discipline must be spiritual and its justification and method
must be from the Writings.
Anyone therefore who looks to the Lord and wants to
be guided by Him is in a state of good. But anyone who turns away from God and
wants to be guided by himself is not in a state of good (CL 444)
To look to the Lord is to reason
from spiritual truths obtained from the Word of the Lord. To “be guided by
self” is to reason from natural appearances obtained either from self or from
the ideas of others. The fundamental duality of the
Even those born in a
9.
The Lord’s Relationship to All Religions
After reformation is completed,
regeneration begins, and continues till the end. This is the process of
gradually internalizing the truths in our memory into the choices of our life.
This new mind is appropriately called the
(1)
Religious
membership does not constitute salvation (TCR 254; AC 8762; NJHD 126).
(2)
Therefore,
those born in the
(3)
Hence
also, those born in any religion, and those who have no religion, are
unregenerate and must undergo regeneration, either in this life or in the
afterlife (HH 512, 308).
(4)
Every
individual, regardless of religion or belief system, is born unregenerate, and
in order to be saved for eternal life in heaven, must undergo regeneration (HH
308).
The Lord provides for the salvation
of every individual (TCR 142). Every person is born for eternal life in heaven
(HH 82, TCR 574). The Lord is the same Divine Human for all people on this
earth and on all the other earths in the universe (EU 121; SE 4373, 5513). It
stands to reason therefore that the Lord provides a means for regeneration in
the case of every human being. This
The Church where the Word is and the
Lord is known by means of it, in relation to those outside the Church where
there is no Word and the Lord is unknown is like the heart and lungs in man in
comparison with the other parts of the body, which live from them as from the
fountains of their life ... Before the Lord the universal Church on the earth
is as one Man ... (HH 305)
Here it is revealed that the Lord
unites the entire human race into “one Man” or in the Form of one human being,
even as He unites the body’s many parts into one integrated functioning unit.
There is also a conjunction of heaven by means of the
Word with those who are outside the Church where there is no Word; for the
Lord's Church is universal, and is with all who acknowledge the Divine and live
in charity. Moreover, such are taught after death by angels and receive Divine
truths (HH 308).
This passage reveals that people of
all religions are part of the Lord’s Heaven, the only condition being, not
religious membership, but living an individual life that is good. Good is
defined universally by all religions as worshipping God, obeying God’s
commandments, and loving the neighbor, that is, not injuring others for the
sake of self. Further, the above passages reveal that all individuals must be taught
by angels upon arrival into the afterlife. In this instruction everyone is
given genuine spiritual truths, and these truths are understood with variety,
depending on the genius or religious beliefs of each individual. All those who lived a life of obedience to
God and love to the neighbor, are able to receive the Divine Truths from the
angels. But since these truths are accommodated to the mind of each
individual, the Heavens are arranged by the Lord in numberless angelic
societies, each different, each unique (AC 10334). Therefore people of
different religions have their own Heavens under the Lord, depending on the
idea of Him they form for themselves (DLW 13).
Those born in a
They who are born where the Word is, and where the
Lord is thereby known, are not of the church, but they who are regenerated by
the Lord by the truths of the Word, that is, they who live the life of charity
… (NJHD 246)
Here we
see once again that Church membership is not saving. Those born in the New Church who acknowledge the Writings as the Word
of their religion, are not saved by Baptism in childhood, or by years of Sunday
Worship, and by graduating from a religious New Church school. Salvation is by
one method for all human beings: regeneration. And regeneration does not begin
until after reformation in early adulthood (AC 3518). Clearly then, the
It is clear from all this that the
10. The Writings As The Exclusive Source For Spiritual
Truths
Hence the crucial question: How are
we to reform our mind from the unregenerate state to the state of becoming the
Clearly,
then, it is not permissible for the
Take for instance the concept of
“God” which is universal to all the Heavens. Universal doesn’t mean similar
between the integrated parts. The New Heavens of the Second Coming are at the
center of all the Heavens and closest to the spiritual Sun, or the Lord (xx).
Concepts from this Heaven cannot be exported to the other Heavens in a direct
way, but only in a from accommodated to their genius and willingness.
Similarly, concepts from the other Heavens cannot be imported into the New
Christian Heaven, which is the New Heaven established by the truths of the
Writings (TCR 1).
What applies to heaven also applies
to the Church on earth (TCR 14, 119). And so, once more we see that the
Writings as the Word of the New Christian Heaven, must be the exclusive source
of all concepts regarding salvation of the
It will be shown in this volume that
every concept from the Writings is a duality and every concept not from the
Writings is a nonduality in the
Note that
the individual with a
11.
Separating Nonduality and Duality in the Mind
The advantages afforded to the
Only he who knows how degrees are
related to Divine order can comprehend how the heavens are distinct, or even
what is meant by the internal and the external man. Most men in the world have
no other idea of what is interior and what is exterior, or of what is higher
and what is lower, than as something continuous, or coherent by continuity,
from purer to grosser. But the relation of what is interior to what is exterior
is discrete, not continuous. Degrees are of two kinds, those that are
continuous and those that are not. Continuous degrees are related like the
degrees of the waning of a light from its bright blaze to darkness, or like the
degrees of the decrease of vision from objects in the light to those in the
shade, or like degrees of purity in the atmosphere from bottom to top. These
degrees are determined by distance.
(…)
[3] Until one has acquired for
himself a perception of these degrees he cannot possibly understand the
differences between the heavens, nor between the interior and exterior
faculties of man, nor the differences between the spiritual world and the
natural world, nor between the spirit of man and his body. So neither can he
understand the nature and source of correspondences and representations, or the
nature of influx. Sensual men do not apprehend these differences, for they make
increase and decrease, even according to these degrees, to be continuous, and
are therefore unable to conceive of what is spiritual otherwise than as a purer
natural. And in consequence they remain outside of and a great way off from
intelligence. (HH 38)
At the beginning of our reformation
in adult life our unregenerate mind is mixed with dualities from the Writings
and nondualities from self and culture. Our reformation is therefore nothing
but a clash of ideas in our mind, a battle of life and death, a struggle for
heaven or hell. Our own unregenerate will is dead set to lead us to hell, while
the reformed will is from the Lord, hence set to eternal life in heaven.
… man when regenerated is as to the
intellectual part the Lord's, but as to his will part is his own, these two
parts in the spiritual man being opposed.
But though the will part of man is
opposed, yet it cannot but be present; for all the obscurity in his
intellectual part, or all the density of his cloud, is from it. It continually
flows in from it, and in proportion as it flows in, the cloud in his
intellectual part is thickened; but in proportion as it is removed, the cloud
is made thin.
(…)
[3] This condition of things between the will and the
understanding is as if two who were formerly conjoined by a covenant of
friendship, as were the will and the understanding in the man of the Most
Ancient Church, had their friendship broken, and enmity had arisen-as took
place when man wholly corrupted his will part-and then when a covenant is again
entered into, the hostile part is set forth as if the covenant were with it,
but it is not with it, because it is utterly opposite and contrary, but it is
with that which flows in from it-as already said-that is, with the Own of the
understanding.
The "token" or "sign" of the
covenant is this, that in proportion as there is the presence of the Lord in
the Own of the understanding, in the same proportion the Own of the will be
removed.
The case herein is exactly as it is with heaven and
hell. The intellectual part of the regenerated man, from charity, in which the
Lord is present, is heaven; his will part is hell. So far as the Lord is
present in this heaven, so far is this hell removed. For of himself man is in
hell, and of the Lord is in heaven. And man is being continually uplifted from
hell into heaven, and so far as he is uplifted, so far his hell is removed. The
"sign" therefore, or indication, that the Lord is present, is that
man's will part is being removed. The possibility of its removal is effected by
means of temptations, and by many other means of regeneration. (AC 1044)
The above
passage teaches several things about how we are to undergo reformation and
regeneration:
(1)
All
the willing we do prior to reformation in adult life is evil from hell and
cannot be regenerated.
(2)
Reformation
is the struggle of opposites in our mind. The truths we acquire from the
Writings are the Lord with us in our “intellectual part,” but our will part, or
our willing and intending, is hell with us since there is nothing in it but
evil affections of every kind. This evil doesn’t show in our social personality
because we are motivated by selfish affections to simulate what is required, and
to hide how we would desire to behave.
(3)
Prior
to reformation our evil affections or motives, called cupidities and lusts in
the will, create falsities in the understanding, from which we have false
beliefs where we see falsity as truth, and truth as falsity. This falsified
mental life is called “clouds” in the mind. And as the “density of his cloud”
thickens, the more is one’s mental life impaired and falsified in every
intention of the will and every reasoning of the understanding. This is our
unregenerate life until reformation begins in early adulthood when we can make
the conscious rational lifestyle choice to rearrange our thinking in accordance
with the Writings. Then for the first time the Lord becomes actually present in
our understanding as opposed to being there nominally or by reputation.
(4)
Our
automatic progress to hell can be reversed by allowing the Lord to remove the
cupidities and lusts in our will and to give us a reformed will. The Lord
cannot do this without our conscious cooperation. This conscious cooperation is
to learn the truths of the Writings and to consider them as Divine Commandments
for living. Then the Lord is present actually and can remove the old will. He
does that by Himself for we have no power whatsoever. The process of replacing
the old will is gradual and proceeds only so far as is made possible by our
actual daily cooperation, minute by minute. And “in proportion as it is
removed, the cloud is made thin,” meaning that the life of evil and spiritual insanity
is gradually removed during the years of regeneration. But nothing is removed
by the Lord except that which we allow.
(5)
While
we are regenerating, from young adulthood to the end, our mind is in
opposition, partly sane and partly insane, though not at the same level in the
mind, for they are kept apart by the Lord who prevents commingling (DP 296; cf.
AC 2426). Commingling would lead to profanation and a fate worse than hell (cf.
AC 3757).
(6)
Once
our understanding is filled with the dualities from the Writings, we are
expected to proceed as-of-self in our daily struggle with choices. We are to
recognize and isolate all nondualities that are in our mind from many sources. From
this categorical rearrangement, the
(7)
After
reformation, the childhood and adolescence of the
(8)
As
we struggle daily, in our willing and thinking, the Lord gives us a “sign” of
His presence: It’s our awareness that the old cupidities and lusts we are
familiar with, no longer appear in the same situations. We become aware of this
during temptations, and in other ways.
To initiate and complete our reformation
we must examine our chief concepts as they exist in our mind, and deconstruct
them, so that we learn to distinguish between the nondualities and the
dualities. This volume is about learning the process of eliminating conceptual
nondualities and establishing dualities of life, called Doctrine, and thereby
forming as-of self the
The Lord is creating our gradual
regeneration step by step, but only to the extent that we actively cooperate
with Him moment by moment in our willing and thinking (TCR 371, 577; 615; cf.
TCR 464; BE 15, 13). What does this cooperation consist of? What is it that we
have to do in order to be considered “cooperating”? This book gives two broad
answers. Volume 1 deals with Reformation, which is the struggle against
nonduality in our mind. Since we internalize our culture and education, our
unregenerate mind is suffused with all sorts of concepts and ideas and
attractions that are nondualities.
For example, many people are
attracted to Eastern nonduality in the form “self=divine,” or the idea that
self is an illusion or unreality, while in reality we are God (see Chapter 1).
Another example is scientific nonduality or materialistic science which asserts
that only the natural world exists and denies heaven and hell. Another example
is psychological nonduality which introduces and supports ideas that clash with
dualities in the Writings, such as the idea of unconditional love and
self-acceptance (see Chapter xx Section xx).
One final example is the cultural
nonduality of pluralism and relativity which are opposed to dualities such as
heaven and hell or genuine truth and adulterated truth. Our reformation
consists in struggling against these nondualities in our mind from all these
sources. The motive or purpose must be to replace them with the dualities we
take up from the Writings. This process of replacement, if it’s going to
succeed, must be done consciously, with full awareness and rational
understanding. Therefore I illustrate in this volume various ways of using
rational analysis to deconstruct and debunk the nondualities in our mind. To
think and will from the Writings is the cooperation we must perform to be
conjoined to the Lord and have heavenly life:
The freedom of choice resulting from
this is the ability to will and to think from the Lord, that is, from the Word,
and also the ability to will and to think from the devil, that is, contrary to
the Lord and the Word. (TCR 371)
Volume 3 deals with Regeneration,
which is the struggle against our inherited and acquired lusts and their
falsities in our mind. I describe many kinds of spiritual disciplines that I
found suitable for developing the
12.
Reformation by Means of the Writings
The
We first are to change our thinking
by studying the Writings every day and forming the Doctrine of Life in our
understanding. Often readers believe that I am exaggerating when I mention that
the study of the Writings should be a daily task. But consider what you do if
you are going to succeed as a student, scholar, or expert at anything whatsoever.
It requires many hours a week that amount to daily portions, and this, week
after week, until there is accumulation. This is what needs to be done if we
are going to accumulate enough Doctrine in our mind to serve as Divine Guide in
our every moment of willing, thinking, and behaving. The accumulation of
Doctrine can never cease because Doctrine is to be understood more and more
interiorly in order to serve our regeneration. The highest angels continue to
regenerate by means of more and more interior ideas they receive from the Lord
when studying the Word.
Consider also what would prevent you
from serious daily studies of the Writings, given that you know that it is the
Lord present with you and through which He wants to regenerate you by giving
you ever more interior visions and truths of Himself and of heaven.
So I am not exaggerating when I
frequently repeat this requirement that we study the Writings daily as a
serious student. Overcoming the obstacles that pose themselves to prevent this,
is a key element of reformation. They can all be overcome by holding this one
genuine idea in your focus: The Writings are the Lord in His Word of the Second
Coming and every truth in it is a Divine Commandment for me. To love the
Writings is therefore to love the Lord. To postpone the Writings is to love
something else above the Lord. To have a distaste for studying the Writings is
to love self above the Lord. Since we all start that way, we must compel
ourselves to act in opposition to our resistance or avoidance of Him in His
Word in which He is Himself, His Own Divine Truth.
The more interior our understanding
of Doctrine from the Writings, the more we are willing to think and act in
accordance with our Doctrine.
They who are being regenerated, at
first do what is good from doctrinal things, for of themselves they do not know
what is good, but learn it from the doctrinal things of love and charity; from
these they know who the Lord is; who is the neighbor; what love is, and what
charity; thus what good is. (AC 3310)
Regeneration is a gradual process
over our entire life on earth, and beyond (AC 9410). It is a conscious process
because it can go on only with our conscious cooperation (DP 114). This takes
the form of monitoring our thinking and willing, assessing them in the light of
the understanding of Doctrine in our mind, modifying our thoughts and decisions
accordingly, and continuing every day to live in this manner. Doing this as-of
self prepares our mind for heaven. To
do it as-of self means that we struggle in the natural mind as if we were doing it alone but knowing in our rational mind that it is the Lord
doing it by the infinite power of His Divine Wisdom from His Divine Love
(AC 47, 233, 1712, 2877, 5664, 10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82; SE 5958; LJ 299;
AE 864).
To the extent that we progress in
our regeneration day by day, and week by week, to that extent the Lord reveals
to us more and more interior spiritual truths as we study the Writings. Our
consciousness is thereby enlightened and we can think and understand things in
the light of heaven.
The Word is not understood except by
those who are enlightened. … The human rational cannot apprehend Divine things,
nor even spiritual things, unless it is enlightened by the Lord … Thus only
they who are enlightened apprehend the Word … They who are in the good of life,
and thereby in the affection of truth, are enlightened (NJHD 256).
This new understanding is
simultaneously applied to all things around us and guides our willing and
thinking, and to the extent that we are persistent and consistent, to that
extent the Lord can create a new will within our reformed understanding. Now we
continue life on earth in this celestial state of mind and life. Meanwhile we
continue to have this new mind perfected by the Lord until His judgment of the
right time, and then we pass on, leaving the physical body, and awakening in a
spiritual body. Upon that momentous occasion angels are present, and help us to
prepare fully for entrance into heaven. This period of preparation is fairly
brief, equivalent to less than a few months in relation to the pacing we are
used to from the natural world (HH
498). We then enter the heaven of our society where we
find our house and our spouse. That is our bliss and happiness in eternity.
If we don’t do this daily work,
there is only one other way, which is to remain infernal as we were born,
whereupon when we arrive in the afterlife we are prepared for life in hell and
our spirit-body sinks down to its level of miserable and inhuman life.
Evils are as it were heavy, and fall
of themselves into hell; and so also falsities that are from evil (n. 8279,
8298). (HD 170)
The Writings play an essential role
in this overall process of reformation, regeneration, and preparation. Without
the Writings the
The Word is the only doctrine which teaches how a man
must live in the world in order to be happy to eternity. (AC 8939)
A human being is created for everlasting life, and
any person can inherit that life, so long as he lives in accordance with the
means of salvation prescribed in the Word; every Christian, as well as every
non-Christian who possesses a religion and sound reason, assents to this
proposition. (TCR 340)
Without the Word there is no rational conception of
the Lord, and thus no salvation (SS 111)
As to the formation of faith: it is effected by man's
going to the Lord, learning truths from the Word, and living according to them.
(TCR 347)
I spoke with those who placed the only means of
salvation in reading the Word. They were overhead, and said that they take
great care that all in their society are diligent in reading the Word. But I
told them, that this does not save, but that they must live according to the
Word, and that nobody can live according to the Word except he be in the
doctrine of truth from it; otherwise, they do not know how they are to live,
for, from the sense of the letter of the Word, they are able to defend
everything that belongs to their life, be it what it may, and this to protect
falsities. It was shown also what is the nature of the Word in the letter, but
that those who are in doctrine from the Word, see the Word and read it, quite
differently; they consequently understand it, and are thus able to become
rational: otherwise, this cannot take place. It was shown, also, that the
reading of the Word is not attended to by the Lord, and therefore does not
promote salvation, unless they are in the life of truth; and that they cannot
be in the life of truth, except they be in doctrine from the Word (SE 5961).
For the
formation of the
13.
Old and New Testament From Perspective Of The Writings
If we could be saved by the Old and
New Testaments then the Writings were not necessary! The salvation of the
As we have now one God in the
church, who is God Man and Man God, this church is called the crown of all the
churches. (INV 43)
These are evidences that this has
been granted for the sake of the
(…)
This
(…)
After these things, from good
elevated to Himself, He founds a new heaven, and from the evil removed from
Himself, a new hell; and in both He establishes order, so that they may stand
under His auspices and under obedience to Him to eternity; and then through
this new heaven He successively inaugurates and establishes a new church on
earth. (CORONIS 0)
You can find other passages that say
similar things (e.g., AR 68, 73; TCR 786-788; AE 91-92; and others). You can
see from these considerations that there is not going to be an endless
procession of Churches in the evolution of our race. There are a definite
number of steps or phases that the Lord brings the race through so that He
might complete His creation, which is that we become celestial minds capable of
living in His New Heavens. The
14.
The Writings Are The Last Revelation
The Lord in His First Coming taught
that He must come again to complete His Divine mission of the salvation of the
human race (AC 4060). The Lord gave the Old Testament through Moses and the
Prophets. That was the equivalent of the Word’s legs and feet. It was so
obscure that the Jewish Church is called a “representative of a Church.” The
literal of the Word reveals the level of understanding of the people who
receive it at the beginning of a new dispensation. Consider the literal of the
Old Testament. By today’s standards scholars call it pre-modern, superstitious,
racist, barbaric, and obscure in meaning. It is written at a level entirely
unacceptable to the modern mind concerned with human rights, humanism, and
rationality. You can see why I said that it is the legs and feet of the Divine
Word. It does establish that there is God, and that God rules all details of
the universe. It establishes that God saves human beings for eternal life in
happiness and bliss if they follow His commandments, but puts away all others
into an eternal hell of misery. Enough is established by this Old Testament Word
to save those who obey the commandments of their religion.
But after many generations the level
of thinking of the Old Testament was no longer believable to the generations
that were surrounded by more advanced civilizations and intellectual traditions
in the East and the West. A new Word was then given as the New Testament by the
Lord Himself in His First Coming. This Word is like the entire midsection of
the body, including the abdomen and the chest and the arms. The level of
thinking is a discrete degree above that of the Old Testament. Enough is
established in this Word to once again be able to save for heaven all those who
obey its commandments as being from the Lord. These commandments, even in their
literal statements, are more internal than those given in the letter of the Old
Testament. The level of thinking of the Old Testament is corporeal-sensuous,
while that of the New Testament is external rational.
The new truths and principles were
for the rational mind, unlike the Old Testament where the truths were for the
external mind that is close to the body senses. For example, the Old Testament
tells nothing specific about the afterlife. The only level of thinking the
people were capable of at that time was the idea that heaven is what a reformed
earth will be after the resurrection from the graves. That idea of heaven was a
heaven in the physical world. But the heaven of the New Testament is “within
you,” thus not out there or here, but in the interior of the human mind. To go
to heaven is not to go to a place but to develop a state of mind in which
heaven can exist:
Heaven is in the man; and there is a
place for him in heaven according to the state of life and of faith in which he
is (AC 9305)
The New Testament Commandments were
also at a higher level of rationality, suitable for the new mind. “Love thy
neighbor” meant not just your own ethnic group or religion. “Being married”
meant not just doing what you please but what God demands and consecrates. “Adultery”
is not just what you do, but also what you desire and think. In the New
Testament level of reasoning, willing and thinking become more important for
salvation than ritual sacrifices or prayers. Not overt doing is the measure of
salvation but inward thinking and intending. So a new more interior, more
rational method was made available by the Lord through this new Word.
As deeds and works are from the will
and thought, so are they from the love and faith, consequently they are such as
the love and faith are; for it is the same thing whether you say one's love or
his will, and it is the same thing whether you say one's faith or his
established thought; for that which a man loves he wills, and that which a man
believes he thinks; and when a man loves what he believes he also wills it and
as far as possible does it. Everyone may know that love and faith are within
man's will and thought, and not outside of them, for love is what kindles the
will, and the thought is what it enlightens in matters of faith; therefore only
those that are able to think wisely are enlightened, and in the measure of
their enlightenment they think what is true and will it, or what is the same,
they believe what is true and love it. (HH 473)
But in the course of time a new modern
mind emerged from the successes of science and modernism. The New Testament was
no longer believable to this new mentality and civilization that rejected
mystery of faith and anything spiritual that could not be understood and
justified by the modern mind. Those who still adhered to the New Testament as
religion still were not able to be saved thereby because internally their
rational mind rejected mysteries (TCR 116, 182; AE 870). When all these people
across the centuries after the First Coming entered the afterlife, their mind
was not at a level of reasoning that could support life in heaven which was a
spiritual-rational state created by spiritual-rational truths.
