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A Man of the Field Forming The New Church Mind In Today’s World
Volume 1: Reformation The Struggle Against Nonduality
Volume 2: Enlightenment The Spiritual Sense of the Writings
Volume 3: Regeneration Spiritual Disciplines For Daily Life
Volume 4: Uses The New Church Mind In Old Age
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By Leon James October 2002 (draft 17a)
Author information appears at the end. This document is in the process of being revised. Please note the draft version marked on top. To print this document, see Printing Note at the end.
A “field” means doctrine (AC 368) A "man" signifies faith and truth (AC 427; 4823)
Volume 1
Reformation The Struggle Against Nonduality
Chapter 3
Table of Contents
Access to other Chapters and Volumes here: 2. The New Testament does not contain any nonduality. 1. Who Runs The Universe: The Divine Father Or The Divine Human? 3. Trinity of Persons versus Unity of Three Aspects in One Person 1. Spiritual Unity Is Different From Nonduality 4. People are saved apart from their religion 1. Everyone Can Be Regenerated 2. Regeneration Leads To Enlightenment 5. Mind-Body Nonduality and God-Cosmos Nonduality 1. God Is Separate From Creation 6. Christian Science Nonduality 7. Secular nonduality in Objectivism, Skepticism, and the Aquarian Conspiracy 8. Rudolf 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 Titles for the Abbreviated Citations in the Book Full Text Free Online Access to All Swedenborg’s Writings:
Access to other Chapters and Volumes here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Chapter 3.Christian Nonduality
Falsities ought by all means to be rooted out (INV 16)
Chapter 3, Section 1
1. Introduction
New-age belief systems in the United States are generally couched in nonduality. They constitute an intellectual opposition to Christian ideas of God based on the Bible and the Writings. Specifically these are some of the persuasive ideas that are potentially harmful to Christians:
q God is the only reality. q Creation is the splintering of the God-consciousness into individual minds filled with temporary qualities that appear to have real existence--good and evil, true and false. q Salvation consists in remembering oneself as the only God and emptying oneself of all that is good or evil, true or false. q This can only be accomplished by becoming a disciple to a self-realized “Living Master” who has divine-like powers for appearing unconsciously to the disciples and effecting healing, forgiving, and setting things right. q Without this intervention people are compelled to live the life of karma through many reincarnations. q Progress towards liberation from this life of illusion is possible through meditation, vegetarianism, and the abandonment of moral and intellectual distinctions and struggles. q At one point one experiences enlightenment and cosmic consciousness. One discovers and remembers oneself as the one God. In that highest state one is capable of omnipresence and omnipotence and one shares the bliss with others, helping them to the same realization.
Regarding reincarnation, the mystery was forever solved and laid to rest in the revelations of the Writings:
God's omnipotence shines forth also from the heaven that is above or within our visible heaven, and from the globe there that is inhabited by angels, as ours is by men. There are wonderful testimonies there to the Divine omnipotence; and as these have been seen by me and revealed to me, I am permitted to mention them. All men that have died from the first creation of the world are there; and these after death continue to be men in form, but are spirits in essence. (AE 1133)
Imported ideas of nonduality are harmful when Christians adopt any of them because they weaken the fundamental love they must have for the Lord—the First and Greatest Commandment. The Writings teach that one cannot love an unknown and invisible God (TCR 339). Salvation and eternal life depend on allowing the Lord to regenerate us. This is possible only to the extent that we cooperate and suffer ourselves to undergo spiritual temptations (NJHD 197; AC 227). We cannot accomplish this without acknowledging in our mind the Lord as the Divine Person to Whom we must go for every step in our regeneration (AR 750). Any nonduality that removes the duality of a Divine Person, distinct and separate from self, interferes with our ability to think of God as Divine Person. This is a form of Christian paganism (AR 750).
This potential danger also applies to New Church members and can only be guarded against through reasoned reflection based on the logic and rationale of the Writings. There is an attractiveness of Hindu and Buddhist ideas to the Western intellect that is imbued with notions of universal fairness and non-exclusion of any race and creed. This liberal or cosmopolitan cultural attitude forms the intellectual and moral context for New Church persons in North America today. There is an eagerness in reaching out and making connections, and Hindu and Buddhist notions are readily seized upon as similar to ideas in the Writings.