These people of the “spiritual
church” were all stuck in the spiritual world, unable to go up, being kept by
the Lord from sinking down (TCR 119; AC 7975). At last the generations on earth
reached the intellectual capacity to receive and understand the last portion of
the Word. This was the Lord’s Second Coming in the Writings. This new Word was
like the head of the body, which is why the
The Lord has revealed the spiritual meaning of the
Word at this day because a doctrine of genuine truth has now been revealed.
This doctrine is contained in part in The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly
Doctrine, and now in some shorter works which are in process of
publication.********** And because this doctrine and no other agrees with the
spiritual meaning of the Word, therefore that meaning has now for the first
time been disclosed, along with a knowledge of correspondences. (De Verbo 7:8)
Add to these most manifest evidences, that the
spiritual sense of the Word has been disclosed by the Lord through me, which
has never before been revealed since the Word was written among the sons of
Israel; and this sense is the very sanctuary of the Word: the Lord Himself is
in this sense with His Divine, and in the natural sense with His Human. Not a
single iota in this sense can be opened except by the Lord alone. This
surpasses all the revelations that have hitherto been made from the creation of
the world. (INV 44)
Now a new way is provided again for
salvation. The level of thinking of this new Word is spiritual-rational:
Without the Word there is no rational conception of
the Lord, and thus no salvation (SS 111)
The Word of the Writings are the
Lord’s Divine Truth in His Second Coming to humankind. This is the only way
of discovering who the Divine Human is. No other door way has been provided
by the Lord for the new salvation, the new Heavens. The angels read the
Writings and derive therefrom their Doctrine of Life and all their ineffable
knowledge and wisdom (AC 1405, 1767). They have no other religion but the Word
of the Writings.
Not everyone who reads the Writings
is willing to raise their level of thinking to the rational reasoning presented
in the Writings. In that case one does not read the Writings as the Lord in His
Word. One sees no more in it than books of excellence by a magnificent genius,
if appreciated, and if not, one sees only the fantasies of a religious madman. Only
those who read the Writings as the third portion that completes the Word of
God, can see in it genuine spiritual truths.
[in the Word] they are called "drunkards"
who believe nothing but what they apprehend, and for this reason search into
the mysteries of faith. And because this is done by means of sensuous things,
either of memory or of philosophy, man being what he is, cannot but fall
thereby into errors. For man's thought is merely earthly, corporeal, and
material, because it is from earthly, corporeal, and material things, which
cling constantly to it, and in which the ideas of his thought are based and
terminated.
To think and reason therefore from these concerning
Divine things, is to bring oneself into errors and perversions; and it is as
impossible to procure faith in this way as for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle. The error and insanity from this source are called in the Word
"drunkenness."
(…)
Spirits are perfectly well distinguished from each
other, as to whether they are in the faith of charity or not. Those who are in
the faith of charity do not reason about the truths of faith, but say that the
thing is so, and also as far as possible confirm it by things of sense and of
memory, and by the analysis of reason; but as soon as anything obscure comes in
their way the truth of which they do not perceive, they defer it, and never
suffer such a thing to bring them into doubt, saying that there are but very
few things they can apprehend, and therefore to think that anything is not true
because they do not apprehend it, would be madness.
These are they who are in charity. But-on the
contrary-those who are not in the faith of charity desire merely to reason
whether a thing be so, and to know how it is, saying that unless they can know
how it is, they cannot believe it to be so. From this alone they are known at
once as being in no faith, a mark of which is that they not only doubt
concerning all things, but also deny in their hearts; and when they are
instructed how the case is, they still cling to their disbelief and start all
kinds of objections, and never acquiesce, were it to eternity. Those who thus
persist in their contumacy heap errors upon errors. (AC 1072)
15.
The Writings Are For The Rational Mind
Rev. Donald L. Rose has noted in a
sermon that the Lord has need of our rational in order for Him to enter our
mind:
As they were untying the colt, its
owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They replied,
"The Lord needs it." They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on
the colt and put Jesus on it.
(Luke 19:33-35)
In reading this story of the Word,
we may picture ourselves addressed by those words: “The Lord hath need of him.”
The colt has various significations and is especially related to what is
rational (see AC 2782, 5741, 6376). We can see here the Lord’s emissaries sent
to bring the rational mind to himself. The owner of the rational questions this
action. The so-called owner of the rational is the man himself.
In this story we see especially the giving of the
Writings to man (see ISB 20).
(Rev. Donald L. Rose, Sermon titled
“The Colt Loosed For the Lord’s Service”
We accumulate knowledge about the
Writings from our education and from study. Where in the mind is this
accumulation? Of course it is in the organ of the understanding, but this has
several discrete levels, each with a totally different psychological function.
The sentences of the Writings can be understood according to one’s level of
mental functioning at the time. In the lowest intellectual mentality, called
the natural-corporeal mind, the Writings are understood as a storybook about
heaven and hell sprinkled in among mostly incomprehensible pages. At the next
level of intellectual mentality, called the natural-sensuous mind, the Writings
are understood as a storybook about the spiritual world mingled with Church
doctrine and a lot of history about the previous churches and the mentality of those
people. At the third an uppermost level, called the natural-rational mind, the
Writings are understood as the new Rational Word, revealing a coherent rational
system of theology tied to the Bible and corroborated by Swedenborg’s special
mission as the revelator of the Lord’s Second Coming. And the more we study the
Writings at this level of understanding, the more we create suitable “vessels”
or dualities, in which the Lord will implant spiritual truths. And with more
and more study of the Writings, we can begin to see the marvelous rational web
and framework of truths by which the Lord maintains reality.
To live from the Word is to live from the Lord, for the Lord is in the
Word, yea, He is the Word. (AE 754)
These are three levels of the
natural mind. This is the mind we build up totally by ourselves through
experience and choice. It feels like our very own life, our very own identity,
and so it is called the self. The conscious self, whom we know ourselves to be,
has these three levels of mentality and functioning.
At some point in our adulthood,
early on or later, we feel the motivation to undergo reformation. We have been
studying the Writings before this, but it was a lukewarm thing. But now we feel
a new passion for studying the Writings, excited by the thought that it is the
Word of the Lord speaking through the rational mind of this awesome 17th
century Swede. We now begin to think about the topics of the Writings in a
personal way. For example, while you’re doing something somewhere, you begin to
think about what it will be like to be an angel, what it’s like to have an
occupation there, and to have friends and neighbors. Now for the first time you
are applying the Writings to yourself. Before this, it was a storybook you
inherited by culture and family.
Or take another example. While
you’re doing something somewhere, you begin to think about the heavy emphasis
the Writings place on the principle of no salvation without regeneration.
Suddenly the thought occurs to you: What about my own regeneration? Now for the
first time you stepped across a threshold. You applied the Writings to a vital
part of yourself, your concern for your salvation. You know enough about hell
to want to avoid it! You eagerly go back to the Writings and search it for
passages on regeneration. You quickly find out that before you can begin
regeneration you must undergo reformation. You begin to worry, feeling a vague anxiety.
You’ve now crossed another threshold. The anxiety you felt was the first step
you took in your reformation. It was a brief, very brief, view into the difficulty
of the task that lies ahead. The thought occurs to you: Perhaps I’m not ready
for all this. But you are, and you go ahead. You systematically go through all
your main belief systems and hold them up to the principles of the Writings.
One by one they must be rationally deconstructed and discarded, like Abraham
had to smash the icons of his inherited false religion.
Sooner or later this great task
comes to its completion. Suddenly the thought occurs, usually prompted by the
wife, “Why am I wasting time holding on to the non-heavenly behaviors and
traits?” We refuse to face, close up, so from afar we look at it and retort:
“But look how much I know about heaven” or, “But look how much I love the Word
and the Doctrine” or, “But look what great progress I’ve already made compared
where I was before reformation” etc. But at last we find the motivation to
begin our regeneration with full sincerity, though not yet with full success.
You’ve just crossed the final big threshold. You’ve taken your baby step in the
process of regeneration. You’re now fully committed to condemn your evil loves.
From then on the Lord will fight with you in a series of spiritual temptations,
precisely designed for your struggle to map out the hell within you. The
temptations reveal your inner delights to yourself. Normally they’re hidden
from your focus and attention, conveniently tucked away so that you can
continue to enjoy them, even while you continue to declare you passion and love
for the Writings.
But you also continue to study the
Writings at an accelerated rate in comparison to before. You’re driven to find
the relevant truths, those that can help your predicaments. They are everywhere
now—in your marriage relationship, in your work situation, even in your
recreation. Everywhere you feel challenged by what you passionately believe and
know, and your seeming inability to align your willing and thinking with what
you know is right. For example, you know that scortatory interests harm the
conjugial relationship. Yet, you feel delight in them, secretly. You beg the
Lord to purify you, but you find His answer in the Writings: “You have water.
You have soap. Go wash yourself, like a real man.” And you feel ashamed. You’ve
just made a step in a new direction. You repented of an evil delight you’re
holding in secret. Like Adam and Eve who were ashamed of their nakedness after
they had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:
Now you feel driven out from your
paradise. Nothing of the many delights you’re so attached to, can be allowed to
stay around. No one. If you catch yourself arguing for mercy, that you’ve given
up so much already, you feel forced to withdraw the mercy request, realizing
full well, everything must go. An affection must be traced to its origins by a
simple test of duality: Is this delight from heaven or from hell. There is no
in between, so there is no hiding any more. Now you’ve taken your last baby
steps in regeneration. You’re fully ready because fully committed to the idea
that not one can be left standing. All must be exterminated, every one of our
delights that are form hell. And it seems that they are all from hell. Now you
begin to apply what you know form the Writings to everything of your threefold
self: your affections and delights, your thoughts and style of reasoning, your
outward acts of the body and its appearance. Now you begin to see new things.
For the first time you become
conscious that you have an inner perception of spiritual things as you think
about the sentences of the Writings, and apply them to your willing and
thinking all day long. You begin to see how every sentence applies to you,
though how may remain obscure for some time. But you are all excited again
about your new level of consciousness. You search the Writings with trepidation
and suddenly sentences you didn’t pay much attention to, now spring to life
before you. You have living proof that the Lord is managing the process of your
regeneration in every detail—what sentences come to your attention when, and
what they say about you, about whatever you’re struggling with at the time. You
feel a great relief and you recall the Lord’s statement that His yoke is light.
At last you can feel the living certitude that you want to be in His hands more
than in yours. It now terrifies you as you think back on your earlier period
when you were anxious that getting closer to heaven is giving up all the fun in
life, and begged for more time. Now you can see that your best chance is not
with you, but with the Lord. So you’re relieved in your heart and your love for
the Lord takes a big leap.
17. The Birth Of The Interior-Natural
What is happening now as you read
the Writings? You’ve almost gotten used to it now: You can see within the
Letter! It just comes to you automatically. You’re reading the sentences,
you’re reflecting, figuring out what they mean rationally, and suddenly you see
what they mean spiritually. You now understand what is happening in a
scientific way, like anatomy or physiology, and like agriculture or gardening. Regeneration
is a biological process of steady growth built on spiritual truths implanted in
the mind by the Lord’s activity in us through the sentences of the Writings
that are firmly established in our conscious mind. These sentences are established
firmly because they form the basis of our thinking, of our concluding and
analyzing anything. We have appropriated those sentences and rational ideas.
They are no built up as our own edifice. Now the Lord can enter into the
interior of this edifice, and implant spiritual truths. We are not conscious of
this activity directly, but the Lord creates a new thing in our mind, a new
organ, more interior than the natural mind. This new organ is called the
interior-natural.
Note that this new organ is
spiritual and of celestial origin. There is nothing in it from self or the
natural world. What’s in it is a correspondence to what’s in the spiritual
mind. We are not conscious of the spiritual mind and its activates, but we are
conscious of the natural mind. And now this new interior organ gives a new
function, a new conscious awareness of spiritual understandings and meanings.
Spiritual topics that before this we understood in a natural way, now we
understand them in a spiritual way, like the angels of the First Heaven. This
new spiritual awareness and understanding would not be possible without the
sentence and their rational understanding, that we gathered for ourselves in
the natural-rational mind. This is obvious because the new interior-natural
organ of spiritual perception is located within the natural-rational. It cannot
be located anywhere else in the natural mind.
Our prior understanding of the
Writings was external-rational or natural-rational, not yet spiritual-rational
(AC 978, 2654, 4286; AE 355:14). The spiritual only begins with regeneration
and this only begins in adult life (AE 803; AC 8780; AC 3518:[2]; TCR 587), if
ever. Therefore the
The
18. Reformation And Regeneration Begin In Early Adulthood
When a child is first instructed he is affected with
the desire of knowing, not at first for any end that is manifest to himself,
but from a certain pleasure and delight that is born with him and is also
derived from other sources; but afterwards, as he grows up, he is affected with
the desire of knowing for the sake of some end, as that he may excel others, or
his rivals; and next for some end in the world; but when he is to be
regenerated, he is affected from the delight and pleasantness of truth; and
when he is being regenerated, which takes place in adult age, from the love of
truth, and afterwards from the love of good; and then the ends which had
preceded, together with their delights, are separated little by little, and to
them succeeds interior good from the Lord, which manifests itself in his
affection. From this it is evident that the former delights, which had appeared
in the outward form as good, had served as means. Such successions of means are
continual. (AC 3518)
This passage clearly
shows that reformation and regeneration begin in early adulthood, and not
before. The first phase of reformation
starts when as adults we become rationally convinced that the Writings are
indeed the third and final portion of the Threefold Word. It is a step beyond
the received creed. It is the exercise of a new individual choice under the new
vision of rational understanding and confirmation. It’s the confidence we have
when we can explain it rationally and confirm it in our principles and
philosophy. The Writings are indeed the Word. It is beyond the idea that the
Writings are “divinely inspired.” This is a nonduality if the idea admits other
inspired books and authors so that the Writings are seen at the extreme end of
a continuum lined up with other “inspired” books.
This idea of the Writings is not yet
the stage of reformation. One must cross over to the position that “the
Writings are the third portion of the Threefold Word.” This is what the
The second phase after this is to
understand rationally how it is that the Writings are the Word in the same
sense as the Old Testament and the New Testament are the Word, not in some
lesser degree. This phase establishes the idea that the Writings are Divine
Truth, that they are the Lord Himself in His Second Coming. The worship
of the Writings is the same as the worship of the Lord. We must realize in a
rational way how it is that for the
[5] It is now clear from these
things that the spiritual sense of the Word was to be revealed for a new Church
which will acknowledge and worship the Lord alone, and hold His Word sacred,
and love Divine Truths and reject faith separated from charity. Concerning this
sense of the Word more may be seen* in THE DOCTRINE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM
CONCERNING THE SACRED SCRIPTURE (n. 5-26, and following numbers); as, in this
section, what the spiritual sense of the Word is (n. 5-26); that there is a
spiritual sense in all things of the Word in general and in particular (n.
9-17); that it is by virtue of the spiritual sense that the Word is Divinely inspired,
and holy in every expression (n. 18-19); that hitherto the spiritual sense has
been unknown, and why it was not revealed before (n. 20-25); and that
henceforth the spiritual sense will be possible only to one who is in genuine
truths from the Lord (n. 26). (DP 264)
Enlightenment is the influx,
perception, and instruction people receive from the Lord when they read the
Word. (AC 10215)
All worship of the Lord, appears
from the Word (AC 440)
Where the Church is, there the Lord
is worshipped, and the Word is read (NJHD 8)
The individual becomes a
In every particular of the Word there is a spiritual
sense from which it derives its holiness. (DP 264)
What in particular concerns the doctrine that now
follows, is that it also is out of heaven, because it is from the spiritual
sense of the Word; and the spiritual sense of the Word is identical with the
doctrine which is in heaven. (NJHD 7)
Our illumination or enlightenment
from these truths is proportional to our struggle to consciously cooperate with
the Lord as He gradually regenerates us day by day and hour by hour. The rate
of progress is proportional to the extent of our daily willing and thinking in
accordance with the truths we take up from the Writings. The truths for our
salvation that we take up from the Writings are called Doctrine in our mind:
He who does not know the arcana of heaven must needs
believe that the Word is supported without doctrine from it; for he supposes
that the Word in the letter, or the literal sense of the Word, is doctrine
itself. But be it known that all the doctrine of the church must be from the
Word, and that the doctrine from any other source than the Word is not doctrine
in which there is anything of the church, still less anything of heaven. But
the doctrine must be collected from the Word, and while it is being collected,
the man must be in enlightenment from the Lord; and he is in enlightenment when
he is in the love of truth for the sake of truth, and not for the sake of self
and the world. These are they who are enlightened in the Word when they read
it, and who see truth, and from it make doctrine for themselves. (AC 9424)
This clearly says that all Doctrine
is from the Word. For the
19.
Nonduality Fills The Culture Around Us
Since our as-of self role in
regeneration is so crucial it makes sense to learn how to do it effectively.
This learning is called performing spiritual disciplines. Spiritual disciplines
allow us to discover the innumerable things in our mind that we receive from
culture and heredity. Once we know what they are we can reject them as-of self
by rational considerations. The culture we live in contains a variety of
nonduality traditions, attitudes, and popular followings to which we are exposed
from childhood onward. It is not readily obvious how nonduality is promoted in
our mind when we enjoy our favorite sit-com program or admire a book for its
message, or see our teenager practicing meditation. What about Yoga or Tai Chi
or vegetarianism? Sometimes the philosophy is embedded in a mere formality we
follow, like “Namaste” with which my Yoga teacher ends every class. Once in a
while she adds the explanation: “It means: the God in me greets the God in
you.” You can see the fundamental nonduality within this formality routine
since it is motivated by the idea that self=God, and that is the fundamental
nonduality.
Sometimes nonduality comes to us in
a secular Western tradition like Ayn Rand’s ethics of Objectivism or
This deadly conviction, that God infused and copied
Himself into men, was held by the people of the most ancient church in its
final period leading up to its termination, as I have heard from their own
lips. On account of their horrendous belief that they were thus gods, they lie
hidden deep within a cavern, which no one can approach closely without falling
victim to an inner vertigo. (TCR 470).
And sometimes we see nonduality in
Christian traditions like the popular notion that there is no hell, or the idea
that long and repentant prayer brings salvation and holiness. The nonduality
here is the idea that prayers can be more or less effective on a measurable
continuum of how long and with how much self-blame or guilt one prays with.
Duality on the other hand recognizes a distinct and categorical separation
between spiritual things and natural. Praying long and with much guilt is
separate and distinct from the spiritual reasons the Lord grants a prayer. He
grants all prayers that are inspired by Him, and this is a duality rationally
opposed to the idea of “effectiveness” of prayers. (AE 325) (See Chapter 1,
Section 3)
Scientific education and science
reporting in the news media are also nondualist and opposed to the fundamental
duality of natural world and spiritual world.
From this ordering of creation it
can be seen that the coherent linkage from first things to last is such that
taken together they make up a single unit; in this prior cannot be separated
from posterior, just as cause cannot be separated from the effect produced by
it. Thus the spiritual world cannot be separated from the natural world, nor
this from the spiritual. In the same way the heaven where the angels are cannot
be separated from the human race, nor the human race from that heaven. It has
therefore been provided by the Lord that one should perform services for the
other, that is, the heaven of angels should perform services for the human
race, and the human race for the heaven of angels. (LJ 9:[3]).
No concept or theory from dualism is
allowed today into science. It remains staunchly nondualist and materialistic, that
is, insisting that a world that is not physical does not exist. News stories
surround us with materialistic interpretations whether they be on archeological
finds, biological evolution, stellar formations, or brain scan technology. The
modern culture around us continues in an intellectual climate of popular
nondualities that deny all the scientific and spiritual dualities we have from
the Writings--between mind and body, natural world and spiritual world, self
and God, good and evil, heaven and hell, absolute truth and absolute falsity,
revelation and self-intelligence, regenerate and unregenerate, uncreate and
created, and many others. Without these rational dualities of reality we have a
falsified science and no religion or spiritual sanity (DL 188). (See Chapter 4 Section 7)
Surprisingly,
To acknowledge that the Writings are
the Lord in His Second Coming and to understand this in a rational way makes
our spiritual growth and progress possible. If we are exposed to some idea or
principle that runs contrary to a single sentence in the Writings, we would
know instantly that we want to reject that idea. We do not need more than one
statement in the Writings for what is the absolute truth. Every statement in
the Writings has a Divine warrant of truth and validity. Of course, by
comparing a collection of statements on a topic one gains deeper understanding
of the topic. Still, one occurrence gives enough understanding to exclude from
our assent any idea that is contrary to it. This makes deciding all life
choices so much simpler.
They who are in the genuine doctrine of truth from
the Word, and in enlightenment when they read the Word, see everywhere truths
that agree, and nothing whatever that is opposed; for they do not dwell upon what
is said therein according to appearances, and according to the common
apprehension of men, because they know that if the appearances are unfolded,
and as it were unswathed, the truth is laid bare. (AC 9424)
Those who do not acknowledge the
Writings as the Lord have much more difficulty since they have to compare and
weigh things in balance. It becomes a matter of equity in their mind: how many
passages say this and how many say that, etc. What is the preponderance of the
evidence, etc. This leaves plenty of wiggle room for going wrong and we lose
the full protection of heaven. We start wondering how many mistakes are
contained in the Writings. We start thinking that Swedenborg was but a limited
human being hence did make mistakes, either his own or those of his age and
civilization. These are murky thoughts from which we are spared merely by being
totally categorical in our acceptance of the Writings as the Lord Himself in
His Word.
The acknowledgment of the Divine
source of the Writings brings about an entirely new state … A man must loose
something of self-esteem in accepting the Writings entirely. For before that he
can exalt his own intelligence, granting that the Writings are true here and
true there, but still, as it were, holding himself above them. … Many are most
reluctant to acknowledge this, for it is to give up too much. … If there is
indeed a Divine mind, a God, then true rationality is to become a servant to
truth.
This is a joyous recognition. When
an individual really understand the Divine claim on his rationality,
straightaway he complies. … It is a wonderful liberation and a real beginning
when we acknowledge Divine Revelation. Before that we are free to say perhaps
this is right and perhaps that; perhaps this is good and perhaps that. We have
so-called open minds to everything, even things which contradict each other. In
this state we do not make progress.
(Rev. Donald L. Rose, Sermon titled
“The Colt Loosed For the Lord’s Service”
Further, this absolute affirmative
attitude allows us to revere and worship the Writings as the Lord Himself.
Whether we adore and worship the Writings or the Lord is the same, for the Lord
is the Word (NJHD
263, DP 172). How marvelous it is to love the
Lord in this way, through his Word, for the Lord speaks to us only through the
Word (TCR
231). It is nonduality in our mind that weakens this
absolute Divine status of the Writings of Swedenborg.
20.
Two Methods For Fighting Nonduality In The Mind
The source of all nonduality is a
natural inherent opposition to the fundamental duality. The natural mind before
it is regenerated is immersed in nonduality and its concepts are arranged to
fit the apparent order of the physical world entering through the sensory
organs and brain. This apparent order is sensuous and by its own logic excludes
the spiritual that it cannot see, and is aversive to all absolute dualities
that refer to things unseen by the physical eyes or undetected by physical
machines (DLW
66, 92). This is why our modern mind must
be regenerated, and it takes place by re-arranging the concepts from nonduality
to duality by means of the rational truths we take up from the Writings.
These rational truths accurately
reflect reality and serve as cognitive vessels into which we can receive
spiritual truths (NJHD 51; AC 3508). There is no salvation or eternal life in
heaven without undergoing regeneration while we are still attached to the
physical body (HH 470). This obligatory process progresses only to the extent
that we consciously cooperate with the Lord. It does not go forward at all if
we do not cooperate, for the Lord cannot do it on His Own, nor can He compel us
(BE 69, TCR 615, 577; DP 234). It stands to reason therefore that we ought to
learn how to detect nondualities in our mind out of a desire to cooperate in
our regeneration.
This book proposes two types of
methods that can help us to guard against nondualities in our mind. Volume 1 deals with learning how to
analyze common ideas to which we are exposed from culture and the times. I show
with many illustrations how to find the nonduality hidden in the assumptions
behind these ideas. Volume 2 deals
with the process of enlightenment that is needed to undergo regeneration. Volume 3 deals with learning how to monitor
our feelings, thoughts, and acts in our daily behaviors, also for the purpose
of cooperating with the Lord in our regeneration. Many illustrations are given
showing how to infuse a religious motive in everything we do, turning daily
life into a series of spiritual disciplines. The approach involves tracing the
implications of our daily choices and habits to see where they lead to
nonduality or the denial of the fundamental dualities of our religion. All
dualities are unique permanent distinctions that never cease to eternity (DLW
226).
For example, the popular ideas of
unconditional love and unconditional self-acceptance run contrary to the
duality of unregenerate and regenerating, or to good and evil. A notion
promoted by mental health professionals is the idea of equity in relationship
between husband and wife. Equity is the policy of sharing everything
fifty-fifty—chores, contribution, responsibility, status, independence. This is
a nonduality that threatens the conjugial duality of an absolute and permanent
distinctness in all things between man and woman, or husband and wife (CL 33). Many conjugial self-witnessing disciplines for husbands are described
and related to the Writings. They all follow one principle: that the husband
should learn to love acting from his wife rather from himself. While
learning this he ought to simulate so that he always enacts the conjugial
stance: to love acting from the wife more than acting from self. Many of the
illustrations are from my personal self-observations as a husband who is
forming a
I hope that you will find in this
presentation useful tools for your reformation and regeneration. If so, think
about sharing the knowledge with others who may also find it helpful. For
comments and questions, I welcome your email:
leon@hawaii.edu The Web address of this document
is: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html and contains links to related
articles that can also be accessed.
All truths are from
the Word, which is spiritual light…
and nothing ought to
be believed except the truth (INV 7)
A Gallup
Poll in 2002 reported that about 7 percent of Americans believe in “absolute
truth” when asked in a survey—among those who categorized themselves as “Christians.”
Among those who categorized themselves as without a religious affiliation, only
4 percent believe in absolute truth. What does it mean that nine out of ten
people today in our society declare that absolute truth does not exist? It
demonstrates that nonduality is reigning in the entire generation, regardless
of religious background. Nonduality has replaced the traditional dualities of
religion in the mind of the postmodern age. The
The
Writings teach that all truth from the Lord is absolute truth because the Lord
is absolute truth, and this is only from Him. Everything from Him is absolute
truth within which is absolute love (xx). Nothing from Him can be anything but
absolute truth because He is Absolute Truth Itself within which is Absolute
Love. In this sense, “absolute truth” means Divine Truth. Since the
inauguration of the new age of the Second Coming, the human race has received
conscious rational access to Divine Truth through the Writings. Everything in
the Writings is Absolute Truth, because it is Divine Truth, from the Lord, for
the Word is the Lord Himself (xx). The denial of the existence of absolute
truth is therefore a symptom of spiritual insanity. The unregenerate person
today, regardless of religious or other background, inwardly denies absolute
truth because it denies Divine Truth as the Divine Human, preferring for a God
some invisible and unfathomable something called “the universe” or “the
everything which is nothing” or “the energy” or whatever. There is an endless
variety of ways that the unregenerate mind can fabricate denials of absolute
truth. There is a big payoff at stake: Denial of God means the delight of
making up our own god, even ourselves as god, or something within us as god,
and even to the gross insanity of believing that one is above God.
The
Writings make a simple and accurate point: whatever is not from the Lord cannot
be absolute truth, but whatever is from the Lord is absolute truth. Further,
the Lord reveals absolute truth to every individual who seeks for it in His Word,
and nowhere else (xx). And for the
This is the fundamental duality that
has been weakened, or suppressed entirely, in the minds of people today as a
result of the severe climate of cultural nonduality.
The
categorical reasoning of the Writings, when presented for evaluation to a random
sample of people, would be rejected today as sectarian, fanatic, prejudiced, or
dogmatic. They point to other instances of sectarian religious groups in the
past and those of today, and see in the Writings a similar exclusionary
dogmatism, unjustified by the light of human reasoning and intelligence. We
know quite a bit of the historical record of dogmatic religions from the
Writings, and we can explain rationally why this persuasive approach to
religion is wrong headed, and impedes rather than aids the salvation of its
adherents (xx). But at last, the human race was given a Divine method for
regenerating from nonduality to duality, from a base in self, to the Lord as
the Base of reality. The
These new
revelations give the rational means by which any reader can enter into all
previous and future mysteries about the afterlife, the spiritual world, devils
and angels, spirits from other planets in the universe, life in heaven and
hell, and how the Lord regenerates every individual who cooperates, and so
leads the person to eternal life in heaven. And many additional things are now
revealed by the Lord in the Word of His Second Coming, relating to how the Lord
manages the universe, how the Lord manages our willing and thinking through
other spirits, how physical events depend completely on spiritual events, and many
details about the past history of the race. The
Second Coming is the final completion of the creation of the human race. At
last every individual anywhere can now form a celestial mind for themselves, capable
of eternal life in heaven. The only requirement is a willingness to be reformed
and regenerated by a life in accordance with conscience and truth from the
Writings.
Some might
argue that acknowledging and worshipping the Writings as God Himself is a religious
requirement for salvation, and similar therefore to previous sectarian faith.
But this view is not based on the actual information in the Writings. The
Writings give rational, objective, empirical, and scientific explanations and
demonstrations of who God is, and the invariant mechanisms by which the
universe is run and kept running by laws and principles anyone can study and
understand. Reality is not something one can invent or discover. It must be
revealed to be known. The earlier forms of revelation led to dogma because they
were not scientific and rational revelations. They were full of mystery and
unexplained workings behind the scenes by an invisible and little understood
Deity. If this had been the new revelation once more, dogma would again be inevitable.
But dogma can no longer exist in the light of rational explanation of religion,
God, regeneration, heaven, and hell.
All anyone
needs to do to verify what I’m saying here, is to read the details in the
Writings. The full set is available online for searching and reading at this
Web address:
1. Religious Membership Not Required For Salvation
The
Writings show why the Second Coming was necessary at this time in history and
evolution of the race. This new creation, called the
This is
called reformation and is the prelude to regeneration that goes on till the end
of life in the body. Then, a few hours later, the individual awakens in the spiritual
world in a spirit-body and continues immortal life in either heaven or hell.
All are instructed in the truths that have been revealed in the Writings, and
those who can receive them, enter heaven, but those who reject the truths,
enter hell. It has nothing to do with religious membership, belief system, or past
misdeeds and sins. The only requirement for entering eternal life in heaven is
to accept the truths that are taught to all novitiate spirits as they arrive
from the earths in the universe in great numbers every day (xx).
In this
new universal age, all religions and cultures have been rendered equivalent in
salvation.
That means
that henceforth anyone, regardless of religion or culture, has a way of
salvation by undergoing reformation and regeneration in accordance with the new
truths revealed in the Writings. Since the vast majority of people today go
through life without having even heard of the Writings, they are instructed as
novitiate spirits as soon as they arrive in the afterlife. Why the Writings?
Because the Lord had to chose a revelator through whom the New Word can be
given and written down (TCR 779). There is no other way possible from creation. Salvation
has always been be new revelations from the Lord. All evolutionary steps of the
human race were accomplished in this way, by new truths given to the race by
means of a revelator who writes down and teaches the New Word of the Lord (xx).
Spiritual truths cannot be discovered but
must be revealed from the Lord (xx). And only spiritual truths in the mind
can make it possible for an individual to live in heaven (xx).
To be saved
means to develop a mind that can live in heaven. No one is saved by merit,
status, reputation, initiation, birth, or membership. Who is saved is a
scientific issue. It is a matter pf psychobiology, just as it is a matter of agriculture
as to which plant survives and flourishes in the face of insects and the
weather.
Hence no
one can have any spiritual truths from any other source but the revelations
from the Lord to one individual who writes them down for others to read,
understand, and believe. Through this knowledge, there is contact with the Lord
who can then effect actual regeneration and salvation, to the extent that we
are willing to cooperate with Him. Without this conscious intellectual system
obtained from the revealed Word, regeneration cannot actualize in this life. This necessary regeneration process cannot
take place in the afterlife except to the extent that the individual has led a
life of good in accordance with conscience that was considered from God. If
conscience was thought of as the voice of self within, or the voice of our
higher self within, then we refuse the truths of regeneration when instructed
in the afterlife. This was empirically demonstrated to Swedenborg by much
careful observation he made over many years, involving thousands of individuals
arriving every day in the afterlife (xx).
2. Revelation Is Necessary For Spiritual
Truths
Why is a
revelator needed? Why does the Lord not come Himself, in the natural world for
all to see, as He did at the Incarnation? Many people have this physicalistic
idea of the Lord’s return and His physicalistic exercise of Divine power to
flatten all objections and doubts about the Divine. Why would He not do this
since this would convince everyone as they are convinced that airplanes exist
and the moon is made of rock, not cheese.
The
Writings explain that the First Coming was to create in the human race a
sensuous consciousness of Him as God. This was accomplished by glorifying the
natural human self He acquired as a Child growing up among the people with whom
the Word was at that time and point in the race’s evolution (AC 1434). To
glorify His natural human self means that He made it one with the Divine in
Himself (xx). This act of making the human Divine, created a new reality by
which the human race could see Him and understand Him. It was important for the
human race to be able to have a definite view of Him in order to feel close to
Him and love Him. By this love alone can the human race receive from Him what
it needs in order to be saved. And now we know that this what we need to be
saved: Understanding Him in scientific detail. This kind of rational and full
understanding of Him makes it possible to receive from Him the eternal endless
blessings of salvation. These blessings
of salvation and happiness are received within the rational understanding of
Him.
Heaven is
made of His Truth within which is His Love. Clearly then, our access to heaven
is by means of learning His truth, understanding it, and loving it. Then we
have heaven or salvation. A revelation is therefore always needed to bring
Divine truth to our understanding. If we reject this truth, we deny ourselves a
mechanism for receiving heaven. The only thing we can receive in man-made or
man-discovered truth, is hell. It’s a simple practical matter: You can hop on a
real helicopter to take you up the mountain, or a wooden helicopter that will
never take of the ground except when lifted and thrown back down by a
hurricane. It’s not a mystery, not a secret membership of the favored, not a
slot you can buy by means of power, influence, and money. Everyone has equal
access through willingness to receive.
In the
First Coming of the Lord at His Incarnation, the human race was able to see God
in a Natural Body. Until then the Lord was not visible, though He appeared to
many by taking over the spirit-body of an angel and speaking through the angel.
What people then saw was not the Lord, but the angel from whom the Lord spoke
to them. Many such encounters are described in the Old Testament. But this
arrangement was only temporary because it did not allow the closest possible
contact between the Lord and the human race. How can one love a God who only
speaks through an angel, not through His Own Presence?
The Lord
then came into the natural world through the virgin pregnancy of a woman who
birthed the Divine Child (xx). The Lord did not allow this new natural human Form
of Himself to have full perception into its interior mind so as to see who He
was in reality. He wanted this Child to grow up like other children so that it
would develop a natural self and personality. This could not have occurred if
He had not limited the Child’s vision into Himself. He gradually taught this Child
in an external way, about who He really was, doing this by means of the Hebrew
Word, or the Old Testament (xx). This is how the Child gradually learned from
the Word who He was and why He had been incarnated. It was a self-realization
that came to Him consciously from His external environment—the Holy Book that
the Jews had guarded over the centuries. The purpose of this gradual
self-realization, rather than instantaneous revelation and vision, is described
in great detail by the Lord in both the Old Testament and in the Writings. But
in the Old Testament these descriptions were hidden by the language of
correspondences, which are now revealed and rationally explained by the Lord in
the Writings. This is why the Writings are called Heavenly Secrets (AC 1).
These revelations about Himself could not have been given before this. The
reasons are fully explained in the Writings.
The Lord’s
Incarnation was necessary so that the human race could form a genuine and true
“picture” of Him, without which we could not get close to Him and love Him from
an inmost love. Without this inmost love unto Him from Him, no one could
receive the ultimate celestial blessings that He longed to bestow on every created
human being. Therefore the Lord had to Incarnate and show Himself to history,
science, and physical reality. But this was only the first step in the makeover
of the human mind. The final step could not as yet be taken by the human race.
Seventeen more centuries of preparation had to pass, until the human race had
acquired a modern rational mind. The final revelation can only exist in the
human rational mind. This step was completed in 1771 when Swedenborg published
the last work of the Writings called The
True Christian Religion (xx).
This second
step of the Lord’s revelation of Himself was to create a new mind within the
natural one, that could function to give us rational consciousness of Him, not
merely sensuous consciousness from His natural and physical Appearance to the
race. This new rational mind is called the spiritual mind and the Lord creates
it in everyone to the extent that one is willing to apply the New Truths to our
daily willing and thinking--regardless of religious background! The Lord saves
and elevates to Himself every individual of the human race anywhere in the
universe, to the extent that the individual allows Him to do this. Spiritual freedom is maintained by thinking
with rational concepts about spiritual truths.
For
example, to think that there is no absolute truth is to think naturally about
spiritual things. To think this is a persuasion rather than a rational opinion.
Ask a random sample of those who deny absolute truth to state their
justification. You will discover that they have no rational justifications.
They put together various inconsistent or unrelated things they pick up here
and there when they are impressed by someone or some writing. Yet they feel
convinced. Hence it is a persuasion. There is no mental freedom for those who
are in a state of being convinced from persuasion (xx).
3. The New Rational Consciousness of God
Approaching the spiritual domain
through sensuous consciousness leads to states of persuasion and loss of
rational freedom, hence, loss of spiritual sanity. There is then an inability to
recognize which spiritual propositions are true and which false. Even worse,
truth is seen as falsity and falsity is seen as truth (NJHD
171). There is no exit from
this hell in the mind except through one door provided by the Lord for every
religion and every philosophy—reformation and regeneration. For those who are
ignorant of the Writings or are unable to read it and comprehend it, the Lord
provides an inner conscience through which He speaks to them and guides them in
their daily willing and thinking—but only to the extent they are willing to
obey the voice of conscience and to take it as God’s Voice within them. In the
afterlife they are informed and instructed who this inner voice was, and those
who listened to the voice of conscience as God’s Voice, recognize His voice
then, accept the details of the New Truths about Him, and with these in their
mind and understanding, enter their heaven and eternal bliss.
The voice of conscience is effective
for salvation since it provides rational consciousness of super-human
authority, that is, of God’s connection and intimate closeness to the
individual.
We can only
love God when we feel close to Him and connected. And only in this love can
we be saved and receive eternal blessings from Him. Those who withhold and reject this love in themselves from Him, arrive
with a mind unfit for heavenly habitation. They sink down into hellish
habitations where they eek out a miserable existence among others who are like
them. What is amazing is that the Lord does not keep them there, but they keep
themselves there, for when at any time they have the desire to visit heaven,
they do so, but quickly cast themselves back down, being seized with explosive
and insane hatred for the life they find there. Amazingly, they find the unspeakably
miserable life in hell more desirable and pleasurable than the life of love, truth,
and beauty in heaven.
In the Word
of the New Testament, the voice of conscience is represented as the “Holy
Spirit.” The followers of the Lord at His First Coming loved Him in His
physical presence, that is, they knew Him from sensuous consciousness.
Seventeen centuries of intellectual development had to happen before the race
was sufficiently prepared for His Second Coming, that is, in our rational
consciousness of Him. This rational consciousness did not exist with the Apostles
and the Christian Church, except in a slight degree, through their belief in
the existence of the Holy Spirit within them. A full awareness and rational
understanding of what it means to have the Holy spirit within, only became
possible when the spiritual-celestial mind could be created within the modern
version of the external rational mind, developed by science, education, art,
and culture. Human beings had to evolve
so that they might be willing to love the Lord from rational consciousness.
Until then,
people were willing to love Him from sensuous consciousness—e.g., His Blood, His
Tunic, His Relics, His Sacrifice, His Miracles, His Resurrection. They were
unable to love Him from rational consciousness, such as the idea that He and
the Father were the same Person. It takes rational consciousness to understand
how the Lord manages every detail of our willing and thinking, and yet we are
still full of evils. It takes rational consciousness to understand that people
keep themselves in hell and that it is not a forced punishment. It takes
rational consciousness to understand how discrete degrees operate in every
object and in the human mind. And what
cannot be understood is not revealed by the Lord since it would place people
into spiritual harm far worse than they can place themselves on their own
through fantasies and distortions (xx).
Further,
people cannot love what they don’t understand (xx). These are the rational
reasons why the revelations of the Second Coming could not be given until
modern times. Sensuous consciousness of God is a type of connection that allows
only a distant relationship of love, while rational consciousness of the Lord
allows the inmost relationship of love capable by the human race. And every
good and truth the race has, is from this rational love unto Him that we have
from Him.
Even today,
these ideas appear to most people as vague, imaginative, inconclusive,
unbelievable. Many people are willing and able to love God when He makes
Himself sensually or sensibly present through physical miracles, a physical voice
form heaven, a physical pestilence brought on the people by their sins, and the
like. Furthermore, people can only feel actually forgiven if they see tangible evidence
of it, like sacrifices being offered as atonement, in the olden days. Today,
people still expect as proof of God’s existence, physically evident miracles,
special gifts and physical powers, a successful outcome to their projects and
prayers, objects they consider sacred, and so on. This sensuous consciousness
of God is a natural relationship, not spiritual. It has been vastated and
consummated, and a new rational consciousness, serves in its stead.
Miracles close the internal man, and deprive man of all that
free will, through which and in which man is regenerated. Free will really
belongs to the internal man; and when this is closed up, the man becomes
external and natural; and such a man does not see any spiritual truth. Miracles
also are like veils and bars lest anything might enter. This bar, or this
obstruction, however, is gradually broken, and [then] all truths become
dispersed. (INV 6)
Rational
consciousness allows the idea of the universal Church (HH
308), that is, the idea
that religious affiliation cannot save but what can, is individual regeneration.
Faith based on sensuous consciousness is persuasive faith, which the individual
rejects in the afterlife (xx). But rational faith remains in the afterlife and
saves. This is because all the heavens have been recreated by the Lord
through the new rational truths He unveiled in His Second Coming. Now
people must come into the afterlife with rational consciousness of spiritual
things, in order to form a plane of life that supports heavenly existence. This
is because He is Divine Truth, and all truth is rational, and all things are
created by means of Divine Truth (xx). Unless we have rational truths of God we
cannot be conjoined with the Lord. Without conjunction through our rational
idea and love for the Lord, our presence in heaven is not possible.
Prior to
the formation of the New Heavens there were the old heavens and their vast
outskirts where people were able to live adequately while waiting for the New
Heavens to be created (xx). Then, when Swedenborg published the last work of
the Writings in 1771, the New Heavens were completed by means the new truths
that the Lord revealed to the angels and those living in the outskirts of
heaven (xx). A vast migration was then accomplished by the Lord, instructing
everyone there in His new rational truths, and admitting and accommodating all
those who were willing to receive the new rational truths about Himself. But
here on earth things take much longer! Only a few people today are willing to
form the
Remains are like some
heavenly star, which, the smaller it is the less light it gives, and the
larger, the more light. (AC
530)
4. Nonduality is from Self-intelligence
Nonduality
is the intellectual process of our natural intelligence when we think about God
and spiritual things. This opposition between the natural sensuous mind and the
rational spiritual mind, is a developmental process of the human mind—even the
Lord as a Divine Child growing up on earth made Himself go through this
process. When He was still growing up as a young child, the Lord consulted his natural
mind or natural intelligence, about the truths of the Old Testament He was
reading. He then revealed to Himself from within His Divine, that He is not to consult
natural intelligence regarding the truths of the Word. Instead, He instructed
Himself to rely on truths that He is going to reveal to His natural mind from
His spiritual mind (HH 308). It is a natural step therefore, for everyone to first
attempt to discover spiritual truths by using one’s own natural intelligence.
Afterwards, the Lord reveals to us when we read the Writings, that we must no think
naturally about spiritual revelations. We must read the revelations as Divine
Truth already, and then, and only then, trying to understand what we read. This
understanding is not passive but active. It is a rational process of figuring
out what the literal language of revelation says. The goal of this
understanding is to avoid doubt and questioning based on our own prior ideas
and attitudes. Instead, all our mental effort must be in understanding how the details
we are given are true and rational. This is the activity what builds our rational
consciousness, and nothing else.