These attempts at connections may not pose a serious danger when it is left at the broadest general level of comparison such as these assertions: Religion is essential, there is God, there is the spiritual, there is evil, there are spirits, there is heaven and hell, there is revelation. But as soon as one is led to unpack the more specific concepts that make up these ideas of God, spirit, and evil, a whole new ideational world comes to view. This is a strange world that serves a strange God and can lead a Christian to spiritual confusion. There is far more danger for those who confirm themselves of these opposing ideas through comparisons and justifications from the Writings. It is prudent to examine under what conditions such connections are beneficial or a hindrance to understanding the rational ideas of the Writings.
A neighbor acquaintance recently told me that a Hindu man regularly attends her Bible study class. At first she thought this was odd but she changed her mind as he kept pointing out similarities between the Bible and Hinduism. She was especially impressed by his idea of “one-mindedness” which she explained was the notion that God is the actual power behind good and bad events that happen. If you worry about the bad things happening you are dual-minded but since there is only one Power the bad things are just as much God’s doing as the good things. This gave her a sense of relief since she no longer had to worry about anything happening since all is God’s doing.
She didn’t use the word nonduality but it’s clear that that’s what she admitted into her mind. It’s the nonduality between good and evil as having the same source. To a Christian mind this thinking is pernicious and insidious, and if admitted, spiritually injurious. The idea is attractive to the unregenerate mind because it hides one’s responsibility in distinguishing between falsities and truths and, hating evil and loving good. The Writings teach that only good can come from God and that evil comes from self, hence hell, which is turned away from God and in opposition to Him (AC 4997). Truth from God flows into the soul and mind of every human being and then each individual adapts it and sometimes turns it this way or that, and at last into the opposite of truth. This falsity (or falsified truth) in the mind is better suited to one’s evil loves, and the two couple each other in the infernal marriage (HH 377). Once this is accomplished (or confirmed), hell rules the mind. The evil never comes from God (DLW 264). Good and evil are dualities in relation to each other and in relation to God.
The idea that evil comes from God (nonduality), when admitted into the New Church mind, becomes an impediment to one’s regeneration, constituting a grave spiritual threat.
Chapter 3, Section 2
2. The New Testament does not contain any nonduality
Hindu nonduality is affecting how some Christians may come to view the Lord’s revelations in the New Testament concerning Himself as being one with the Father. Here is one example of how some New Testament verses are being commingled within nonduality:
From: Christmas Thought: The Nondual Teachings Of Christ by Pieter Schoonheim Samara (Web document accessed April 2002 at: www.nonduality.com/1208ps.htm
"All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." John I: 3 "That (Christ) was the true Light, which lighteth every man that is born into this world." John I: 9 Christ to John in Revelations, Ch I: 8: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending" sayeth the Lord, "which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." "For I have not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak." John 12: 49
(…) One might think from reading these passages that Christ always speaks as the Atman and of the Father as Brahman, or as the Self realized being One in relation to the All pervasive and timeless Self. Just as Krishna tells Arjuna that he taught Aditia (the Sun), Christ states: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I AM." John 8: 58 … "The light of the body is the eye: Therefore, when thine eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light...." (Luke 11: 34)
This non-dual teaching is easily paraphrased as follows: The part of you that sees (the seer, one's Self) is your true light. Therefore, if you hold on to (i.e., abide as) the seer (subject-"I"), singly or exclusively (i.e., relinquishing attention to thoughts), you will have illumination - or what some call the "enlightenment of the whole body". This is said to be the exact instruction given in the non-dual Vedanta tradition, with the same described outcome, as already discussed above.
It is known from the Writings that when the Lord referred to Himself and the Father as One, He was referring to the identity of Personhood between Himself and the Father. No one was able to comprehend this at that time, or later, until the new revelations of the Second Coming effected in Swedenborg’s Writings (completed in 1771). No one today comprehends the Divine Father/Son relation save those who acknowledge the Writings as the Lord in His Word of the Second Coming, as a result of which they receive enlightenment from the Lord, in proportion to their willingness to suffer themselves to be regenerated by Him. The Writings themselves assert this idea as a central tenet (De Verbo 12).