The general
belief that there is no absolute truth is an instance of this nonduality
operating today in the natural mind. Absolute truth is a spiritual idea since only
God is absolute, and His truth is absolute truth. This is known from revelation
that God gives to all people through their religion and culture. To accept
genuine revelation is therefore to have an idea of God that is rational. This
rational consciousness of God saves the person, as long as one obeys God’s
commandments in daily life. But to deny absolute truth is to consult one’s
self-intelligence in matters of spiritual truths, and this is forbidden because
it leads to spiritual self-destruction:
Those things
which are from one's own intelligence have no life in them, since nothing good
proceeds from man's proprium (NJHD 256).
[in the Word]
they are called "drunkards" who believe nothing but what they
apprehend, and for this reason search into the mysteries of faith. And because
this is done by means of sensuous things, either of memory or of philosophy,
man being what he is, cannot but fall thereby into errors. For man's thought is
merely earthly, corporeal, and material, because it is from earthly, corporeal,
and material things, which cling constantly to it, and in which the ideas of
his thought are based and terminated. (AC 1072)
Spiritual self-destruction
means that people in the afterlife refuse to let go of their self-imposed
spiritual insanity, thereby keeping themselves in the hells that exist in every
human mind (NJHD 256).
Self-intelligence
in matters dealing with natural things is called the external rational level of thinking, or the natural-rational level
of the mind. This external rational level is to be contrasted with the interior
rational level, which is called the spiritual-rational level of the mind. The
difference between the natural-rational and the spiritual-rational is like the
difference between hell and heaven. Why then is the natural-rational capable of
giving us science and civilization? Wouldn’t the natural-rational mind become
insane and not capable of living a modern life of law and order in democracy?
The answer is that it would indeed, were the Lord to allow that. But the
Lord wills that we succeed in our physical environment with this self-intelligence
based on our experience and reflection.
Our successes
in the natural world is powered by the Lord, even when we deny it. He gives His
power and intelligence to people’s goals and plans regardless of their
acknowledging Him and regardless of whether they live wickedly or well in this
world. He does this out of love for the every individual and His greatest
desire to keep the individual in a state of spiritual freedom as long as
possible. Only in spiritual freedom can we choose willingly to love Him. In
this way He keeps everyone in a state in which they can decide freely to
cooperate in regeneration and thus be saved for eternal happiness. But this Divine
assist in the background, works out only for our natural activities and ideas. It
would be spiritually disastrous for the Lord to do the same thing in spiritual
things and ideas that we form for ourselves in freedom and rationality.
Instead of
this disastrous direct intervention in the background, the Lord provides
indirect management or assistance in His open revelation of the Word. This
allows us to be informed in genuine truths about Him, and thereby to reject the
falsities of truths we invent in the natural mind. Spiritual truth cannot be
discovered like natural truth. This is a Divine Law of Providence (AC
6047 [2], INV 22, SE 4131).
All genuine spiritual truth must come to us from the Lord into the external
natural mind, by means of the written revelations of His Word. When we accept
genuine revelation as Divine truth, we are allowing the Lord to create our
spiritual-rational mind, the mind we must have to live in heaven.
By Adam, or
man, and by Eve his wife, was there meant a new church, and by the eating of
the tree of knowledge, the fall of that church from good to truth, consequently
from love to the Lord and toward the neighbor to faith without these loves, and
this by reasoning from their own intellectual, which reasoning is the serpent
(AC 8891).
The
American intellectual climate we live in exposes nearly everyone to ideas of nonduality.
Some are imported from Eastern religions and philosophical systems, some are
Western in tradition and contemporary formulation. And some are indigenous to
the
Every one after death is immediately bound to his like, the
good to their like in heaven, but the evil to their like in hell (LJ 69)
The power
that governs all loves is called conjugial love, and it is based on the
permanent and absolute distinction between a man and a woman (CL 44). It would
be instantly destroyed by any switching around of sexual identity (to use a
modern phrase), and so the duality of man and woman cannot be turned into a
nonduality or a continuum of masculinity-femininity. Eastern nonduality is the
opposite view that all distinctions are illusory, temporary, unreal, and to be
transcended. Self=God, man=woman, individual=Divine, material world=spiritual
world, corporeal=spiritual, energy=God, evil=good, angel=man, and so on. You
can see that some of these equations are imported from the East, but others are
indigenous to the West, as for example the idea in materialistic science of human
sexuality as a continuum on a masculinity-femininity scale. Nonduality is a
property of the natural mind and acts against all spiritual-rational concepts of
duality. Nonduality is a corporeal-sensuous style of reasoning that looks
outward and downward in the spiritual mind, seeing a continuity of degree
between everything conceivable. This is why nonduality is also in science,
where it is called materialistic monism (i.e., “only the natural world exists”).
Another
reason that the natural mind reacts against the spiritual mind is that the
natural mind consists not only of substances of the spiritual world but also of
substances of the natural world, as was said above (n. 257), and substances of
the natural world from their very nature react against the substances of the
spiritual world. For substances of the natural world are in themselves dead,
and are acted upon from without by substances of the spiritual world. And
substances which are dead, and are acted upon from without, resist from their
own nature, and thus from their nature react. From these considerations it can
be established that the natural man reacts against the spiritual man, and that
there is a conflict. It is the same thing whether it is said the natural and
spiritual man, or the natural and spiritual mind. (DLW 260)
If any idea
of nonduality were to be confirmed in the
Nonduality
is a natural consequence of the natural mind. Rational nondualities abound in
modern science and in humanistic philosophy and psychology. The
natural-rational mind is a modern development needed for the build up of the spiritual-rational
mind. But its initial or unreformed state, is opposed to spiritual-rational
ideas to the extent that we have confirmed in our mind the theory of nonduality
of existence, that is, believing that the natural can exist by itself, without the
spiritual or God. This belief may be around in society and culture, but it is
not necessary to confirm it and believe in it within our interior mind where we
are free to believe whatever we want. If we do not confirm the ideas of
nonduality we remain open to believing spiritual truths from the Word, that are
not accessible to the natural mind. This belief opens up the spiritual mind,
and we for the first time begin to live like a genuine human. The genuine human
only begins in the spiritual-rational mind. Everything below it in the natural-rational
mind, the sensuous mind, and the corporeal mind, is not genuine human, but
animal (xx). Our natural mind is superior to animals in language and thinking
power, but this is merely a continuum of superiority in physiology and
functioning. The human begins with the spiritual rational at reformation in adult
life. Only the spiritual mind is human, and we are born with the capacity to
become genuinely human and to have our spiritual mind opened in adult life. The
spiritual-rational mind can be opened only by revealed truths from the heaven
from the Lord. This is also why the
Nonduality
permeates our modern culture and is a dictating force in politics,
entertainment, recreation, education, science, the arts, man-woman relations,
and articulated or fashionable lifestyles. Eastern nonduality did not create
nonduality in the Western mind. Rather, the enormous appetite of modernism for nonduality
in Western cultures, have created a mental marketplace for the imported ideas
from the culturally rich fabric of Eastern religions and philosophies, and
their physical and mental disciplines and arts. The imported nonduality mixes
around with the indigenous nonduality with the result that we are surrounded by
a culturally rich web that enters into our mind from everywhere--into public
life, mental health practices, group and individual therapy, popular
followings, professional ethics, morality in relationships, and lifestyle
choices relating to health, physical programs, and “spirituality.” Thus, nonduality in our mind is a
significant presence that must be dealt with first when we start our
reformation in adult life.
One who knows
nothing about discrete degrees, that is, degrees of height, can know nothing
about the state of man as regards his reformation and regeneration, which are
effected through the reception of love and wisdom of the Lord, and then through
the opening of the interior degrees of his mind in their order. Nor can he know
anything about influx from the Lord through the heavens nor anything about the
order into which he was created. For if anyone thinks about these, not from
discrete degrees or degrees of height but from continuous degrees or degrees of
breadth, he is not able to perceive anything about them from causes, but only
from effects; and to see from effects only is to see from fallacies, from which
come errors, one after another; and these may be so multiplied by inductions
that at length enormous falsities are called truths. (DLW 187)
You can see
then that nonduality is the mind we have when we begin our reformation and
prior to being on the road to regeneration. The
5. Nonduality In The Mind Opposes
Regeneration
If any
imported element of nonduality were to be admitted and confirmed in the
When we try
to write down the spiritual insight that came in the application, we can do so,
but when we read it in another state of mind, we only see something natural in
it, and we may even believe that this natural that we see, is spiritual. But it
is not. The spiritual-rational only functions in the spiritual mind, and the
spiritual mind is closed when we fall back into a natural state. We need many
years of constant spiritual discipline to be able to remain steadfastly in a
state of mind where we are consciously living from the spiritual mind through
the natural, and not merely from the natural (see Volume 3 for spiritual
disciplines). In the unregenerate state of mind the natural mind is turned
downward towards earth, but at reformation, the natural mind is turned around,
and now faces heaven (xx). When the natural mind faces heaven, it faces the
spiritual mind, and it obeys. Prior to that, it does what it pleases from
itself, and thus, it slides easily into hell. The turning around of the natural mind is effected at reformation by
means of rational analysis of everything in our mind, comparing each element
with the truths of the Writings that we study and endeavor to understand
rationally. All that is needed a this point to make the process effective,
is to apply it to our daily willing and thinking. This application gives birth
to the spiritual mind and opens it for continued growth. By the end of
reformation, everything in the
A constant and
effective mental vigilance is therefore necessary in order to manage our willing
and thinking moment by moment every day. This orientation is fully efficacious
against the spiritual invasion of “strange fires” in the surrounding ocean of
cultural and scientific nonduality. Constant self-witnessing is also an
efficacious mental management technique that gives us the ability to cooperate
with the Lord in our regeneration (BE 69, TCR 615, 577). I discuss this in
Volume 3 under the topic of spiritual disciplines that we can use for the
conscious self-management of our daily activities. Since this is the very arena
of our regeneration it is crucial that we make use of available techniques the
Lord puts at our disposal. I will show that the numerous resistances we
experience in our daily regeneration efforts, stem from ideas of nonduality,
either imported or indigenous. Rational analysis of our ideas that is
informed by the Writings, creates dualities to replace every form of nonduality
in the mind.
It is
important to understand in detail, not just in general, what danger nonduality
poses to the
A
persuasion of falsity extinguishes and as it were suffocates everything
spiritual and celestial; as everyone may know from much experience, if he pays
attention. They who have once conceived opinions, though most false, cling to
them so obstinately that they are not even willing to hear anything that is
contrary to them; so that they never suffer themselves to be informed, even if
the truth be placed before their eyes. (AC 806)
All nonduality concepts have at
their core nonduality. Search if you like and see if you can find one that is not so marked from
within. Every nonduality concept is opposed to our mind because it contradicts
the duality concepts that we have from the Writings.
Chapter 1, Section 2
I became
aware of the dangers that nonduality might pose to the New Church mind when I
was recently asked to comment on a brief article by Wilson Van Dusen titled
“The Highest Insight in Hinduism and in Swedenborg” (first published in the Messenger
June 2001; reprinted in ISI News, Newsletter of Information Swedenborg,
March 2002, issue 54, pp. 8-9). It was about nonduality and introduces the
issue as follows: (discussed further in Chapter 2 Section 1)
Hinduism's
advaita vedanta or non-dual theology, probably represents the highest mystical
insight possible. It is the insight that ultimately only God exists. My friends
know that I regard Swedenborg's mystical revelations as the greatest ever. We
can then ask the question, Can we also find non-dualism in Swedenborg? The
answer is a resounding yes. The highest revelation of Hinduism is also in
Swedenborg's revelations even though the two traditions had no contact.
In order to
understand what this article is saying in relation to Swedenborg I needed to
research how Hindu nonduality exists in the ideas of Americans today. Searching
for nonduality sites on the World Wide Web yielded a large quantity and
diversity of information on contemporary formulations of traditional
definitions. I then went back to Dr. Van Dusen’s article and felt surprised at
the opening claim, quoted above. How can nonduality be compatible with the
Writings when every concept I know from the Writings is grounded in permanent
and absolute dualism: God/creation; love/wisdom, heaven/hell; create/uncreate;
natural/spiritual; spiritual/celestial; regenerating/unregenerate; good/evil;
truth/falsity; Father/Son, Esse/Existere; infinite/finite; will/understanding;
and so on. Nonduality would deny that these distinctions are absolute and a
permanent feature of reality. As we read in the Writings:
Good exists
from creation, and it varies in degree from the highest to the lowest. When its
lowest degree reaches zero, evil arises on the other side. So there is no
relationship or progress of good to evil, but it relates and progresses to what
is more or less good. Evil relates and progresses to what is more or is less
evil, because these are opposites in every single detail. (CL 444)
There is
therefore an inherent clash in the
1. Evil and good cannot exist together in man's interiors;
and consequently neither can the falsity of evil and the truth of good.
2. Good and the truth of good can be introduced by the Lord
into man's interiors only so far as the evil and the falsity of evil there have
been removed.
3.
If good with its truth were introduced there before or in a greater measure
than evil with its falsity is removed, man would depart from good and return to
his evil. (DP 232)
Chapter 1, Section 3
Nondualism
is opposed to the definition of reality given by dualism because nondualism
asserts the contrary view that all dualities stem from a temporary illusion
created by the mind, which itself is an illusion created by its many
attachments to temporary things. And so, when the individual awakens from this
illusion (maya) all dualities drop off, leaving behind nonduality as the only
reality called God (Brahman). Nondualism urges that every individual mind
awaken from this illusion created by the unreal self (atman), and when all attachments
drop off and the self is emptied, there remains the only Reality (Brahman).
This is the basis and foundation stone of religious and philosophic nonduality.
Every other concept derived from this defining proposition must also be
congruent with nonduality. Therefore not a single concept in nonduality can be
similar in meaning to any concept in the Writings where dualism permeates every
concept to its core assumptions and implications. To attempt to commingle the
two by arguing for similarities leads to a clash of doctrine in the
The
kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he
hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that
field. (Matthew 13:44) (AC 5886)
This
confirms what has been stated in the Faith of the New Heaven and the New Church
in its universal and in its particular form, at the beginning of this work,
namely, "The Lord came into the world to remove Hell from man, and He did
remove it by means of combats with it and victories over it, thereby subduing
it and reducing it to obedience to Himself." And further, "Jehovah
God came down and took upon Him the Human for the purpose of reducing to order
all things in heaven and all things in the church; because at that time the
power of the devil, that is, of hell, prevailed over the power of heaven, and
upon earth the power of evil over that of good and in consequence a total
damnation stood threatening at the door. This impending damnation Jehovah God
removed by means of His Human, thus redeeming angels and men. From this it is
clear that without the Lord's coming no one could have been saved. It is the
same today; and therefore without the Lord's coming again into the world no one
can be saved" (see above, n. 2, 3). (TCR 121)
Given birth
by the Writings, the
all
truths - not only the general ones but also the particular, and indeed the most
specific - must in heaven have been arranged into that order so that one truth
relates to another within a form like that in which the members, organs, and
viscera of the human body relate to one another. That is, their uses relate to
one another in general, also in particular, as well as most specifically, and
act so as to be a single whole. … When therefore truths have been arranged into
an order like that into which heaven is arranged they exist in heavenly order
and are able to enter good. Truths and goods exist in such order with every
angel, and they are also being arranged into such order with every person who
is being regenerated. (AC 4302)
Eastern and
Western nonduality forever strives to empty itself of the rational order into which
the celestial mind is arranged from creation (AC 5113). It grounds itself in
corporeal and experiential things instead. Its religious life of discipline is
in physical and mental disciplines accompanied by prescribed physical exercises
and communal chanting or rituals of initiation. These are traditions that were
established long before the religious civilization initiated in the West by the
First Coming. From the perspective of the New Church mind the highest content
it can find in the mental exercises (often called “meditation”) consist in
sensuous visions and corporeal metaphors of spiritual ideas like God, heaven,
sacred objects, forms of energy, action at a distance, merging into the all,
divine vibration, mystical union, transcendental, universal spirit, and many
such things, all of which are below the rational in the New Church mind.
This is also true of all forms of nonduality including Western and scientific
sources. It is one thing to think about God in a natural way, and
another to think from God in a spiritual way (DP 142). To think about spiritual things in a natural
way means to think of them only in metaphors.
From the
point of view of the Writings, natural
metaphors have no spiritual-rational content except as correspondences of each
other. The knowledge of the correspondences is natural, but from them
one can be introduced to spiritual meanings (AC 9280). The spiritual cannot be
seen in the lower portions of the natural mind, but starts to be seen above the
corporeal and above the sensuous, in the external rational region of the
natural mind (AC 978, 4286; AE 355:14). Below this, there is no spiritual
content because no rational. Correspondences are rational only to the
extent that they are understood from the idea of discrete degrees between the
natural and the spiritual (D. Wis. 2). This alone is rational. Any form of
nonduality cannot rise to the rational level, but sinks down to the material. Material
ideas cannot be spiritually rational because they deny what is not natural.
Scientific theories that assume materialism are based on material concepts or
natural-rational reasonings. They reject or spew out whatever idea that is not
natural. These natural things of the mind that that are the highest in
nonduality, correspond to the lowest spiritual level, and is compared in the
Writings to "the intestines" (AC 10030).
Nonduality
as a religious and philosophic discipline leads to the notion that the control
of the body and the corporeal mind, is a way to spiritual things. There is no
requirement for the rational to be initiated and developed. The spiritual is
said to develop when these physical exercises and mental feats are performed.
Hence the focus and emphasis on corporeal and mental disciplines, martial arts,
initiation rituals, and diet. It is taught that spiritual “energy” issues from
the body in particular places identified as “chakras.” Also, that performing
well practiced physical movements of a certain style help the practitioner to
become “one with the flow, one with nature.” This sensation of integration is
by itself considered as the spiritual attainment. It’s a spirituality that is
emptied of any rational content in contrast to
Chapter 1, Section 4
[3] The human rational - that is to say, the rational formed
from images of worldly things received through the senses, and later on from
images of things analogous to actual worldly ones, such as are received from
factual knowledge and from cognitions - virtually laughs or mocks if it is told
that it does not live of itself but only appears to itself to do so. It
likewise laughs if it is told that the less anyone believes that he lives of
himself, the more he is truly living, that is, the more wise and intelligent he
is, and the more blessed and happy. And it also laughs if it is told that that
life is the life which angels possess, especially those who are celestial and
are inmost or nearest to the Lord; for these know that nobody except Jehovah
alone, that is, the Lord, lives of himself.
[4] This rational would also mock if it were told that it
has nothing of its own, and that its possessing anything of its own is an
illusion or an appearance. Still more would it mock if it were told that the
more it is subject to the illusion that it possesses anything of its own the
less it in fact possesses, and vice versa. It would likewise mock if it were
told that whatever it thinks and does from what is its own is evil, even though
it was good [in its effect], and if it were told that it has no wisdom until it
believes and perceives that all evil comes from hell and all good from the
Lord. This is a conviction, indeed a perception, that exists in all angels, yet
they possess selfhood or a proprium in fuller measure than all others. But they
realize and perceive that their selfhood comes from the Lord, even though it
seems to be completely their own.
[5] This rational would again mock if it were told that in
heaven the greatest are those who are least; that the wisest are those who
believe and perceive that they themselves are the least wise; that the happiest
are those who wish the greatest happiness to others and the least to
themselves; that heaven consists in wishing to be below everyone else, but hell
in wishing to be above everyone else; and that consequently the glory of heaven
does not hold within it anything at all of that which the glory of the world holds.
[6] This rational would similarly mock if it were told that
in the next life space and time do not exist at all but states in accordance
with which there are appearances of space and time, and that life becomes more
heavenly the further removed it is from the things that belong to space and
time and the closer it comes to that which is eternal - for that which is
eternal has absolutely nothing within it that is received from the notion of
time or anything analogous to it. In the same way would the rational mock at
countless other things it could be told.
[7] The Lord
saw that such things were present in the merely human rational and that this
rational therefore mocked Divine things. He did so from the Divine spiritual,
which is meant by the words 'Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian', 2651,
2652. The fact that a person is able from within to have insight into the
things residing with him that are below is well known from experience to those
who have perception, and also to those who have conscience, for they see
clearly enough to reproach themselves for what they think. This exemplifies how
regenerate persons are able to see what their rational prior to regeneration is
like. In man's case however such perception is received from the Lord, but in
the Lord's case it was Self-derived. (AC 2654)
The
Writings reveal that the
In contrast,
the New Testament reinterprets the Old Testament text in a more rational,
abstract, and spiritual way. The New Testament introduces external rational
concepts that can serve as vessels for containing genuine spiritual-rational
ideas, not mere natural representatives of spiritual ideas (NJHD 51; AC 3508).
The representations in themselves are not spiritual just as the literal
sentences of the Word are not spiritual, but only the spiritual correspondences
to which the literal represented.
Truth
Divine is not received by anyone unless it has been accommodated to his
apprehension, consequently unless it appears in a natural form and shape; for
at first human minds apprehend none but earthly and worldly things, and not at
all spiritual and heavenly things. Wherefore if spiritual and heavenly things
were set forth nakedly, they would be rejected as if they were nothing, (AC
8783)
Anyone
reading the Word without at the same time thinking of the spiritual meaning in
the sentences has then read nothing spiritual (AC 9280). Further, the content
of the spiritual meaning one thinks of must be revealed truths about God,
heaven, sin, love, faith, and regeneration. This process of rational analysis
is a necessary step for applying the rational rules of correspondence that have
been revealed. Without this rational
application, the faith of one’s religion, including the
The
Christian mind prior to the Second Coming in the eighteenth century could not be
regenerated from natural to spiritual by means of the ideas it obtained from
the literal text of the New Testament. Christians who passed into the spiritual
world between the First and Second Coming, were kept “in waiting” in the
spiritual world, until such time as the Writings were completed. They then were
instructed in the new spiritual-rational revelations, and by means of these in
their understanding, they were at last admitted to heaven (TCR 115). All those
who were willing to receive the Heavenly Doctrine were made part of the New
Heavens of the Second Coming (TCR 1)
Because it is here said, "until the words of God are
consummated," it shall also be told what is signified by the Lord's last
words to the disciples, which are these:
Go
ye and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you all the days, even
until the consummation of the age. Amen (Matt. 28:19-20).
"Until
the consummation of the age" is until the end of the church (n. 658); and
then, if they do not go to the Lord Himself, and live according to His
commandments, they are left by the Lord; and being left by the Lord they become
like pagans, who have no religion; and then the Lord is with those only, who will
be of His New Church. These things are signified by "until the words of
God are consummated," and by "even until the consummation of the
age." (AR 750)
But before
the Lord’s Second Coming, Christians were not able to be constituted into a new
heaven because unable to receive spiritual-rational truths about the Divine
Human. During the First Advent, the Lord was reticent to multiply miracles
because this strengthens corporeal spirituality and weakens rational
spirituality. Since the Second Advent no miracles are allowed (AC 7290). The
Lord on earth frequently taught abstract and rational ideas, encouraging,
challenging, sometimes teasing, the disciples to prompt them to think more
abstractedly and rationally about Him, heaven, and regeneration. But these rational
vessels were not yet dualist enough. The Lord was unable to bring to them
concepts of absolute dualism, for they were uncomprehending and unwilling. In a
matter of a few generations even these few and obscure rational concepts were
diverted and turned downward towards many forms of heretical nondualities that
prevent regeneration in confirmed believers. When confirmed believers of
Christian nonduality arrive in the afterlife they are unwilling to be
instructed in the dualities of the Heavenly Doctrine (AC 2329, 5256,
10736-10738, 10821; TCR 821; SE 408; HH 321). Thus they cannot be saved.
More
gentiles are saved than Christians. For people who have thought what is good in
regard to their neighbour and have willed for him that which is good accept the
truths of faith in the next life more readily than those who called themselves
Christians; and they acknowledge the Lord more than Christians do. (AC 2284)
The
interiors cannot be so closed up with the heathen as with Christians (n. 9256).
Neither can so thick a cloud exist with the heathen who live in mutual charity
in accordance with their religion as with Christians who live in no charity;
the reasons (n. 1059, 9256). (HH 321)
A principal
example given in the Writings, is the idea implanted by allegiance to the
Nicene Creed (325 AD onward) of a “Son from Eternity” which created a
nonduality between “Three Divine Persons” being of “one substance” and formed
into one “Godhead.” (TCR 174, CAN 43) This idea was called a “mystery” and it
replaced the Father/Son duality that the Lord taught to the disciples, which
was “the Son born in time” and “the Father from Eternity” and not, “the Son
from Eternity in the One Godhead” and “the Father from Eternity in the One
Godhead.” The generations following the apostles were unable to understand the
Incarnation of the Father Himself in the external form of the Son born in time.
The Divinity of “the Son born in time” within whom was God the Father Himself,
could not be understood and believed, until the generations were prepared by
rational science and philosophy to understand more abstract dualist concepts in
discrete degrees. The Lord could say to them “The Father is in Me” but they
could not but take this description in the natural sense. At this level of
thinking, it is not possible to see an identity of Personhood between Father
and Son. Therefore the mind is thrown back to the idea of “Two Divine
Persons in One Godhead.” The only other option is that the Father is Divine
while the Son is human—the “Arian heresy” that the Nicene Creed was designed to
defeat. In the Writings these are also called “Socinian spirits” (DP 231; TCR
94, 380, AR 0, LJ 38).
1. The New Age Of The Second Coming
At last, in
the Writings of the Second Coming, the Lord has brought humankind the gift of spiritual-rational
ideas that are fully suitable for being infilled by the celestial ideas of the
angels. The literal explanations of the Writings are first received in the
external rational of the natural mind. This in itself is not spiritual but is
well suited for the construction of rational “vessels” that can be infilled by
spiritual-rational truths from the Lord through heaven (AC 9280, 8783, 3508).
This infilling is the opening of our spiritual mind. It is the one and only way
the
Cognitions are vessels for receiving good and truth entering
in from the rational. The way in which the vessels receive and the amount they
receive determine the nature of their enlightenment and how far they are
enlightened. Vessels which receive good and truth from the rational are the
truths themselves belonging to the natural, which are no more than facts,
cognitions, and matters of doctrine. From the order according to which they
flow in and from the order which exists among them there they become goods.
This is the origin of the good of the natural. (AC 3508)
The absolute duality of every concept in the
Writings rests on the revealed existence of discrete degrees of separation
between levels of creation, and therefore, between the levels in the mind.
These
levels in the mind can never touch each other or be in the same sphere—they can
only communicate by spiritual-rational correspondence. The natural level which
includes the sensual and corporeal, is the lowest region or outmost level of
the natural mind. It is closest to the body senses and identifies itself with
the physical environment. The physical environment and the body are material,
but the natural mind is natural-spiritual. The highest portion of the natural
mind is called the external rational, which is therefore natural-spiritual, not
yet spiritual-rational or celestial (AC 978, 4286; AE 355:14). The spiritual
itself cannot exist in the external rational because it is in a discrete degree
above it. The spiritual mind has its rational which is called the interior
rational or the spiritual-rational, not from the natural world, but only and
exclusively from the spiritual world by means of influx from the Lord through
heaven (AC 9280, LJ 10).
The existence of these three degrees in people can be seen
from the elevation of a person's mind even to the degrees of love and wisdom
possessed by angels of the second and third heavens. For all angels were born
people, and a person is, in respect to the interior elements which are those of
his mind, a heaven in miniature form. Consequently there are from creation as
many degrees of height in a person as there are heavens. The human being is
furthermore an image and likeness of God, and these three degrees are therefore
engraved on a person because they exist in the human God, which is to say, in
the Lord. (DLW 231)
The
angels with each person inflow into the individual’s spiritual mind by means of
spiritual-rational truths. This inflow is proportional to the extent to which
the individual thinks and wills daily in conformity to the external rational
truths they understand. The more the angels inflow with spiritual-rational truths,
the more we are regenerated, the more we become spiritual-rational and sane and
wise. In this way, we are prepared for heaven, which is living in the highest
level of the mind called the celestial degree. This level is constructed of
interior rational truths that are an image of the Lord’s Divine Rational order
in the universe. Duality is the only reality because all things in the Divine
Rational are arranged into discrete order.
Chapter 1, Section 5
The difference between natural, spiritual and celestial
things is such that there is no proportional relation between them. Therefore
natural things cannot in any way by any approximation approach in likeness
spiritual things, nor spiritual things celestial things. That is why the
heavens are distinct. I have been given to know this from much experience.
Again and again I have been conveyed into the company of spiritual angels, and
I then spoke with them in their spiritual way of speaking, and what I said I
then made a point of remembering. When I returned into my natural state-the
state every person in the world is in-I then tried to recall what I had said
from my earlier remembrance and write it down, but I could not. It was
impossible. No words were to be found and not even any mental concepts by which
to express it. The spiritual mental concepts and words were so removed from
natural mental concepts and words that there was not the least approximation.
Surprisingly, when I was in that heaven and spoke with angels, I then knew no
other than that I was speaking in the same way that I speak with people here.
But afterward I found out that the thoughts and speech were so dissimilar that
the one could not approximate the other, consequently that they have
proportional relation.
[3] There is a similar difference between spiritual and
celestial things.
(De Verbo 3)
It is
therefore very important to distinguish between the external rational of the natural
mind and the interior rational of the spiritual mind, as discussed
before. These two rational levels of the human mind are in discrete degrees (DP
154, TCR 564; AC 978, 4286; AE 355:14). Nothing of the spiritual can exist in
the natural, but only within the natural by correspondence of discrete degrees.
There is no continuity between the external rational and the interior rational
(or spiritual-rational), because one is in the natural mind and the other in
the spiritual mind. This means that it is not possible to keep increasing the
natural-rational (or natural-spiritual) and eventually arrive at the interior
rational (or spiritual-rational). In the New Church mind regeneration is going
on when the external rational is turned around by our rearranging all its
concepts and affections to be in conformity and obedience to the literal
sentences we take up from the Writings into our understanding where it is
called “the Doctrine of the Church” (NJHD 257). This is the process of being
reformed and regenerated. From birth and heredity, the external rational of the
natural mind is arranged according to the world and nature—thus in the
appearances of nonduality:
Human rational truth does not apprehend Divine things,
because these are above the sphere of its understanding, for this truth
communicates with the memory-knowledges which are in the natural man, and in so
far as it looks from these at the things which are above itself, so far it does
not acknowledge them. For this truth is in appearances, which it is not able to
put off; and appearances are born from sensuous things, which induce a belief
as if Divine things themselves also were of a like nature, when yet these are
exempt from all appearances, and when they are stated, this rational truth
cannot possibly believe them, because it cannot apprehend them.
[3] If for example it is stated that man has no life except
what is from the Lord, the rational supposes from appearances that in that case
man cannot live as of himself; whereas he for the first time truly lives when
he perceives that he does so from the Lord.
[4] The rational supposes from appearances that the good
which man does is from himself, and yet there is nothing of good from self, but
all is from the Lord.
[5] From appearances the rational supposes that man merits
salvation when he does what is good; whereas of himself man can merit nothing,
but all merit is the Lord's.
[6] From appearances man supposes that when he is withheld
from evil and is kept in good by the Lord, there is nothing with him but what
is good and just, nay, holy; whereas there is nothing in man but what is evil,
unjust, and profane.
[7] From appearances man supposes that when he does what is
good from charity, he does it from his will; whereas it is not from his will
part, but from his intellectual part, in which charity has been implanted.
[8] From appearances man supposes that there can be no glory
without the glory of the world; whereas in the glory of heaven there is not a
particle of the world's glory.
[9] From appearances man supposes that no one can love his
neighbor more than himself, but that all love begins from self; when yet in
heavenly love there is nothing of the love of self.
[10] From appearances man supposes that there can be no
light but that which is from the light of the world; whereas in the heavens
there is not one whit of the light of the world, and yet the light is so great
that it surpasses the world's
[11] From appearances man supposes that the Lord cannot
shine before the universal heaven as a sun; when yet all the light of heaven is
from Him.
[12] From appearances man cannot apprehend that in the other
life there are motions forward; whereas those who are there appear to
themselves to move forward just as do men on earth-in their dwellings, courts,
and paradises; and still less can he apprehend if it is said that these moving
forward are changes of state, which so appear.
[13] Nor can man from appearances apprehend that spirits and
angels, who are invisible before our eyes, can be seen; nor that they can speak
with man; when yet they appear to the internal sight, or that of the spirit,
more manifestly than man does to man on earth; and their voices are heard as
distinctly; besides thousands of thousands of such things, which man's
rational, from its own light, born from things of sense, and thereby darkened,
cannot possibly believe. Nay, the rational is blinded in natural things
themselves, not being able to apprehend, for instance, how those who dwell on
the opposite side of the globe can stand on their feet and walk; and it is the
same with very many other things. How blind then must the rational not be in
spiritual and heavenly things, which are far above natural things? (AC 2196)
You can
see from this list that nonduality is according to appearances and the rational
thinking of the external mind is not capable of believing contrary to the
sensuous appearances of its life and reasoning. This is why revelation is
necessary! Because from revelation the rational mind that has been formed
to look only outward to the world of the sensuous body, can turn itself around
and face upward to the spiritual world which enters through the
interior-rational mind, and not through the external rational (AC 978, 4286; AE
355:14). Therefore the source of all rational-spiritual concepts we can know is
from revelation in the Writings. Those who deny and reject revelation are
therefore trapped at the level of thinking of their external rational (AC 978,
4286; AE 355:14).
1. Nonduality Is In The Unregenerate Natural
Mind
The devil's hatred is against spiritual truths and goods,
because merely natural truths and goods are the direct opposites of these, for
merely natural truths and goods are in their essence falsities and evils,
although to those who are merely natural and sensual they appear to be truths
and goods (AE 754).
All
ideas and affections in the external rational mind which have not been
reformed, are opposed to all ideas we have from the Doctrine of the Church in
our mind. When we read the Writings as Divine Truth, we acquire in our
conscious mind heavenly concepts that function as external vessels suitable for
being infilled with spiritual-rational truths inflowing from the spiritual
world through heaven as we read the Writings (AC 9280, 3508). This infilling is
proportional to the extent that our daily willing and thinking is made to
conform to the Doctrine of the Church which is in our understanding.
Regarding thoughts: All the thoughts of people, including
each single idea in them, involve conceptions drawn from space, time, person,
or material-things that appear in natural light or the light of the world. For
no one can think anything apart from light, just as nothing can be seen without
light. And natural light or the light of the world is lifeless, being from the
sun of the world, which is nothing but fire. Nevertheless, the light of heaven
flows into that light everywhere and continually, giving it life and making
possible the perception and understanding of things. The light of the world by
itself cannot impart any perceptive or intellectual ability or confer any
natural or rational sight, but it does so from the light of heaven, because the
light of heaven comes from the sun of heaven, which is the Lord and so is life
itself.
The influx of the light of heaven into the light of the
world is like the influx of a cause into its effect-the nature of which will be
explained elsewhere. It is apparent from this what natural thought is like, or
ideas of thought in people, namely, that they are inseparably bound up with
notions of space, time, personality and material. Because of this, those
thoughts or ideas of thought are very limited and restricted, and so are crude,
and must be called material. (De Verbo 3:6)
There are also in our natural self reasonings that are
grounded in falsities impressed from infancy. Moreover, we apprehend by
manifest sense what is in our natural self, but not so what is in our rational,
until we have put off the body. This also causes us to believe the body to be
every thing; and all that does not fall into the natural sense, we scarcely
believe to be anything.
From such causes and many others, it results that we receive
truths in the natural self much later, and with greater difficulty, than our
reception of truth in our rational self. Hence arises combat, which continues
for a considerable time, not ceasing until the vessels recipient of good in our
natural part have been softened by temptations, as before shown …; for truths
are nothing but vessels recipient of good …, which vessels are harder in
proportion as we are more fixedly confirmed in the things which have been
mentioned; and if we are to be regenerated, the more fixedly we have been
confirmed, the more grievous is the combat. (AC 3321:3)
Concepts
of nonduality can only enter the natural mind since they are devoid of
spiritual-rational content. (How this is will be shown in the Sections below.)
There they act by persuasive pressures that strive to oppose the rearrangement
of the external rational ideas into absolute dualities from the Writings. These
absolute dualities are at first only in our external rational mind as we read
the literal of the Writings. There is nothing spiritual in itself about our
memory-knowledges from the Writings (AC 9280, 8783). Yet these
memory-knowledges are necessary as vessels (or cognitive constructs) which can
be infilled through correspondence by the spiritual ideas from the angels that
are with us. They cannot inflow except into rational concepts in our mind
from the literal text of the Writings.
It will also be briefly stated how the Lord casts out lusts
of evil, which beset the internal man from birth, and how He bestows in their
place affections of good when a man as of himself removes evils as sins. It was
shown before that man has a natural mind, a spiritual mind and a celestial
mind; and that he is in the natural mind alone, as long as he is in the lusts
of evil and their delight; and that during this time the spiritual mind is
closed. But as soon as he, after self-examination, acknowledges evils to be
sins against God because they are contrary to Divine laws, and therefore
desires to desist from them, the Lord opens the spiritual mind, and enters into
the natural mind through affections for truth and good; and He also enters into
the rational, and from it disposes in order the things that are contrary to
order below it in the natural. (DP 147)
The
angels understand the Heavenly Doctrines spiritually (in their interior
rational mind), while we understand the Writings naturally (in our external
rational mind). Only if we have formed these external rational vessels can the
interior rational ideas inflow by correspondence. Hence it is that we cannot be
regenerated unless we fill our external rational mind with concepts and
reasonings from the Writings. For the
We don’t
want oppositional concepts or loyalties in our natural mind. Least of all do we
want them in our external rational which is the highest level of our natural
mind (AC 978, 4286; AE 355:14). That level must be filtered and purified to
make sure that only concepts of duality from the Writings are there as vessels
waiting to be infilled by spiritual ideas. This filtering and purification
process is not possible through censorship, sectarianism, or dogmatism. It
is only possible through rational analysis and freedom of thought. Hence
the importance of studying the Writings so that we have available in our mind,
its concepts or ideas, its reasoning process, and all its related affections.
2. The Spiritual Begins With The Rational
Corporeal
spirituality, which may also be called spirituality of the intestines (AC 10030),
is the natural-spiritual level of the mind that identifies with the material
body since it is built up by the sensations from the body’s interaction with
the physical world. This is why their location is in the natural mind (DLW 257,
AE 577). The natural mind is below the spiritual-rational level where genuine
spirituality can exist, which is called spirituality of the chest (AC 10030).
The natural-spiritual mind and the rational-spiritual mind are created into
discrete degrees and cannot interact except by correspondences. (D. Wis. 2)
Rational spirituality is formed only by the inner sensory organs of the
will and understanding, and these spiritual organs are fed by the spiritual Sun
and its world of events and modifications (DP.166). Corporeal spirituality is
formed only by the outer physical senses which are fed by the material world
through the body. The mind in the spiritual world interacts with the body in
the natural world only by correspondences because the two are created into
discrete degrees (DP 166; D. Wis. 2).
The
Writings define the spiritual as only that which is rational, while everything that is below
this level is not spiritual but natural, corporeal, and sensuous from the
natural world (AC 4667). The human begins with the spiritual- rational,
a discrete degree above the natural mind, which in itself is animal or
sub-human (AC 2196, 3570). Meditation, chanting, and initiations are not
considered spiritual activities for the
In the
The pleasures
that are in the bodily or outermost things of man have their origin in delights
that are successively more and more interior. The delights that are perceived
in those outermost or bodily things are relatively vile, for it is the nature
of all delight to become more vile in proportion as it progresses toward the
externals, and more happy in proportion as it advances toward the internals.
For this reason, as before said, in proportion as the externals are stripped
off, or rolled away, the delights become more pleasant and happy, as may be
evident enough from man's delight in pleasures being vile while he lives in the
body, in comparison with his delight after the life of the body, when he comes
into the world of spirits; so vile indeed that good spirits utterly spurn the
delights of the body, nor would they return to them if all in the whole world
should be given them. (AC 996)
Correspondential
communication between the interior and the exterior occurs with the highest
level of the natural mind called the external rational mind (AC 978,
4286; AE 355:14). The ideas we have at this level are suitable “vessels” into
which the spiritual ideas can descend, but not descend directly but only in
correspondential interaction. The natural conscious understanding of what is
spiritual and celestial is achieved when we acquire external rational concepts
that are suitable for reacting correspondentially to spiritual-rational ideas
that we receive into our spiritual mind while reading the Writings and applying
its truths to life. This is how the spirituality of the
When man
becomes internal and is instructed about internal things, external ones are of
no account to him. He then knows what the holy is, namely, charity and the
faith therefrom. According to these are his external things then regarded, that
is to say, according to the amount of charity and faith in the Lord there is in
them. Since the coming of the Lord, therefore, man is not regarded in heaven
from external things, but from internal ones. And if anyone is regarded from
external things it is because he is in simplicity, and in his simplicity there
are innocence and charity, which are in his external things, that is, in his
external worship, from the Lord, without the man's knowledge. (AC 1003)
3. The Spiritual In The New Testament
The power
to be regenerated starts with consciously thinking about rational issues
and living according to them. At first, this rational is not yet a
spiritual-rational but something representing it in the natural mind. This
natural-rational can be infilled with a spiritual-natural such as the ideas
found in the New Testament. The Lord frequently brought up puzzling issues that
encouraged the disciples to be analytic and rational:
The
Before you can be saved you must born again (John 3:4)
The Father and I are one (John
The
Son of Man sows the good seed (Matthew
Who do people say the Son of Man is? (Matthew 16:13)
before Abraham
was born, I am! (John 8:58)
All that is in the Old Testament is about the Christ (Luke
24:27)
In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1)
John the Baptist is the Elijah who was to come. (Matthew
11:14)
Let the man who is without sin cast the first stone (John
8:7)
The kingdom of heaven is made of such as the children
(Matthew 18:3)
I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. (John
14:20)
What shall we say the
And many
more…
The
rational is crucial to the
The Lord loves man, and from love wills that he may be happy
forever, and man cannot become happy except by a life according to His
commandments, because by means of these a man is regenerated and becomes
spiritual, and in this way can be raised into heaven. (AC 10578)
This is the
burning passionate spirituality of the human rational by which the individual
becomes fit for receiving Divine Rational things, which alone are
spiritual-rational. These are the holy things by which we are saved and by
which we have eternal life. But to nonduality these rational things of
salvation are taken as merely illusory attachments to nonexistent things such
as good and evil, God and self, prudent and foolish. Is it possible to transfer
any idea at all across two systems that are so opposed to each other? Perhaps
only by remaining superficial or most general.
Chapter 1, Section 6
There is a
state of the
Nevertheless
these comparative interests and ideas can be harmful to the
Some months
ago I received an email from someone who came across my article on dualism
posted on the Web (see Note 1 at end). He wrote:
I got here by
accident. I am interested in Swedenborg. Van Dusen has taught me a lot. I think
I started with William James! At present, I am trying to understand more about
monism - reading "Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path" - and I
think you wrote that you think Swedenborg is a dualist. I want to believe that
Swedenborg would be a monist.
Why, I
wondered? Such is the subconscious attractiveness many Americans have for
nonduality and monism. This love for nonduality is the unconscious desire to
annihilate absolute duality in one’s mind and to become more mixed because this
appears more balanced and fair to the natural mind—which is the external
rational doing the thinking and which leads to corporeal spirituality when
applied to spiritual things:
With
those who conjoin the truths of the Word to the affection of the love of self,
the natural mind also is closed, and only the ultimate of this mind is opened,
which is called the sensual, which clings most closely to the body, and stands
forth nearest to the world. Thus does man's spirit become corporeal, and then
it can have no lot with the angels, who are spiritual. (AE 579)
Duality
demands humility—“I am not God and I never can be. I am God’s creation and I’m
next to nothing in comparison to God.” Or: “I am evil by nature but God is
good. I can be saved by God from my evil nature and I can be good from Him.” The
attractiveness of nonduality is the promise it gives of avoiding the suffering
of regeneration. With nonduality, people don’t have to face the idea that
heaven is only for the good, while hell is for the bad. They don’t have to be
responsible for sustaining the idea that salvation is tied to the Word of the
Lord and cannot be obtained from “strange fires.” (Lev. 10:1, AC 10244, 934)
Nonduality offers the more convenient idea of “Universe as Spirit” or “God as
Emptiness.” It is not as personal as the God of Abraham or the Son of God, thus
easier to relate to without having to change, and it offers less demands on the
self. The Writings reveal that in the afterlife, there is no belief in God in
those who in this life annihilated in themselves the idea of God as Person.
Without a belief in God as Person they cannot be reformed, regenerated, or
saved from hell.
How
important it is to have a right idea of God can be seen from the fact that the
idea of God forms the inmost element of thought in all who have any religion,
for all constituents of religion and all constituents of worship relate to God.