This identity of Personhood is not to be considered a form of nonduality, as is done in the Schoonheim quote above. Those who think within the Eastern philosophy system interpret the Father/Son relation as a nonduality in the sense that the illusory self of the individual can end, leaving behind God alone as the one only reality. Transferring this reasoning to the New Testament, they see Jesus as the illusory Self (Atman) that is to be transcended or eliminated at illumination, leaving only the Father. This nonduality is entirely opposed to the New Church duality of Jesus, the visible Divine Human called the Son, on the one hand, and on the other, Jehovah, the invisible Divine Essence called the Father. This duality can never be transcended. It would not make rational sense, therefore it is impossible, and only the imagination of the sensuous mind can think it up and suppose it to be possible.
1. Who Runs The Universe: The Divine Father Or The Divine Human?
Sixth: This One Only and the Self is the Lord from eternity, or Jehovah. It was shown in THE DOCTRINE OR THE NEW JERUSALEM CONCERNING THE LORD that God is One in essence and in person, and that this God is the Lord; and that the Divine itself, which is called Jehovah the Father, is the Lord from eternity; that the Divine Human is the Son conceived from His Divine from eternity and born in the world, and that the Divine Proceeding is the Holy Spirit. (DP 157:9)
This passage indicates how the Divine Rational can resonate by correspondence in our interior-rational perception. The passage is describing a spiritual truth about the Lord. We can resonate to it by allowing the Letter to stand for this spiritual truth, only by correspondence. This orientation to the passage allows the literal meaning to recede somewhat so it doesn’t dominate and become opaque instead of translucent. The expression is used, “the Lord from eternity, or Jehovah.” At first the literal meaning dominates the internal truth, and so makes itself opaque, hiding the spiritual tucked within it. But then we ask the question: How do we take this expression as a correspondence for its spiritual-rational truth?
“The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah.” Who is the Lord from eternity? In the literal meaning this refers to the contrastive expression “the Lord born in time.” We are familiar with the idea that “the Lord born in time” is Jesus, who glorified His Human and made it one with the Divine (xx). We are familiar with the Divine as the Father, or Jehovah. So in the Letter we have the idea that the identity of Personhood was an achieved identity. Therefore, this important rational truth follows: We are not to think that it was Jehovah who descended from the Heaven under the assumed name and identity of Jesus. This truth is proven by the distinction the passage makes between “The Lord from eternity” vs. “the Lord born in time.” The Lord born in time, namely the Child Jesus, was not born glorified. The Child Jesus was Divine, as specified in the New Testament and the Writings. But we have to enter into a more spiritual view of how this is true. So the literal must recede, as the spiritual comes to the fore.
This more interior rational perception is that Jesus and Jehovah are not the same, though they are the same Person.
Looked at from the literal, this sentence sounds like a contradiction or a metaphor for something vague, not specified. But look at it from the idea that the sentence is a correspondence for the interior-rational idea. In this new orientation, the literal becomes less opaque allowing us to perceive the interior, to some varying extent. The sentence is an instance of the spiritual Doctrine discussed throughout the book. By looking at it as a correspondence, we can reflect of how it applies to our willing and thinking every hour of the day. This makes sense since the glorification series recapitulate how we are to be regenerated (xx). Jesus had a threefold self as we do, meaning He had inherited and acquired affections in the will, He had memory-knowledges from the Old Testament that He acquired by studying it as the Word, and He had a sensorimotor mind that served to exert control over His corporeal functions. The Writings explain that, as Jesus grew He experienced a revelation from within that He was the Word He was reading (xx). This happened at an early age in childhood and the details of it are explained Arcana Coelestia when discussing the Call of Abraham and Abram’s first realization of the existence and presence of Jehovah (xx).
Now Jesus knew who He was and how He is to redeem the human race. He was the same Person as Jehovah, the Lord from eternity, but He was not the same conscious awareness. Applying this to ourself: If you have undergone reformation you can ask yourself: Was this the same me before and after? As I look back on myself, I shudder at how I was. But I can also look at myself today and have plenty things to be aghast about. Myself who is feeling ashamed, aghast, and repentant is myself from eternity because it is my conscience, and my conscience is the Lord (xx). Myself from eternity is as different from myself born in time, as heaven is different from earth, or as an angel is different from a man on earth. Yet it would be foolish to say that I’m not the same person.
When I get to heaven and I become an angel, what happens? It is an image of the glorification series. My self born on earth is united to myself born from eternity, and thus I am an angel. The same Person as Jehovah is not the same willing, thinking, and sensing by Jesus. Myself born from eternity is my rational consciousness as my conscience. This is the correspondence to the Divine. When you read about conscience in the Writings you are being told something about how the Divine of the Lord is within His Human. This is what we call the Divine Human, namely, how the Lord from eternity is within the Lord born in time.
Note further, that it would be foolish to think that Jehovah does things by means of Jesus, as many people believe who pray the Father in the Name of Jesus (xx). It would be equivalent in saying that myself from eternity does things by means of myself born in time. In other words, everybody sees that we cannot go around in our daily activities and claim that we are not doing the things, but our conscience is. This is speaking foolishly. Instead, we say that we are doing the things from conscience, or in accordance with conscience. Jehovah does not act by means of Jesus, but rather, Jesus acts from Jehovah, or in accordance with Jehovah (xx). “The expression, “I and the Father are one” refers to the idea that, since the Lord glorified Himself, it is the Human of the Lord that now acts. It acts from the Divine, or in accordance with the Divine.
The mind that thinks that the Father acts by means of Jesus, or for the sake of Jesus, is in the Letter, which is natural. The mind that thinks the Jesus acts from the Father, is a New Church mind from the Writings. And returning to the Letter, we find plenty confirmations in the Lord’s descriptions in the New Testament, as for instance, that all things have been given to the Son (xx). Now we can see that this refers to the Human acts from the Divine, not the Divine through the Human.
The mind in the natural of the Letter cannot see a distinction between the two ways of phrasing it, and whatever difference there may be, it cannot see it. What you can’t see, you can’t understand, and what you can’t understand you can’t love, and what you can’t love is not yours, hence useless for salvation. So the Lord gives us to see the distinction. We do not see distinctly or clearly, to be sure. This is a matter of further and further enlightenment about something we already have implanted within the initial perception of it. Think how you would feel if someone persisted in addressing your conscience instead of you. It would be ludicrous and could not support normal social relations, hence all of society would fall. This is why the New Church mind only prays to the Lord Jesus and never to the Father Jehovah, for this would be acting like a thief, in the Lord’s own words (xx).
There is a resistance in us to the idea that it is not the Divine Father who runs things in the universe, but the Divine Human as Jesus, who runs the universe from the Divine Father. Our evil affections have a hope of surviving in us if it is the Divine Father who runs things, but they are annihilated and banished in us if it is the Divine Human who runs things. The reasons for this will be confirmed one day by the Letter as the men of the Church are gradually regenerated. We need the idea of the Divine Human running the universe, in order to regenerate. We cannot regenerate as long as we hold on to the notion that it is the Divine Father who runs things.
To the Western Christian Church there is an indigenous nonduality between Father and Son. The Athanasian Creed asserts that Father and Son are of “one substance” but of “two Persons.” Both propositions are false and led to the vastation of that Church (AE 114; xx). The idea of one substance is a nonduality and was forced upon the mind by the necessity to maintain the idea of “Two Divine Persons from Eternity.” Without knowledge of discrete degrees (DLW 173-281) the mind can only think of one substance for both Father and Son. Nonduality is what the mind falls back on again and again without the knowledge of discrete degrees (to be found only in the Writings). The duality in all of the Writings applies here as well: The Father is the substance called Esse or Divine Love; the Son is the form of the substance, called Existere or Divine Truth. This duality of substance and form is also a duality in aspects of function because function or use arises from substance in a particular form (DL 4).
Chapter 3, Section 3
3. Trinity of Persons versus Unity of Three Aspects in One Person
The concept of “unity” is entirely different from the concept of nonduality. In unity dualities do not change or lose their absolute and permanent distinctiveness, but rather contribute to a new function (or use), so that the function possible when there is a union is higher or more perfect than the function possible when the two or more are single and are not united into one. In God, infinite dualities are united into one (DLW 17, 22). The Lord sees the entire human race—past, present, and future, as one Grand Human in which numberless dualities and distinctions function together in an integrated whole (HH 59). Each elements in such a union contribute something diverse and unique to the whole as is communicated mutually to every one else, thus enhancing the perfection of the whole. In contrast, a collection of homogenous elements cannot function as a unity.