And because God is universally and specifically involved in all constituents of
religion and worship, therefore without a right idea of God no communication
with the heavens is possible. So it is that every nation in the spiritual world
is allotted its location in accordance with its idea of God as a person; for in
this idea and in no other lies an idea of the Lord. (DLW 13)
Nonduality
introduces in the Western mind a certain peace or quietude that comes from the
idea that we need to be more detached. We don’t have to struggle so hard. We
don’t need to be so desperately always trying to be better or good. There is
the promise of a healthier consciousness, less competitive, less anxious, more
self-confident, even to the point of unshakableness. This introduces a lulling
sense of relaxing the pace of our struggles and of weakening the utmost
determination to reform. Thus it runs contrary to the most important task we
have in this world--to cooperate with the Lord in our regeneration, which must
be effected through the long-term accumulation of all those little struggles
daily (BE 69, TCR 615, 577). The good news is that as we advance in our
regeneration, the Lord gives us more and more rest and peace. This is felt from
within and looks down upon the continuing struggles and stress as something far
and distant and ultimately so small. We do not wish for detachment but pray for
the Lord’s will to be done. This peace we have from the Lord is peace indeed,
whereas the lulling nonduality of some good mixed with some evil, is not peace
in our
Chapter 1, Section 7
The universal principle of faith must be in each thing and in
all things of it. … The universal principle of faith on man's part is that he
should believe in the Lord (TCR 2)
Every idea
or concept in the Writings contains the fundamental duality, which is here
called “the universal of faith.” In the same way every idea that derives from
nonduality has nonduality as its central core presupposition. Every single idea
of nonduality is therefore antagonistic to any idea from the Writings, which
contains only spiritual-rational ideas. This is because the ideas that derive
from the Writings have dualism as their central core presupposition. Dualist
ideas are rational, spiritual, and celestial (AE 708). Nondualist ideas are
corporeal, sensuous, and natural. By mixing these two in the
Duality and
nonduality can be compared to two different cognitive trees. The trunk is the
central idea or supposition and all the branch ideas take their root from the
trunk. Every concept therefore will have at its inmost, the core supposition it
springs from. In the system of thought called nonduality, the central core is
the eradication or dissolution of all duality. Any concept in nonduality that
is admitted into the
dvaita-advaita:
(Sanskrit) "Dual-nondual; twoness-not twoness." Among the most
important terms in the classification of Hindu philosophies. Dvaita and advaita
define two ends of a vast spectrum.
--dvaita: The doctrine of duality, according to which reality is ultimately
composed of two irreducible principles, entities, truths, etc. God and soul,
for example, are seen as eternally separate.
--dualistic: Of or relating to duality, concepts, writings, theories which
treat dualities (good-and-evil, high-and-low, them-and-us) as fixed, rather
than transcendable.
--advaita: The doctrine of nonduality or monism, that
reality is ultimately composed of one whole principle, substance or God, with
no independent parts. In essence, all is God.
Hinduism's Online Lexicon.
(
/www.himalayanacademy.com/books/dws/lexicon/d.html
(Accessed April 2002)
"Advaita" means "not two," nondual. This
is the nature of Reality: it is indivisible. The Self is One. God is One. The
Self and God are one and the same. This is Nonduality; this is Advaita.
(Society of Abidance in Truth (SAT) (Maharishi ). Found on
the Web at www.satramana.org/sswhoare.htm
Accessed April 2002)
I will
present examples from
Second:
Good and the truth of good can be introduced by the Lord into man's interiors
only so far as the evil and the falsity of evil there have been removed. This
is a necessary consequence of what has gone before; for as evil and good cannot
exist together good cannot be introduced before evil has been removed. The term
man's interiors is used, and by these is meant the internal of thought; and in
these, which are now being considered, either the Lord or the devil must be
present.
The
Lord is there after reformation, but the devil is there before it; therefore,
so far as man suffers himself to be reformed the devil is cast out; but so far
as he does not suffer himself to be reformed the devil remains. Everyone may
see that the Lord cannot enter so long as the devil is there; and he is there
so long as man keeps the door closed, where man acts together with the Lord.
(DP 232:3)
The
Writings teach that in the age of the Second Coming, the only way to salvation
is by instruction from the Writings, either in this world or in the afterlife
(TCR 108, DLW 429; AC 1775). Entrance to the New Heavens cannot occur without
acknowledgement and love of the Divine Human (Coronis 1; TCR 2; 121). This is
the beginning and end for the
All good
and truth is from the Lord and remains the Lord’s even when it is in us (DLW
113). This good and truth is Divine and remains absolutely distinct and
separate from anything in us. Because the
Divine is in us we must not conclude that therefore we are Divine! The good
and truth in us from the Divine is accommodated to each individual, and our
use of it for choices is appropriated to us by the Lord. The good and truth
is never ours and we can never become part of it (AC 9338). A permissive and
uncritical attitude for nonduality can insinuate the thought that we are this
good and truth that is in us. And this false notion further insinuates the idea
that we are god. The entire intellectual thrust of nonduality is to have people
accept this identity between self and God. Once this idea gains a foothold in
our
The
following chapters will show how nonduality creates opposition or impediments
to our regeneration, hence salvation.
The Lord is present
with His Divine good and truth with every person (TCR 580)
Chapter 2, Introduction
The New Age or Buddhist-like oneness blurs distinct discrete
degrees between spiritual and natural light, and ends up making man the source
of himself. C.S. Lewis had it right: We slide into pantheism when left to
ourselves.
And esoteric experiences of channeling is inferior to the
written Word, since such contacts can happen even if the will is intent on
evil. A supernatural experience in any case just fades away, turning people
into fanatics (De Verbo 29-13). The whole cosmos snarls up between Ego and
God--anything but oneness with God! By contrast the Word is better and should
come first (AC 129), and the truths of Nature or experie4nce can then confirm
the Word (cf. SE 5709-5710; AC 2568, 2588). The New Age sees God and nature as
different colored marbles rolling in the same plate: Pick whatever you like.
The
(Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom, The New Age and the New Church (Part
Two). New Church Life, June 2002, 251-260)
One theme resonates clearly in the Writings,
reinforced in various ways in every work of Swedenborg. It is that the natural
and spiritual worlds are distinct and discontinuous (non-overlapping and of
different substance), but relate to each other by the laws of correspondences
(D. Wis. 2). The spiritual world is not in time, space, and matter but is
constructed of substances from the spiritual Sun. The natural world is in time,
space, and matter and is constructed out of physical materials from the natural
sun. This is one of the many basic dualities in Swedenborg’s Writings.
The dynamic
relation between the spiritual and natural worlds is reciprocal. If God took
away the physical world, the spiritual world would also disappear. And vice
versa. The created universe is a fundamental duality: spiritual and natural, the
two being interdependent, one “within” the other, both necessary to one
another’s existence, yet always and forever remaining in different worlds, one
natural in time-space, the other, spiritual, outside time and space. These
two worlds cannot be the same or similar in a single thing; they are dual in
every respect. The spiritual is the cause and the natural is the effect.
Without an effect, there is no cause but something potential, imagined, or not
yet real. Reality is born or created when cause and effect are brought
simultaneously together by correspondence.
It is
contradictory to say that nonduality can exist in our mind and not have a
negative effect. All things that exist must have a prior cause (DP 157). If
nonduality exists, it is an effect caused by a spiritual event to which it is
related by correspondence. What has existence must be dual.
What else is
there in life except "I will this, and I understand this," or in
other words, "I love this, and I think this?" As a man wills what he
loves, and thinks what he understands, so all things of the will relate to
love, and all things of the understanding to wisdom; and since love and wisdom
cannot exist in anyone from himself, but only from Him who is Love itself and
Wisdom itself it follows that they exist from the Lord who is from eternity,
that is, Jehovah. If they did not exist from this source man would be love
itself and wisdom itself, thus God from eternity; but from this human reason
itself recoils. Nothing can exist except from what is prior to itself; and this
prior thing can exist only from what is still prior to it, and thus finally
only from the First which is in its Self. (DP 157)
Chapter 2, Section 1
Is it
possible that anything in the Writings can be compatible with nonduality? Here
is what Van Dusen writes:
Though
I have long suspected Swedenborg's theology was also non-dual, only recently
did I find the real evidence. (…) Swedenborg's theology presents the non-dual
in a kind of illuminating paradox. Divine
God rules
all things—this is the cornerstone of Swedenborg’s theology and science. I was
surprised to see that this principle can be considered a non-dual position. The
obvious duality is pictured by the concepts “God rules” and “all things.” These
are in dual reality or status. God creates all things from Himself since there
is nothing else from which creation can be constructed (DLW 283). The idea that
created things can come out of nothing is shown to be irrational by Swedenborg,
who reports that the wise angels who have knowledge far greater than ours,
abhor the idea that something can come out of nothing (DLW 82, 283; DP 3).
Therefore all things that are created by God exist in a reality that is outside
God Himself. Duality is inherent in the idea of creation. Creation has no
meaning at all if one removes duality from it. The fact that all things are
created from God does not mean that these created things are God, for God and
His substance and attributes, are uncreate, having no beginning, while all
created things have a beginning, by definition. The distinctness between
created things and uncreated is absolute, never to be transcended. Uncreate
things include love, truth, and life in infinite variations. Created things
include the physical world, the spiritual world, and the human mind. Created
things are adjoined to uncreate but never become of one substance.
Further, it
is not rational to say that God is the only reality when God creates reality, which
is the universe and its order. In order to create reality God must be
outside reality. Existence cannot be created from existence or within
existence, but only from something prior to it and outside of it. The Writings
teach that the Lord created the universe through Divine Truth from the Divine
Love in Himself (DLW 290). Divine Truth is called His Existere, and Divine Love
is His Esse. The Lord from His Esse created all existence through Divine Truth.
From Esse, God can create existence or reality. Esse is prior to reality and is
the cause of it. Esse, as source or cause, and existere or creation as effect,
are in a dual relationship. One can never become the other and neither can be
missing. Nonduality between God and creation is rationally an impossibility.
Everything
created must needs be from an Uncreate. What is created is also finite, and the
finite can exist only from the Infinite. (DLW 44)
Consider
the difference in the Van Dusen quote above between “God rules all things” (an
idea attributed to Swedenborg’s system) and “Brahman is the all” (an idea attributed
to the Hindu perspective). These two propositions are entirely different in
terms of what they assume and imply. The idea that God rules all things is the
way Swedenborg phrases the creation duality. God rules all things in existence
but not from existence, but from Esse or that which is prior and outside
existence. This is the meaning of the Lord’s I AM (John
The
sentence “Brahman is the all” is represented as a central feature of
nonduality. For example:
From
The Song of Ribhu: The English Translation of the Tamil Ribhu Gita. Translation
by Dr. H. Ramamoorthy and
Advaita
Vedanta, or the Teaching of Nonduality … reveals the utter absence of any
differentiation between Atman (the Self) and Brahman. … Advaita (Sanskrit) …
teaches the oneness of Brahman … with the human spirit-soul, … and the identity
of spirit and matter; also that the divine spirit of the universe is the …
all-productive cause of the periodic coming into being; continuance, and
dissolutions of the universe and that this divine cosmic spirit is the ultimate
truth and sole reality … All else is maya, in proportion to its distance from
the divine source. … It is also regarded as both the efficient and material
cause of the visible universe, … the essence from which all beings are produced
and into which they are absorbed. The entire phenomenal world of beings,
qualities, actions, all manifestations, and so on, is said to be an illusory
superimposition on the imperishable substratum, which is Brahman.
(Accessed on the Web in April 2002 at nonduality.com/whatis9.htm .)
It is clear
from this description of Brahman that it has no relation to God as described in
the Writings. And in fact it is opposed to everything said by Swedenborg about
God. There is no “oneness” of God with “the human spirit-soul.” Humans are part
of creation and God is not part of creation nor can ever be. God must be
outside existence to create existence. God creates all things from His Esse
which is the cause of existence. God and created existence form an indissoluble
duality. Existence is a perpetual coming forth from God and is recreated moment
by moment so that it may subsist (AC 6056).
Love and
wisdom cannot exist in anyone from himself, but only from Him who is Love itself
and Wisdom itself it follows that they exist from the Lord who is from
eternity, that is, Jehovah. If they did not exist from this source man would be
love itself and wisdom itself, thus God from eternity; but from this human
reason itself recoils. Nothing can exist except from what is prior to itself;
and this prior thing can exist only from what is still prior to it, and thus
finally only from the First which is in its Self.
(…)
All good and
truth can come from no other source than Good itself and Truth itself. These
things are acknowledged by every rational man as soon as they are heard. When
it is afterwards stated that everything of the will and the understanding, or
everything of love and wisdom, or everything of affection and thought in a man who
is led by the Lord, has relation to good and truth, it follows that all that
such a man wills and understands, or every activity of his love and wisdom, or
of his affection and thought, is from the Lord.
(DP 157)
The
Writings reveal that the persuasive belief and insanity that self=God led to
the extinction of the first human race on earth (AC 5725). This evolutionary
event is described in the spiritual meaning of the Flood and the story of Noah
in Genesis (AC 553). The last generation of this race is referred to as the
“Nephilim.” It is revealed that their persuasion destroyed the human will so
that it was no longer possible for that race to be regenerated. The Lord then
raised a new race in whom the will and the understanding were separated, and by
means of this independent functioning, the subsequent generations were able to
be regenerated. The natural correspondence to this new creation of the human
mind caused the brain to also be split from birth, the left brain corresponding
to the understanding in the mind, the right brain to the will (AC 641, 4052).
Henceforth the dire persuasions of nonduality between self and God could be
controlled and eliminated by the absolute duality of self and God. The duality
is learned in the understanding as a religious motivation, and this is called
faith. Afterwards the Lord creates a new will in this faith (AC 5354). This is
the mechanism by which we are regenerated today.
Besides the
idea that self=God, Hindu nonduality includes the notion of a “periodic coming
into being; continuance, and dissolutions of the universe” (see The Song of
Ribhu quote above). This says that once creation exists, it develops, changes,
and goes through dissolution so that only “Dharma” remains. This notion of the
universe is the opposite of what Swedenborg says about creation or existence,
namely that it is permanent (DLW 168). There is no universal un-creation. Human
beings are born on some natural earth, die, and awaken as a spirit in the
spiritual world where they continue their individual existence to eternity,
either as an angel or a devil (CL 355). There can be no relation whatsoever
between Brahman and the Lord who is God-Man incarnated, showing Himself in
history and having a Human character or Proprium. God loves what is good and truth
and hates sin and evil inasmuch as “good hates evil” (AC 10618), while Brahman
is represented as separate from both good and evil, who neither loves nor
hates, who isn’t partial to human beings created and lost in existential
illusion. For the
Van Dusen
argues that since God has all power in the created universe the choices we make
in life for good or evil are not real but an image of the real:
Now
when we zero in on the person in the midst of this
It is the
case that we have no life from ourselves but by continuous influx from the
Lord. It is the case that what we take to be our self has no power of its own,
for all power is the Lord’s power activating every event and motion, and
maintaining every thing in its created form. Life is uncreate hence it cannot
be a substantive part of us, of our self. But from this point on one’s
explanation could go in two directions: the way of nonduality and duality.
The mind in
nonduality concludes that therefore there is no real self. It argues that since
our prudence is not really prudence, our struggle to reform and regenerate is
not real either, but merely another grasp at more illusion. This characteristic
mode of nonduality always comes up against our struggle for reformation and
regeneration, combating against it, hoping to weaken the burden and effort at
character reformation. This feels attractive from a distance, with the seeping
in of the lulling thought that maybe I won’t have to reject the delights and
comforts of my evils.
The mind of
duality concludes that therefore we need to get a right idea of the self from
the Writings. And we already know that the Lord grants an as-of self for the
sake of our contentment and freedom (xx). And we also know that we must
struggle as-of self to act prudently according to our understanding (xx), and
to act charitably to the neighbor according to the good in the neighbor (xx). And
we are required to put up the effort of rearranging everything in our natural
mind to be ordered consistently according to the Doctrine we have from the
Writings (xx). And we are required to do all this with sincere motives and
persistently without relenting, and with love unto the Lord in appreciation of
His supplying the power and the wisdom for the process of our reformation and
regeneration to be successful. If we do all this, then at last we are admitted
into true human hood—a celestial mind in conjugial love in heaven to eternity.
Everything about this wonderful Divine process is real and permanent. The same
unique individual that lived on this earth eons ago, is that same individual
who is now an inhabitant of a heavenly city, jointly with friends and citizens
(xx). Nothing is lost from earth to heaven to eternity.
Consider
the conclusion of nonduality quoted just above: “So our doing is relatively an
image within the real doing. Our effort at conjunction with God is met by the
real and substantial work of the Lord.” This belief assumes a nonduality
because it detracts from the reality of our as-of self efforts. Our doing is an
“image within the real doing” does not take into account of the process of
reformation and regeneration, in which our doing is the primary of it, this
being our initiative or willingness to cooperate with the Lord. The Lord is
waiting for us to take this initiative, for without it He cannot remove the
interior evils of our character of which we are totally unconscious (xx). Yet
it is these unconscious affections of evil delights that pull the string in our
conscious external mind.
At first
one might think that this is unfair. If we are puppets pulled by unconscious
strings, why are we held responsible for detesting our evil delights?
But the
answer comes when we continue to seek the truth about it. The Lord sees, knows,
and maintains these affectional chains to evil societies in the hells. Our
inheritance and our tolerance for evil delights prevents the Lord from breaking
those chains. The process is compared to agriculture or to the digestion of
food in the body and its use for energy and vitality (xx). These are
physiological processes in that plants and body organs are constructed out of
cells and the overall energy and vitality of the body, or the health of the plant,
is determined by the cumulative integrated action of billions of cells in each
plant or body. The process is constantly going on, constantly stepping through
to the next cycle and motion of cells and the particles below the cells that
are still more numerous, and down to the biochemical action of atoms,
particles, and energies. From all this there is built up a global action such
as the purposeful movement of a finger or the flowering of a plant. This same
type of physiological process must take place at the mental level in our
willing and thinking moment by moment.
You can see
why reformation and then regeneration must take the entire life we have in the
physical body (xx). To be reborn, to be reformed, to be regenerated in
character in thousands of areas of living, in billions of acts of willing,
thinking, doing for many years for millions of seconds. There is a lot to
regrow, reinstall, rewire, for the will and the understanding are spiritual organs
made of coiled fibers of great number (xx). Every moment of experience, every
act of willing, loving, desiring, thinking, feeling, doing over our years here
on hearth is “recorded” in the spiritual mind, “hard-wired” as it is said in
computer language. Swedenborg has many times witnessed the opening of a
person’s mind when they arrive into the afterlife, and it was proven to him
that nothing is lost and that angels can read with ease and precision a
person’s book of life (xx)
The Lord
has now revealed in the Writings how He manages this psychological growth
process called reformation and regeneration in every individual. The central
feature of this process is the as-of self effort involved in rejecting evil
delights, in resisting to do them, and in holding them in aversion or
detestation. This is the real part of the process. It determines the pace and
the outcome. The Lord does not, because He withholds Himself for the sake of
the individual, and should He determine the pace and the outcome, the individual
could never be regenerated, and it would be like condemning this person to hell
forever (xx). Obviously, to let us determine the pace and the outcome is in the
Lord’s Divine order, from His infinite compassion for the human race. And this
is what makes the process of spiritual growth real—each of us in that struggle
by our own determination.
The idea
that God alone has power does not imply that only God is real and that we are
not real, or, our self is not real, etc.. Created things are real and define
the real because they have been created in Divine rational order. Even
appearances are real (AC 4882). For instance, the appearances in the spiritual
world are real despite their instantaneously come and gone character. The
as-of-self is an appearance of acting from self—this as-of-self is real. By
saying that God alone is real, one implies that all things created are not
real. And yet everything God creates is real. Creation implies reality.
Appearances brought about by correspondences are real. The natural world is
real. Even a dream is real: the imagined events are real spiritual productions,
instantiated through the action of spiritual societies who are in communication
with the sleeper. There never is a “oneness” between God and creation as
supposed in Hinduism and Buddhism. Rather, God’s love is nothing unless it can
be given to created others who are not God:
It
is the essential of love not to love self, but to love others, and to be
conjoined with others by love. It is the essential of love, moreover, to be
loved by others, for thus conjunction is effected. … Divine Love must
necessarily have being (esse) and have form (existere) in others whom it may
love, and by whom it may be loved. … It is impossible for Him [God] to love
others … in whom there is … anything of the Divine. For … it would be … God
loving Himself. … Consequently, … there must be others in whom there is nothing
of the Divine in itself. (DLW 47-49)
Created
things are finite and are never Divine, but the Divine can be in them:
Of things created and finite Esse [Being] and Existere
[Taking Form] can be predicated, likewise substance and form, also life, and
even love and wisdom; but these are all created and finite. This can be said of
things created and finite, not because they possess anything Divine, but
because they are in the Divine, and the Divine is in them. For everything that
has been created is, in itself, inanimate and dead, but all things are animated
and made alive by this, that the Divine is in them, and that they are in the
Divine. (DLW 53)
Every
feeling in our will and every thought in our understanding is from the Lord and
is real—nothing whatsoever that we do is from ourselves (DP 157).
2. No Overlap Between Nonduality And Duality
Continuing
with the Van Dusen article:
So
the highest teaching of the Upanishads and of Hindu advaita vedanta also exist
in what Swedenborg found in his great exploration. The non-dual position in
Hinduism helped me to see it in Swedenborg's writings. But in a way, the
writings better illuminate the human situation by providing a direct way to
move from a dualistic struggle to oneness. The very struggle of mankind is
Divine Providence at work in the greatest and even the least of things. Our
struggle is an aspect of Divine Providence at work. There are other ways where
the writings of Swedenborg see reality in a unitary way. But this is a good
first statement. All our efforts to improve ourselves do not create an
us-versus-God dualistic situation-but rather our efforts are a part of the working
out of Divine Providence. We are better off to see it as such because that is
the truth. In this way we can sense God working right in the midst of our
situation.
Here it is
asserted that the Writings, on the one hand, and the “Upanishads and Hindu advaita
vedanta” on the other hand, contain overlapping ideas and explanations. But
this is impossible since everything in the Hindu vedanta has nonduality within
it and everything in the Writings have duality within it. In addition, the content
of the Writings are the new truths and understandings of the new age of the
Second Coming. This event of a new revelation replaces the old revelations when
there is no longer any spiritual truth left (xx). The reason the Lord must wait
for a full consummation is for the sake of the people, so that they may not
profane the new truths. This doesn’t happen when there are no more spiritual truths
because then people only see the literal of the revelation, and this cannot be
profaned, even if denied or ridiculed. So it is a spiritual necessity that old
truths and revelations are of no service to new truths and revelations (xx).