The Writings teach a view of the Holy Spirit that is compatible with this rational idea of unity. The Lord’s management of the universe has three universal aspects—creating, preserving, and re-creating. “Creating” refers to bringing the physical and spiritual worlds into existence. “Preserving” refers to managing every event so that the whole doesn’t break down and keeps growing and being perfected. “Re-creating” refers to new creations within what’s already been created, so that the perfection of the whole can continue to eternity. In ancient times these three universal functions of God were represented by different Names given to God. For creating, the Name of Creator—in Christian tradition Jehovah, or the Father. For preserving, the Name of the Son—Jesus Christ or the Messiah, in Christian tradition. For re-creating, the Name of the Holy Spirit. In religious terms, the three functions are Creator, Savior, and Holy Spirit.
These three functions represent three evolutionary steps in the human race’s capacity to relate to God more and more spiritually, rather than naturally. For instance, Jehovah the Creator was revealed in the Old Testament thousands of years ago. Then, Jesus Christ the Messiah was revealed in the New Testament two thousand years ago. Then, the Divine Human, was revealed in the eighteenth century in the Writings. This last revelation shows that what was historically believed to be God in three Persons is actually God in One Person and the three Divine functions.
In the Divine Human, that is the Lord, the three discrete and absolutely distinct aspects are united into one. Jehovah is united to Jesus, making one Divine Person whose inmost is Jehovah and whose outmost is Jesus. The third aspect or function issues from this absolute duality in the One Lord. The Writings call this the Divine Proceeding or Holy spirit.
The Writings teach that the Lord creates everything by intermediaries, not by disconnected elements (HH 9, 37). The first step in creation was the spiritual Sun which is made of Divine Good, in the interior, and Divine Truth in the exterior. These Divine Substances are infinite, uncreate, and the Divine in Itself, Changeless, eternally the same. The light proceeding from this Sun, with the heat within it, was the next step. As it proceeded away and outward, it created atmospheres of increasing “density.” These atmospheres are arranged into discrete degrees of perfection from most perfect as it proceeds, to less and less perfect until it reaches the outmost reaches called matter, space, and time. This successive sequence of discrete atmospheres is retained in every element or compound down the line. The earliest atmospheres (closest to the spiritual Sun) are inmost within the constitution of every object. The later atmospheres (furthest away from the spiritual Sun) are least perfect, most gross in their quality and capacity.
Every object is maintained in existence by this simultaneous order, from which the Lord operates from firsts (or inmosts) to lasts (or ultimates) (DP 124[4] ). And it is this way that the Lord manages every detail in the universe. The purpose of creation is to provide a habitation for human beings (DP 324). They are first born in a physical body on some earth in the natural universe. Their mind is created out of spiritual elements, not natural like the body. When the body dies, the mind then awakens in the spiritual world and in a spiritual body to live forever. The quality of life in the spiritual world is determined by the mind’s constitution or formation. This formation is achieved during life in the body. It becomes of utmost importance therefore to form the New Church mind through active participation with the Lord’s commandments as specified in the Writings.
1. Spiritual Unity Is Different From Nonduality
From the spiritual Sun proceed love (=spiritual heat) and truth (=spiritual light) as two distinct things, but united into one. Although these two Proceed as One from the spiritual Sun, they are then divided in creation (DP 14-5). The idea of Divine Love and Wisdom United as One may appear at first as a nonduality, but they are a duality. To make a one, the composing elements must retain their permanent distinct character which makes them different (AC 9613, DLW 22). It is the unity that is one, not the composing dualities. The duality of the composing elements remains absolute and permanent. In nonduality there is no such unity of distinct elements but an amalgam that eliminates the distinctiveness of the elements. In nonduality discrete degrees become continuous, which is an impossibility in the duality of the Writings.
People who have turned away from thinking about the Divine when they see wonders in nature, and as a result become sense-oriented, do not consider that the sight of the eye is so crude that it sees a number of tiny insects as a single, indistinct mass, and yet that each of them is organically formed to be capable of sensation and movement, thus that they have been endowed with fibers and vessels, including little hearts, air passages, viscera and brains; that these have been woven together out of the finest elements in nature; and that these structures correspond to some activity of life, by which even the least of these are individually actuated.
Since the vision of the eye is so crude that a number of such creatures, each with countless components in it, looks to the sight like a small, indistinct mass, and yet people who are sense-oriented think and judge in accordance with that sight, it is apparent how obtuse their minds have become, and thus in what darkness they are regarding spiritual matters. (DLW 353)
The Writings discuss the history of the idea of a Trinity in the Christian Church and identifies it as the chief cause of spiritual breakdown in the Christian Church that eventually led to its vastation (TCR 177). The idea of Three Divine Persons is injurious because the mind is then logically compelled to think of three Divine Gods, but this is forbidden by Church Doctrine. And so the mind of the believer is beleaguered with an idea impossible to believe rationally. Yet this idea continues to be taught generation after generation, despite the irrationality of it, as recognized by those who yet uphold it as Church Doctrine. Here is a current version of its intellectual justification:
The Christian Church believes in the doctrine of the Trinity. That means the Church believes that God is three persons and yet God is one God. What does this mean, and why does it matter? Some say it is the theology of a free and democratic society. Others say it is impossible arithmetic. (…) So the church worships and prays to the three persons: God the Father, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. They are quite clearly distinct from each other, and yet they freely work together in harmony. We pray to each of these as truly divine.
So why not say "three Gods"? But the church does not speak about the three gods. It speaks about the threeness of God. Why? Because they can't be separated in our minds like three human beings can. Three people may be close friends, but they still look different and have different thoughts and feelings. The three divine persons are not in different places, for God is not a being in space and time, and has no place, shape, size or color. God is equally present everywhere. The three persons are not like stories of the ancient Greek gods, who often disagreed and fought with each other. They share one purpose of love for us, and act together for that purpose. When the church says "three persons, yet one God", it means that these three persons freely choose to share one purpose.
Thus the Trinity is a very simple idea. (Critical Questions about the Christian Faith: Douglas Miller “The Trinity: why does it matter?” on the Web at vic.uca.org.au/doclit/trinity.html accessed June 2002)
You can see where the logic is placed in this position: “They share one purpose of love for us, and act together for that purpose.” There is an underlying conviction of the Oneness of God based on the entire Bible with the invented idea of three Divine Persons in the one Godhead. This idea does not appear in the Bible—it couldn’t since it’s not rational. It is recognized that the idea was invented by the Nicene Council of Bishops in 325 AD, for the purpose of fighting the Arian heresy that was threatening the Christian religion (TCR 137). This heresy was that Jesus was human, not Divine. The Council convened in Nicea and issued the new idea of Jesus as the “Son from Eternity” and “born in time.” Nowhere in the New Testament is such an idea to be found. Instead, the Apostles all knew and understood that Jesus was the incarnated Jehovah Himself. Current belief in the idea of Three Divine Persons is further reinforced by many passages in the New Testament that appear to agree with the idea. People are faced with passages that talk as if there were three Persons of Deity involved in the events. Here is one modern version:
God is a community Now the New Testament never uses the word "Trinity", but it often speaks about the three different persons. We read that Christ prayed to the Father. We read that the Father would send the Holy Spirit to recall people to Christ. Paul often speaks of "God the Father", "the Lord Jesus Christ", and "the Holy Spirit". So the notion that we praise all three persons as God, yet as different from each other, is already there in the New Testament.
One example: in Mark's gospel, we read the story of Jesus' baptism (Mark 1:9-11). We read that Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan, and that the Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove, so that he might be strengthened for his ministry of calling people to God. We also read that the voice from above declared "You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased". So you have the three persons in the one passage: the voice of the Father speaking from above, the Spirit coming down from the Father to strengthen Jesus, and Jesus from Nazareth being declared to be the Son of God. (Miller, ibid.)
Note the subtitle on top: “God is a community.” And the sentence in the prior quote: “They share one purpose of love for us, and act together for that purpose. When the church says "three persons, yet one God", it means that these three persons freely choose to share one purpose.” The nonduality in this explanation is to view God in terms that appropriate for human beings, rather than the other way round, as in dualism. The idea of “God is a community” and the related idea of “three persons freely choosing one purpose” are not rational ideas about God but natural, invented not received. In dualism we are mindful that there is a distinct and discrete difference between uncreate and create, and they cannot be commingled. God cannot be a community of persons like human beings are. God is called King, because “king” corresponds to truth in the Word. God is not actually a king—He is called King on account of the correspondences (LORD 42).