All this is said about the
Another
assertion made in the above quote is
that “the writings better illuminate the human situation by providing a
direct way to move from a dualistic struggle to oneness.” But there is never a
move from struggle to oneness, meaning that the duality of self and God is
permanent to eternity. It is further stated that “The very struggle of mankind
is Divine Providence at work in the greatest and even the least of things.” But
this is not so since the Divine Providence, although at work in the greatest
and even the least of things, is not one with the things. We are not one with
the Lord in our struggles for reformation, though we attribute the power to
Him. Because it is His power, it does not turn us and Him into a one, for this
is impossible from creation and Divine order (xx). And further, it is stated
that “All our efforts to improve ourselves do not create an us-versus-God
dualistic situation-but rather our efforts are a part of the working out of
Divine Providence.” This is not so. The us-versus-God duality is permanent by
creation and Divine order. The very purpose of creation is for God to have
others who are not Him, whom He can make happy from Himself (xx). To make a one
with Him is contrary to the purpose of creation and cannot exist.
Our efforts
are empowered by God, true, but the duality remains: us and God. There never
ceases to be a condition or state where the duality of “us and God” ceases.
Even angels of the highest heaven and closest to the Lord are yet separate and
distinct from Him (DLW 202). The Lord is the all in all in heaven and in angels
and yet the duality remains. The Grand Human and God is an eternal duality.
Everything is from God (DLW 53). But
what we have from God is not God, but things from God, and though what we
receive from God is Divine and is the same with everyone, each individual
receives only what it can assimilate—and this is unique with each person (DLW
54). Therefore it is written that “not the least thing is the same as another”
(DLW 226).
Here is
another example from an article in the Arcana journal (Swedenborg
Scientific Association, Bryn Athyn) titled “In the Hindu Tradition: Appearance
and Reality in the Relationship Between Finite Soul and Infinite Soul” by
Michael Stanley (Vol. 1, No. 1, 22-34). The article originally appeared in the
book Swedenborg and His Influence (edited by Erland Brock et. al.,
Academy of the
The
Hindu View of the Self: Much Hindu philosophy, like Swedenborg, takes the line
that anything that changes or lacks permanence cannot be said to be really
real. … When we look into ourselves, what do we find but changing images,
thoughts, ideas and feelings? Therefore any real self cannot be any of these…
The
discussion just above showed that this is a general feature of nonduality,
namely to want to make the self not “really real,” which as I pointed earlier,
weakens the struggle to maintain permanent duality. It cannot be therefore that
anything in the Writings can overlap with anything in Hindu philosophy. Here it
is asserted that because the self constantly changes there is no “real self.”
But constant change is of Divine order for real things, and especially for the
human self, for which the Lord creates all things in the universe, and this
constant creation will never end, for that is contrary to His purpose (xx). It
is said in the quote that the “real self” cannot be the self that is constantly
changing. And yet it is, for there is only one self, created immortal and
unique to eternity. Every individual has such a self.
While it
may be correct to think that nonduality was a genuine revelation thousands of
years ago in
We know
that the self is real. The proprium is real. Change of character (or
regeneration) is real. By Divine Law all created things change and no two
things can be identical. Permanence is not a condition for reality since
reality consists of continuous change, and a reality without change is
impossible because not rational and purposeful. Reality is the universe created
into a rational order in accordance with God’s rationality or wisdom which is
uncreate and has no beginning. All things in the created universe must have
reality. God is not part of the reality of created things but the Creator of
reality. The created universe is outside God, not within Himself. This duality
between God and created things cannot be removed or transcended. It enters into
every single created thing such as rocks, animals, the self or proprium,
thoughts, affections, heaven, hell. Nonduality cannot exist as a property of
reality since it is opposed to the fundamental duality of God and created
things.
Continuing
with the Arcana article by Dr. Stanley:
The
central reiterated teaching of the Hindu Upanishad Scriptures is that my true
or Higher Self (atman) is identical with the creator of all forms (Brahman).
Atman is Brahman. The appearance I have of being a separate isolated individual
is an illusion. … This apparent self is termed by Swedenborg the “proprium”
…Quoting Arcana Coelestia 4623: “Whatever comes from the Divine (that is, from
the Lord) is real, because it comes from the very being of things, and from
life in itself, but whatever comes from a spirit's own is not real, because it
does not come from the being of things, nor from life in itself.”
Again, what
the Writings mean by unreal is opposed to what nonduality means when saying
that the self is “unreal” or an “illusion.” Nonduality says that the self is
unreal, and the only thing real about us is our “Higher Self” which is
“identical” with God, and therefore we are God, and only illusion of self keeps
one from realizing one’s divinity. The notion continues: once we learn how to
empty ourselves from self, what remains is God. Once this persuasion is
established in the mind, one can read the Writings in the literal and without
integrating passages, one can have the impression that Swedenborg supports this
type of nonduality in one or more respects. In the above quote the author uses
a passage in the Writings to support the nondualist idea of the unreal self.
But it is clear that the quoted Number from the Writings does not give support
to the nonduality between self and the Lord. Note that it contrasts two ideas:
“whatever comes from the Lord” versus “whatever comes from a spirit's own.” It
does not contrast “the Lord” versus “the self.” And it says that whatever
proceeds form the Lord is real because it is good and true, and only this has
real existence. This is the existence we have when the Lord’s good and true is
appropriated to our self. And this appropriation only happens when we reject
whatever comes from self, which is evil and falsity. Therefore the contrast is
between good and truth versus evil and falsity, and the latter is unreal
because it is only a fantasy and an insanity.
The nondualist system does not see that it is
irrational to say that self becomes God and is God. To say that “My true self
is identical with the creator” is not a rational thing to say from the
perspective of the Writings. It is a total misunderstanding to say that
Swedenborg teaches this view. The Writings teach that the literal of the Word
can be used to support any heresy or fallacy, especially by the ingenious (TCR
254). But when these fallacies and heresies are examined from a rational
perspective such as we gain from the Writings, it is straightforward to see and
show the misunderstanding in it. Here we see a clear misunderstanding of the
notion of the proprium and what is real and not real. The proprium is real
because it is created by God and God creates only real things. The quote above
given from Arcana Coelestia says that “whatever comes from a spirit's own is
not real” and this is taken to mean that the proprium or self or ego is not
real. Instead, it means that evil, which is what comes from the proprium, does
not have within it anything from God, that is, truth and good. One can clearly see
this when we look at the full number referred to in the
AC 4623. But
be it known that the life of sense with spirits is twofold, namely, real and
not real. The one is distinguished from the other by the fact that everything
is real which appears to those who are in heaven, whereas everything is unreal
which appears to those who are in hell. For whatever comes from the Divine
(that is, from the Lord) is real, because it comes from the very being of
things, and from life in itself, but whatever comes from a spirit's own is not
real, because it does not come from the being of things, nor from life in
itself. They who are in the affection of good and truth are in the Lord's life,
thus in real life, for the Lord is present in good and truth through the
affection; but they who are in evil and falsity through the affection, are in
the life of what is their own, thus in a life not real, for the Lord is not
present in evil and falsity. The real is distinguished from the not real in
this-that the real is actually such as it appears, and that the not real is
actually not such as it appears.
[2] They who
are in hell have sensations equally with others, and are not aware but that
everything is really or actually just as it appears to their senses; and yet
when they are looked at by the angels, the same things appear as phantasms, and
disappear, and they themselves do not appear as men, but as monsters. It has
also been given me to speak with them on this subject, and some of them said
that they believe things to be real because they see and touch them, adding
that sense cannot deceive. But it was given me to reply that no matter how real
these things may appear to them, they nevertheless are not real, and this
because they themselves are in things contrary or opposite to the Divine,
namely, in evils and falsities, and moreover are themselves nothing but
fantasies insofar as their thoughts are concerned, to the extent that they are
in cupidities of evil and persuasions of falsity; and to see anything from fantasies
is to see things that are real as not real, and things that are not real as
real; and that unless it were given them of the Lord's Divine mercy to have
their senses affected in this manner, they would have no sensitive life,
consequently no life at all, because that which is sensitive constitutes the
whole of life. To adduce all my experience on these subjects would be to fill
many pages.
[3] Therefore
when you enter the other life beware of being deceived, for evil spirits know
how to conjure up illusions of many kinds before those who come fresh from the
world, and if they cannot deceive them, they nevertheless thereby endeavor to
persuade them that nothing is real, but that all things are ideal, even those
which are in heaven.
Clearly then one cannot say that self is unreal when
it explicitly states that the self in heaven is only real, while the self in
hell is full of fantasies that are not real. The contrast here is between the
self in which the content is from hell (unreal fantasies) and the self in which
the content is from heaven (real realities). What is real and unreal is not the
self but the content of the self, this being fantasy (in hell) or reality (in
heaven). For reality is good and truth from the Lord while unreality is turning
these into their opposites.
The notion that nothing is real except God is a
persuasion that puts us at risk of spiritual deception and illusion. The
Writings give a clear definition: “The real is distinguished from the not real
in this-that the real is actually such as it appears, and that the not real is
actually not such as it appears” (above quote in AC 4623). Hell is real and to
the inhabitants of heaven when they look down, it appears as it is in
reality—deformed and devoid of rationality. But to the inhabitants of hell the
appearance there is not such as it is, and this (appearance) is what’s unreal.
To continue
the thought of the Arcana article by Dr. Stanley:
Swedenborg
agrees with the Hindu view that although man has the ego experience he cannot
be said to actually have a thing called an ego [proprium]. As opposed to the
pure soul itself, ego is essentially unreal. My self as I feel and experience
it to exist, is an illusion. As Swedenborg puts it, “There is not anything proper
(proprium) to man, but it appears to him as if there were” DP 78:3
Here again
nonduality misconstrues what the Writings say about the proprium. The full
number makes it clear that the evil self doesn’t have the Divine within and yet
is fully and inexorably real, permanent, and allowed to keep itself in disorder
by the Divine Laws of Permission (DP 234). This is the meaning of the assertion
above that this evil “is appropriated to him as his own, and remains with him”:
The reason is that man's proprium and his freedom make one.
Man's proprium is of his life; and what a man does from his life he does from
freedom. Further, man's proprium is what is of his love, for love is the life
of everyone, and what a man does from his life's love that also he does from
freedom. Man acts from freedom according to thought, because whatever is of the life or love of anyone is also an
object of thought and is confirmed by thought; and when it has been confirmed
then he does it from freedom according to his thought. [2] For whatever a man
does, he does from the will by means of the understanding; and freedom is of
the will, and thought is of the understanding.
Moreover,
man can act from freedom contrary to reason, and he can also act according to
reason and not from freedom; but such acts are not appropriated to the man,
being only the acts of his lips and of his body, and not of his spirit or
heart; but the acts of his spirit and heart, when they also become the acts of
his lips and of his body, are appropriated to him. That this is so could be
shown by many illustrations; but this is not the place for them.
[3]
By being appropriated to man is meant to enter his life and become part of it,
consequently to become his own. However, it will be seen in what follows that
there is nothing that is man's own: it merely seems as if it were. Here it
needs only to be said that all the good which a man does from freedom according
to reason is appropriated to him as his own, because in thinking, willing,
speaking and doing it appears to him to be his own; and yet, the good is not
man's but belongs to the Lord in him, as may be seen above (n. 76). But how
evil is appropriated to man will be seen in the proper article. (DP 78)
This
passage explains that what is appropriated to the self remains forever.
Further, that both evil and good can be so appropriated. Clearly then what is
appropriated and belongs to the self MUST BE REAL. When evil is appropriated to
the self, it is a real appropriation of real remains and it is permanent. When good
or truth is appropriated to the self, it is a real appropriation that is
permanent. Clearly it is not possible to have the self drop away or empty
itself, as is predicated in all of nonduality.
Chapter 2, Section 3
My research
on the Web indicates that the Hindu idea of nonduality has been incorporated
into the Western intellectual diversity. A google.com search on
nonduality yields thousands of Web sites, almost all in the
Experiencing Nonduality is the path, the means and the
realization of our true nature as unqualified Oneness, Consciousness or
Presence. Nondual proclaims the truth that everything is an expression of
unqualified Oneness. It is the ‘pathless path’ we traverse while healing our
misperceptions of separation. And it is the means we utilize in realizing this
truth of Oneness. Experiencing Nonduality is the path of welcoming all that is.
Ultimately, nothing needs to be changed. Everything is always unfolding in
mysterious perfection—always. This is the first and final understanding.
Experiencing Nonduality by Richard Miller, Ph.D. Web
document accessed April 2002: www.nondual.com/advaitayana.html
Everything
in the Writings contradict this perspective on life and reality. Everything in
the Writings insist on duality everywhere and always. We are born immortal
spirits and God’s purpose for making us is to elevate our consciousness into the
celestial spheres of our mind. Eternal life in heaven is a ceaseless growth
towards human perfection (LJ 12). It never ceases for every individual who
achieves this celestial state through regeneration. Individuality is unique
from birth to eternity (ISB 14, AC 5354; DLW 226; CL 355). Once an individual,
always an individual. Nonduality in the Western intellect advocates the
“pathless path” that “welcomes all that is” because “nothing needs to be
changed.” The opposite is taught in the Writings of Swedenborg. Our path is
straight and narrow, and only welcomes that which is good and true. Ultimately,
everything needs to be changed because we are born infernal and totally
corrupted in spirit and needing to become a new creation so that we may enter
the celestial state (AC 4594[2]).
Without
personal effort at changing our character (loves and understandings) there is
no new creation of the spirit called regeneration. The Lord cannot heal us by
His own omnipotent power, or else He would do that to all, such is His
universal love for the human race (DP 91). Our regeneration is effected
solely by means of temptations of character provided by the Divine Therapist
day by day, minute by minute (AC 227). Such is the amazing close connection
between the Lord and the
Continuing
with Dr. Miller on nonduality:
Experiencing
Nonduality is an exploration into the nature of Oneness and is not in the
becoming process for we cannot become what we already are. There is nothing we
can add to our self to make our self one iota better. We are already perfect as
we are.
It is not
possible for the
Another
example of the Americanization of Hindu nonduality is found in the work of
Jerry Katz who founded a Web discussion community called “Nonduality Salon”:
“There is the natural state. It invites itself into itself.
And this invitation of itself into itself is given many names, such as satchitananda,
being consciousness bliss. It invites itself into itself. .... Bliss is
generated from this coming of the natural state into itself. Consciousness is
another word for the churning of the natural state. Being is being the natural
state …The problem is the suffering of it. Not it. I'm sure I've done all kinds
of crazy things in my life, but one understanding has never changed since the
age of 7. I AM. That plainly shines forth.
(Nonduality Salon at www3.ns.sympatico.ca/umbada/
Accessed April 2002):
Nonduality
is a point of view that opposes the struggle of regeneration in the
Chapter 2, Section 4
Another
instance of nonduality as corporeal spirituality are the notions given in
relation to Tantric sex. According to one text titled “A Contemporary Guide to
Sacred Sexuality and Sex Magick” (accessed in April 2002 on the Web at www.geocities.com/iona_m/Virtualtantra/ball-lightning.html
) sex is the path to immortality and divinity:
Tantra
presents the ultimate Nondual reality as the sexual embrace of God and Goddess,
of Shiva and Shakti, of Emptiness and Form.
"I am in
the creature's desire." –
"The
union of man and woman is like the mating of Heaven and Earth.
It is because
of their correct mating that Heaven and Earth last forever.
Humans have
lost this secret and have therefore become mortal.
By knowing it
the Path to Immortality is opened." - Shang-Ku-San-Tai
"Sexual love is the purest energy of the divine state,
for lovers in their embrace form one angel." –
Swedenborg
What a
curious reference to Swedenborg in this context! It is presented as a direct
quote but we can tell that it is not (no actual reference is given). The
Writings do not use the expression “sexual love” so it must be a rendering for
conjugial love. Neither do the Writings talk about “energy” in relation to
conjugial love. And the appearance of a husband and wife as one angel when they
are seen from a distance (CL 42) is here fancifully modified to refer to the
embrace of lovers.
Other
similar notions are further given:
The core experience of Tantra is revelation of its sexual
secrets. Sexual union symbolizes the
quintessence of the elements. Sacred sex
reveals eternal truth and transcendence.
It is a way of redemption -- union of the personal self with the
transpersonal Self.
The acts of the lovers mirror the primordial creation and
subsequent fecundity. In desiring his
opposite, the Supreme Being impregnates Nature.
The attraction of the two principles for each other engenders all life.
Neither asleep nor awake the spirit is set free by perfect exhaustion of the
body. Through tantric sex a twilight
state is produced. Then there is a
dramatic paradoxical shift from sympathetic arousal to the afterglow of
parasympathetic tranquility. This "calmed violence" is the essence of
the Real.
Here it is asserted
that “sacred” sex reveals what eternal truth is and is a way to redemption.
Once again we see here the persistent view in nonduality that some particular
act of the body has the spiritual effect of salvation and divinity.
Another
version of what is called spiritual or sacred sex may be seen in this sample
called Kundalini:
Orgasms CAN be used to increase spiritual/life energy. It
depends what you do with the energy, your attitudes around sexuality.
Especially for Women, but for men it is intensified if they learn to have
orgasms without ejaculating. Partly, because you can have more orgasms, and
build your energy with each one. Of course we release energy.
It's about how
clear you are to the free flow of energy through you, shaping your life, not
how much is stuck inside. It can be another way to love yourself and give love
to Gaia. Focus on unconditional self-love, give thanks for being alive and
having a body that can feel pleasure. In Orgasm, release the energy out through
the top of your head, and through your feet, with love for the beautiful
planet.
(“Mind Body Spirit Kundalini the Grounding” on the Web at www.domin8rex.com/serpent/spirit/gaia.htm
Accessed June 2002)
Consider the statement in the Tantric Sex Guide
quoted above: "The union of man and woman is like the mating of Heaven and
Earth” In the New Church mind there already is the idea that the union of man
and wife is through conjugial love—a celestial-rational concept that can be
understood only by those who study the Writings and strive to live according to
its rational truths. This husband-wife union is holy and angelic. On the other
hand heaven and earth do not “mate” and do not form a union—ever. Heaven and
earth, or the spiritual/celestial and the natural, are in correspondence of
discrete degrees and no union is possible between them. There is not a “mating”
between angels of the Second Heaven (called spiritual Angels) and those of the
First Heaven (called natural Angels). There is only a relation by
correspondence and no direct communication, contact, or overlap in substance
and form (De Verbo 3). However, we say instead that there is a marriage (or
union) between the Lord (or heaven) and the Church, or the church in each of
us. The church within us is in the mind, not the earthly body. There can never
be a “mating” between the body on the earth and the church in the mind for they
are in discrete degrees. The Writings define the Church as heaven on earth, by
which is meant, heaven in the mind of the person still living on earth (HH
57). All dualities
must be maintained because they are unique permanent distinctions that never
cease to eternity (DLW 226).
Comparing
the union of man and wife (“woman”) to the “mating” of heaven and earth
destroys the real duality of order into which the universe is created. It
fudges and obscures the discreteness (duality) of the natural and the
spiritual. It also empties conjugial love from its rational basis. The
conjugial union between man and wife is angelic and takes place only in
continuous degree. Obviously both husband and wife must belong to the same
heaven or level of consciousness. All that is within one heaven is in
continuous degree, not discrete. There cannot be a union between a man in the
First Heaven and a woman in the Second heaven, or vice versa! Angel couples are
united in a “sexual embrace” like on earth, but the offspring is spiritual (SE
6110). It is further specified:
Love of the
married partner does not result from the sexual embrace, as with adulterers,
but the sexual embrace from the love of the partner; so that the love of the
partner does not depend on the fire of that organ, but the reverse. The love of
the partner is full of delights, irrespective of sexual intercourse, and is a
delightful dwelling together. Between that love apart from the sexual embrace,
and the sexual embrace itself, there is a determination, just as there is
between that which a man thinks from the will, which is intention, and act, or
speech. Between these, intervenes determination, which is as it were the
opening of the mind to doing a thing, like the opening of a door. (SE 6110)
The
Writings show that the mind/body duality is the same as the duality between the
spiritual and the natural. Consider the statement in the David Loy quote above:
“The sense of a within apart from the world is the self-delusion that needs to
be overcome”. By accepting the notion that mind and body belong to the same
realm, the idea of correspondences is destroyed, and so is the idea of discrete
degrees. As a result, the person sinks down into the state of corporeal
spirituality discussed above, and this is an infernal state in the afterlife:
Evils are as
it were heavy, and fall of themselves into hell; and so also falsities that are
from evil (n. 8279, 8298). (HD 170)
1. Nonduality Between The Physical And The Spiritual
Nonduality
between the physical and the spiritual is clearly visible in the following
excerpts of an article on sexuality at the Web based Yoga Research and
The dynamics
between biological needs (specifically genital urges) and higher evolutionary
or transpersonal aspirations is a crucial part of all moral, religious, and
spiritual traditions of the world. Typically we experience these two sets of
wants or needs as being at war with each other: Don’t let the cerebrum know
what the genitals are doing. Suppress your desires. Curb your sexual curiosity.
Feel ashamed about having genitals. Feel guilty about sex.
(…)
This body- and
sex-negative orientation is epitomized in the religious doctrine according to
which the “flesh” is the enemy of the “Spirit.” For love to be “pure,” it must
be devoid of sexual connotations. At best sex is regarded as a necessary evil.
As the British mathematician-philosopher Bertrand Russell observed, this view
has caused millions of people untold misery. For they had to suppress their
sexual instincts in the hope of a better life in the hereafter where they, as
sexless angelic beings, could participate in the joys of heaven beyond all
genitality and sexual complications.
(…)
This dualistic
[sic] idea, which splits the human being into genital or sensual and spiritual
or ascetical compartments, is at home in Christianity and Judaism as much as it
is in Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For instance, the ancient Rig-Veda, the
“Old Testament” of Hinduism, records a domestic quarrel between Sage Agastya
and his wife Lopâmudrâ. Their quarrel, of course, was over sex or rather the
lack thereof. Agastya, who was a renowned ascetic and a paragon of the virtue
of chastity, was neglecting his husbandly duties. He preferred to meditate in
solitude over making love to his wife. Understandably, she was beginning to
feel frustrated and started to complain and make demands.
(…)
This struggle,
which has brought many would-be ascetics to their knees, has been fought by men
and women ever since religions began to propagandize the idea that in order to
fulfill spiritual life one must curb the passions of the flesh. Whole traditions
arose that were based on this mistaken idea, namely that communion with the
Divine, or God-realization, depends on repressing or confining the sexual urge.
(…)
For the
ascetic, lust is the ally of death. The reason for this is that the loss of
semen signals to him the loss of power, energy, and hard-earned merit. The
ascetic needs good merit to cheat the iron law of karma, and he requires the
body’s energy to accomplish the magnificent work of self-transformation that is
the goal of all austerities. The ascetic is a hoarder at psychosomatic energy.
He guards all bodily openings, especially the genitals. Semen is, for him, not
merely semen but a substance of power that must be accumulated, not squandered.
The typical ascetic is always worrying about the involuntary loss of semen, or
becoming sexually aroused to the point where he loses control over his
thoughts.
(…)
Both the
Tantric master and the Taoist adepts knew that sexuality in itself is not a
hindrance to spiritual maturation. They promoted, on the contrary, the idea
that an impotent eunuch stands a slim chance of realizing the supreme potential
of spiritual evolution—enlightenment or liberation. Instead of recommending the
anxious suppression of the libido lest it should interfere with the sacred task
of spiritual transformation, they favored a sex-positive philosophy. They even
designed special practices to utilize this most powerful impulse in us for the
process of psychospiritual transmutation. Of course, they did not condone the
kind of “sexploitation” that is the liability of the ordinary individual,
particularly in our post-sexual-revolution days. Rather, they were interested
in the right use of the sexual energy.
(…)
However, the
left-hand approach which involves sexual intercourse with a suitable partner,
has the advantage of increasing the level of psychosomatic energy and thus of
including the physical dimension in the process of psychospiritual
transformation. Actual sexual intercourse involves an energy exchange between
the partners in the Tantric ritual, which enhances the unification process that
is strived for on the level of consciousness.
At the point
of enlightenment, the Tantric practitioner realizes the transcendental unity of
Male and Female, Shiva and Shakti. This condition is known as “great delight”
(mahâ-sukha) since it cannot be diminished by anything, not even by the act of
ejaculation, which typically concludes the male partner’s experience of sexual
pleasure in ordinary circumstances.
Tantra is the
technology of joy on many levels—from sexual pleasure to transcendental bliss.
(…)
(“Sex, Asceticism, and Mythology” by Georg
Feuerstein on the Web at www.yrec.org/sex_ascet.html Accessed June 2002)
The
commentator’s nonduality perspective shows in how he interprets the flesh and
spirit theme in traditional religions. He calls this “dualistic” which he sees
as contrary to our nature, which is that we are as much as our body as our
mind—both, mixed, equal. This nonduality sees the duality model as un-natural
and psychotic. This same nonduality is also responsible for the Western idea of
chivalry and pure love, namely, that it is spoiled by sex when it is brought
down to that level. Religious or moral purity was seen as incompatible with
sexuality. On the surface this looks like a duality, as seen by those in
nonduality. But actually this is also a nonduality since it assumes that
spiritual chastity and natural sexuality were on the same continuum, except
that one was high up and the other was low down. Duality would be different. It
sees that sexuality and spiritual purity go together as integral parts to the
unity of the conjugial couple. It is not sensuous sex and mental sacredness
that are the opposite ends of a continuum. The Writings define chastity, not as
those who are virgins, but marrieds who reject all forms of adultery or
pornography (CL 152, 452).
Until you practice conjugial sex, you cannot be totally chaste, pure, and holy.
If a man concentrates his love upon his wife, by shunning
adultery as sin, then love with its potency increases daily; but if men take
from that love and consume it with harlots, conjugial love becomes like chaff,
and dies.
(…)
There is no lasciviousness in conjugial love, for
lasciviousness is unchaste. There is the identical sensation with those who are
in conjugial love; consequently, there is nothing unclean, but pure. It appears
as if there were, but yet there is not. The reason is, because inwardly in
conjugial love, even to the ultimates, is heaven, and inwardly in the love of
adultery is hell; and the ultimates of each appear similar, as to their
delights, but yet they are not. The difference is not perceived except by
conjugial love. (SE 6110)
Note the
commentator’s details about “tantric sex” which are practices that instantly
destroy conjugial love, union of husband and wife, and consequent eternal
angelic bliss and blessedness in the
Christian spirits cannot endure the spiritual sphere of the
feminine and the masculine. They cannot endure the spiritual sphere of
conjugial love; and the hells, at such times, are roused to fury. They cannot
endure the sphere of nakedness between married partners; and, at such times,
flee away. They cannot endure any sphere of love from a married partner. They
loathe the sphere of customary [intercourse]; that is, when conjunction with
the wife becomes ordinary, or freely permitted, it produces nausea. (SE
6110:65)
The attempt
to overcome sexual guilt became a cultural movement in twentieth century
Love of the
married partner does not result from the sexual embrace, as with adulterers,
but the sexual embrace from the love of the partner; so that the love of the partner
does not depend on the fire of that organ, but the reverse. The love of the
partner is full of delights, irrespective of sexual intercourse, and is a
delightful dwelling together. Between that love apart from the sexual embrace,
and the sexual embrace itself, there is a determination, just as there is
between that which a man thinks from the will, which is intention, and act, or
speech. Between these, intervenes determination, which is as it were the
opening of the mind to doing a thing, like the opening of a door. (SE 6110)
The idea
that there is no sex in heaven is a Christian nonduality. The Writings give us
a rational solution to this puzzle, namely, that sex in the physical body and
sex in the spirit-body are a discrete duality forever separated. Heaven is part
of sex through the heavenly body which is a more perfect rendition of the
physical body in its early youth (HH 414). Sex among conjugial pairs in
heaven is performed through this more perfect human body (HH
386, CL 46). Angels are
called holy because they operate from the Lord’s Proprium (or Character) form
inward influx into their will and understanding (AC 9820). Everything they do is holy,
therefore also their sexual activity.
[They enjoy]
delights and pleasures by the mere touch of hands and of lips, when they think
from love, such things from the Word, from objects, from various concordant
delights, as are applicable. They have exquisite sensations of their separate,
and of their common [states]. These arise from the delights of affection and
thought, and of the conjunction thereof; and the sensation is the more
exquisite as the conjunction is more interior. That there is such delight from
the conjunction of female and male, is because there is such [from that] of
good and truth. There are still more delights of conjunction of the external
senses, as of sight, of hearing, of smell; particularly of the respiration, in
which innumerable things lie concealed: they lie concealed especially in the
sound itself of the speech. (SE 6110)
The above
discussion illustrates the rational debunking process the
Chapter 2, Section 5
A popular
form of Eastern nonduality in Western countries is the corporeal spirituality
of the followers of Maharishi and practitioners of transcendental meditation.
The Web details its activities through “Vedic Universities” dispersed through
many countries, and doing research on corporeal spirituality. One instance of
this may be seen in the nonduality concepts they use for the relationship
between physical energy and spirituality:
"Maharishi's
Science of Creative Intelligence, which connects modern science with ancient
Vedic science, is the foundation of all knowledge -- complete knowledge -- and
therefore is the basis of complete fulfillment. Introducing the Science of
Creative Intelligence and the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field into
education is the one way for all mankind to stop violation of Natural Law and
end the long tradition of problems and suffering in life individually and
globally." Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Transcendental
Meditation opens the awareness to the infinite reservoir of energy, creativity,
and intelligence that lies deep within everyone.
"By
enlivening this most basic level of life, Transcendental Meditation is that one
simple procedure which can raise the life of every individual and every society
to its full dignity, in which problems are absent and perfect health,
happiness, and a rapid pace of progress are the natural features of life."
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
As a new science of consciousness, the Science of Creative
Intelligence® provides a practical means to unfold the permanent experience of
higher states of consciousness and offers the theoretical understanding of that
experience which is necessary for the most rapid growth towards enlightenment.
Transcendental Consciousness is the home of all the Laws of
Nature, the pure field of creative intelligence from which all of creation
arises. By contacting this pure field of creative intelligence one experiences
directly the nature, range, development and application of this field of
creative intelligence which governs everything in creation.
The Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health offers comprehensive
programs which are prevention-oriented, time-tested, free from harmful side
effects, and easily applied. This approach re-establishes the balance between
the body and its own inner intelligence through Vedic knowledge and its
application.
Maharishi Vedic Vibration Technology utilizes a refined
impulse of Vedic sound, or Vedic vibration, to enliven the inner intelligence
of the body and restore proper functioning.
(“Maharishi's
Science of Creative Intelligence” on the Web at www.vedicvibration.com
Accessed on the Web in May 2002)
There are
two ideas contained in this approach we need especially to consider. First, the
idea that what creates the universe is called “creative intelligence” (“which
governs everything in creation”) and is something that the individual
possesses. This comes from the idea that self and God are one and the same and
forming a nonduality. Second, the idea that this “higher consciousness” can be
reached by meditation and physical procedures with the body, a nonduality
between the body and mind. Transcendental laws of consciousness and creative
intelligence are in the same continuous degree with the physical world
(“Transcendental Consciousness is the home of all the Laws of Nature”).
The first
idea denies the absolute duality of the Lord and creation and the second denies
the discrete degrees between natural and spiritual. Either of these two denials
bar entry to the
A current
“living Master” of nonduality who draws audiences of thousands in Western
cities and other tours, is known as Supreme Master Ching Hai. She often refers
to Jesus as a former Master and
frequently uses expressions and ideas from the New Testament like the idea that
the
Satan
is born of the
(“The
Teachings of The Supreme Master Ching Hai.” on the Web at www.chinghai.com/TOPICS.html Accessed May 2002)
According
to this notion, hell exists, but mainly for people who are very disturbed in
their minds--people who are virtuous and good never experience hell, and those
who are “initiated” by Ching Hai, never have to go to hell. Hell is portrayed
as a great hospital to help people whose spirits and minds are sick. It is
compared to
hospitals on
earth where illnesses are cured. … So it is better that we always think good,
do good, and talk good, think God, do God and talk God, and to realize God is
even better. … So we cannot say that the evil is within or without us. It is
both, just like God is within and without us and everywhere. (Ching Hai Ibid)
These
notions are opposed to the Biblical ideas in multiple ways. It reinterprets
what hell is to fit the ideas of nonduality. Since it sees each person as God
in reality and self in illusion, hell becomes a temporary “hospital” where the
self is healed from its insanities. Further, Satan is part of the “
Continuing
with Ching Hai:
So when we
meditate, we use the technique to tune into the
It is a consistent theme in nonduality to say that “God is
nothing but ourselves.” It is also common to refer to Jesus as a human being
like we are who has achieved enlightenment by becoming one with God. It is
asserted that when we reach this enlightenment we too can say that we are one
with the Father and that we do nothing but what the Father does (“We become the
author of everything”). Here is another way in which our divinity is asserted:
No matter
how good our intentions may be, we have to first seek the
Karma is a
concept that sounds attractive to many Westerners because it seems logical and
fair. Part of its acceptance is a superficial similarity to the oft repeated
Biblical assertion of a connection between sowing and reaping (e.g., “He who
sows injustice will reap calamity” (Prov 22:8.6); or: “As I have seen, those
who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” (Job 4:8.12). But karma is
always bound to reincarnation, as in this statement by Ching Hai:
There are two
types of karma: human karma and universal karma. Men's laws are governed by an
invisible force that cannot be grasped by human understanding. This is called
in Sanskrit 'karma', meaning the Law of Cause and Effect. It is mentioned in
the Bible as 'What you sow, so shall you reap.' There is good and bad karma,
but both imply attachment for you on earth. After initiation, the karma from
past lives will be erased, but the Master does not touch the karma from this
life. If not, you would die immediately. We must stay here for a while to bless
the world and to help our friends. Afterward, we can go to Heaven and return
whenever, if this is our wish. Karma is an invisible force, very fair and strong.
What we have created will come back to us. This is the law of cause and effect.
(Ching Hai Ibid)
The
reference to “initiation” designates a divine act of the “Master” or guru by
which she claims to “erase karma” for the individual who is being initiated
into her discipleship. Comparisons between the Master and Jesus abound, as
here:
A real Master
can only give and not take. His disciples are comfortable but the Master has to
suffer. That is why it is said that Jesus had to uplift mankind and that He had
to be crucified. He couldn't enjoy any privilege. That is why people scolded
Him and crucified Him. … When you see darkness every day and he gives you the
light, then that is a guru. And then the sound must also be heard, because, In
the beginning was the 'Word' and the 'Word' was God. If you don't hear the
sound, then you have not completely contacted yet with God. The light is only
one attribute of God; not perfect. You have to also hear the sound. … By coming
in contact with these vibrations, or the so-called 'Word" in the Bible, we
become all-knowing, we become all-power, all-blessing, all-virtuous,
all-satisfied, all-happiness and all-bliss bestowing to the people in our
environment, and even to our surroundings. Our surroundings will be blessed
with out presence. Everywhere we go, those beings, or those places will become
sacred. … (Ching Hai Ibid)
This
reflects an amazing but typical amalgam of Bible concepts and Hindu/Buddhist
nonduality. The act of “remembering” that you are God bestows the divine powers
of a Master:
Masters are
those who remember their origin and, out of love, share this knowledge with
whomever seeks it, and take no pay for their work. … When we reach this level
of mastership, not only do we know our origin, but we can also help others to
know their true worth. … While a living Master is on earth he takes on some of
the karma of the people, especially those who believe in the Master, and even
more so those who are disciples of the Master. … A Master has to manifest a
physical body to take on all the troubles and sufferings. … Any Master has to
go through this kind of thing [suffering for others]. You can see it for
yourself, even Buddha, Mohammed, Christ and many other Masters in the East or
West.
As is the
case with many of the activities within guru-type relationships some of the
ideas and practices are not publicized and disciples are warned not to discuss
initiation details with others who are not disciples. Her followers must go
through initiation steps at various levels. This is said to prepare the
disciples for spiritual evolution, liberation, and enlightenment. This
salvation process cannot progress without the Master’s direct intervention
which is done unbeknownst and unconsciously through the spiritual powers of the
Master who is present everywhere where disciples are. This includes coming to
the disciples in their dreams and other secret modes not disclosed. The
divine-like power of Masters lasts up to 500 years, independently of their
physical body. This is why, according to Ching Hai, “the power of Jesus” has
long vanished from the world.
About the
claim of erasing the disciple’s karma, a relevant comment in the Writings may
be this:
Truth
is falsified when it is said that sins are wiped and washed away like filth by water;
and truth is still more falsified when it is said that man has the power of
remitting sins, and that when they have been remitted, they are altogether
wiped away, and the man is pure. (…) There are countless such things as these,
for there is not a single truth which cannot be falsified, and the
falsification confirmed by reasonings from fallacies. (AC 7318)
The notion
by which many secular truth seekers are attracted is the promise that there is
something beyond human thinking that is reachable through specialized training
procedures. In my thirties I once agreed to have a postal relationship with a
guru who lived thousands of miles away. I would read his books and lectures,
listen to this tapes, follow a prescribed dietary regimen, stay out of trouble,
continue with my employment, and continue my study of the guru’s writings and
communications. I would have to meditate every day and fixate my inner gaze on
a visualization of the guru sitting before me, and slightly elevated and
surrounded by light. It was then that the guru would “come to me” and instruct
me. All I had to do is to fixate my attention on the visualized image of him.
I had to
learn to imbue this image with spiritual strength, which came from full
obedience and devout worship of the guru. The more I was to worship him in
visualization and daily practice, the more I was to gain power to imbue his
visualization with real spiritual energy. This energy is given by the guru, but
sometimes by other enlightened masters who “were active” in that period or
sphere. This process would then continue indefinitely. In the meantime, the
guru would communicate with me by letter, or on occasion in face to face
visits, and inform me how well I’m progressing. Sometimes this is to be done in
statements, sometimes by super-conscious contact. The disciple is expected to
experience these super-conscious contacts by peculiar sensations in the body.
There is no
content to any of this, as you will notice. The result is either in the
experiencing of corporeal images and sensations—called ecstatic states, or, in
the experiencing of something near to emptiness of consciousness or absence of
anything particular. I enacted for a few months being a long-distance disciple
and then I quit, having no motivation to continue. I wanted something I could
understand, not feel. From then on I was never attracted again to gurus. I
gravitated to “thinking” paths to truth—Cabala, numerology, astrology, I Ching,
anthroposophy—but did not stay long with any of them, until at last I read the
New Testament. Here I found a thinking man’s haven for truth with explanations,
parables, specific principles of living, and specific description of the end
result. This made sense to me. And a year or two later I found the Writings. I
saw immediately that this above anything else I’ve read, is filled with the
content of truth and the specifics of the end results. I wasn’t left wondering
about “the rest of it.” I wasn’t promised anything obscure or mystical or
corporeal. Just the simple truth of reality such as it is created by the Lord,
moment of existence by moment of existence for every single thing or detail.
Hardly anything can be simpler to understand than the true reality.
Note this
important reality:
It
is the understanding which acts from the will, not the will which acts by means
of the understanding. (TCR 105)
This is the
great heavenly secret that protects the
Of course
this is only an enactment of no longer being human, not a real situation
of actually not being a human. One can never lose one’s humanity, which is to
be in internal liberty to act in accordance with one’s understanding (DP
87).The reality is that
it is the disciple, not the guru, that keeps the relationship going. For at any
moment the disciple can quit. However thinking from oneself is not easy when we
are in persuasive faith (NJHD 118). As long as we hold on to the persuasive faith, we
do think from our own self. Thus we lead a life in which we act like we are not
really human, mimicking a zombie. When this game is carried all the way the
person may lose all motivation to ever give up the delusion and thus to remain
in it forever. Swedenborg has met many people who live in that state in the
portion of the spiritual world called hell (SE 4875, 5015). This portion of the human mind is
called hell because it is devoid of any good and truth. When disciples enter
the afterlife in such inner persuasion they become spiritual slaves to those
there who claim the status and power of a guru. However, they don’t call themselves
gurus but “gods” (SE 4723).
3. Hell Is A Choice, Not A Punishment
The
This prohibitive principle has its origin in a law of the
spiritual world. No one is punished in that world for evils he has done here,
but for those he does there. The evil state acquired returns after death, and
leads him to do similar deeds. For these he is punished, but not for those done
in the former life. (See AE 989; SD 3489). If he then refrains from committing
them, there will be no punishment. (Pendleton, Topics, p. 11)
(see Note 2 at end)
Karma is a
mechanical concept of nonduality, while the idea of “no ex post facto
punishment” is a rational and moral concept of duality. The idea of undergoing
cycles of karma through reincarnated lives creates a continuum between this
life and the next life. The relationship is described by a mechanical balance
model—the amount you sin in this life will set you back by that much in the
next reincarnation, until you can learn to balance right and wrong, and then
you ascend by the amount of negative karma that you get rid of. The suffering
you are experiencing now is a punishment for the sins of your former life.
But in the
Writings we learn that an absolute distinct and permanent duality is created
between this life and the afterlife. Nothing happens to you in the afterlife
because of something you did in this life. It’s easy to fall into this false
idea when we read:
He who thinks
against God is rarely punished in the natural world, because there he is always
in a state subject to reformation; but he is punished in the spiritual world
after death, for then he can no longer be reformed. (DP 249)
When evil spirits are in this second state, as they rush
into evils of every kind they are subjected to frequent and grievous
punishments. In the world of spirits there are many kinds of punishment (HH
509; see below for the rest of the quote).
But note
that this only establishes the fact that there are punishments in the
afterlife. It doesn’t state what these punishments are for. These are not for
misdeeds committed in one’s life on earth:
When evil spirits are in this second state, as they rush
into evils of every kind they are subjected to frequent and grievous
punishments. In the world of spirits there are many kinds of punishment; and
there is no regard for person, whether one had been in the world a king or a
servant. Every evil carries its punishment with it, the two making one;
therefore whoever is in evil is also in the punishment of evil. And yet no one
in the other world suffers punishment on account of the evils that he had done
in this world, but only on account of the evils that he then does; although it
amounts to the same and is the same thing whether it be said that men suffer
punishment on account of their evils in the world or that they suffer punishment
on account of the evils they do in the other life, since everyone after death
returns into his own life and thus into like evils; and the man continues the
same as he had been in the life of the body (n. 470-484).
Men are punished for the reason that the fear of punishment
is the sole means of subduing evils in this state. Exhortation is no longer of
any avail, neither is instruction or fear of the law and of the loss of
reputation, since everyone then acts from his nature; and that nature can be restrained
and broken only by punishments.
But good spirits, although they had done evils in the world,
are never punished, because their evils do not return. Moreover, I have learned
that the evils they did were of a different kind or nature, not being done
purposely in opposition to the truth, or from any other badness of heart than
that which they received by inheritance from their parents, and that they were
borne into this by a blind delight when they were in externals separate from
internals. (HH 505(
It is clear from this that the
punishment in the afterlife is for the deeds committed there and not on earth. Note well that if we love evils in
this life, they remain forever. These evil loves, or lusts and cupidities,
prompt the individual in the afterlife to commit deeds that are forbidden
there. Punishment is then dispensed for those deeds. The punishment is as
severe as is needed for the individual to desist from doing the forbidden acts.
Experience shows that no other method but severe punishments can help those
individuals to suppress their lust from being expressed outwardly as a deed.
Examples of such punishable misdeeds include
infesting the
upright in the other life who are being vastated as to the truths of faith that
belong to the church, a vastation they need to go through for reformation (AC
7502)
thinking and speaking lasciviously, which in the spiritual
world are automatically communicated to other spirits, creating disturbances
(AC 829)
having abominable principles: as that wives, especially
those that are young and beautiful, ought not to be for a husband, but for
themselves and their like, which disturbs those to whom the ideas are
communicated (AC 829)
those who have acquired truths from the Word but mixed them
with disorderly thoughts by hypocrisy or inward irreverence for them—they must
be isolated from contact with other spirits and kept confined in a deep hell
(AC 1008)
thinking that a sharing of sexual intercourse between women
and men to be not only allowable, but even holy, and reviling marriage, undergo
“very severe” punishment until they desist from engaging in such intentions (SE
1976)
those who outwardly put on an appearance of friendliness,
but inwardly wish others ill, even condemning them to hell; they undergo “grievous punishment of
dismemberment as to the whole head” (SE 3170)