God cannot be a community, which is a compound concept applied to human beings. Humans can be properly said to love this or that even though the Lord is Love and Wisdom Itself. In dualism this is explained by pointing out that the love humans have does not belong to them but remains the Lord’s love in them. The Lord grants human beings to receive Love from Him into the will, and this love in them remains His (BE 5). The love in us is not the same as His Love, but it is an individual adaptation and reception. Nevertheless, the essence or inmost of this adapted love is still the Lord. At no time can we say that humans have love from themselves for love is uncreate and humans are created—the two can never be commingled. Whenever they are commingled, duality is destroyed and nonduality reigns.
The passages in the New Testament that refer to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be logically explained if dualism is maintained. This is done in the Writings (TCR, chs. I-III). The dualist explanation is given in both the Old and New Testaments if one pays attention to all the relevant passages. One idea is that it is the Father Himself, or the Lord Jehovah from eternity, who was incarnated as the Divine Child (LORD 19). The second idea is that Jehovah God calls Himself repeatedly as the Only Savior and Redeemer, who by His Own Hand redeems and saves the world (TCR 81). And a third idea is that Jesus underwent a gradual change from His Birth to His Resurrection and Ascension. His change is described by alternating states between being weak--suffering, tempted and praying to the Father in Himself, and states of being Divine and One with the Father—performing miracles, glowing like the sun and speaking to spirits, passing through physical barriers, appearing in several places simultaneously, declaring Himself to be the Word or the Creator from the beginning, etc.
Clearly all the pieces of the puzzle are in revelation so that there is no need at all to fabricate human explanations, which invariably, will downgrade into nonduality and a mere natural idea of God. Into this idea no Divine influx is possible and a religion based on it becomes spurious and no longer serviceable for regeneration, hence salvation (DLW 285).
On the other hand, if we affirm the identity of Person between Father/Son are we not creating another nonduality? No, since the identity of Father/Son as Person is nothing else than the unity of substance between Love and Truth. Father as such is not a Person; Son as such is not a Person—there is no nonduality here. If Father had been a Person, and if Son had been a Person, then asserting that they are one Person would be nonduality. It is like the unity in the human being that images the unity of the Lord who is the Divine Human. A human person is achieved when three functions (or aspects) unite into a one:
q the soul-spirit-mind (created as an image of the Father function) q the brain-body-senses (created as an image of the Son function) q the motor power that issues from the first two when they are united into one (created as an image of the Holy Spirit)
The unity of these three cannot be considered a nonduality since all the originating aspects are retained in the unity. Nonduality requires that only one part of each duality be retained while any other is dissipated. It is similar with the body that contains innumerable dualities of function (or aspect) being united into one. Care must therefore be taken that unity be not confused with nonduality. A conjugial couple is united into one (CL 158). This cannot be considered a nonduality but only a psychobiological unity of function between husband and wife—an eternal duality.
The Jesus/Jehovah duality, or Son/Father duality, is a real duality that does not dissolve. The Father Aspect remains a permanent reference for the Lord’s Esse (Divine Love), while the Son Aspect remains a permanent reference for the Lord’s Existere (Divine Truth). It is never the case that this permanent duality of Aspect can ever be dissolved into a nonduality of substance. The expression in the New Testament “I and the Father are One” (John 10:30) does not refer to a nonduality of substance but to a permanent duality of Aspects and a permanent unity of Person. If one may paraphrase the Lord: I, whom you see as the Son before you, and the Father whom you know but have never seen and can never see, are one and the same Person.
This is a Divine reaffirmation of a permanent duality between the invisible and visible Aspects of God. It may be that only a New Church mind can apprehend this clearly. But anyone on this earth can have a New Church mind who reads the Writings as the Lord in His Word of the Second Coming and makes it the exclusive source of all spiritual truths in their mind. This activity systematically rearranges all the concepts and one’s reasoning, setting everything in the mind in a rational order, so that the mind reflects the true order into which the world is set according to the new revelations of the Second Coming. Until then our mind is in disarray and contrary to the rational form of truth and reality. Whatever idea or principle that comes from any other source but the Writings comes from the unregenerate human proprium because no other method of regeneration has been provided by the Lord except through the Word (TCR 580; xx).
Chapter 3, Section 4
4. People are saved apart from their religion
For every nation the Lord provides a universal means of salvation. (AE 1180)
The idea that people are saved by religious membership is a subtle and pernicious form of nonduality in the Christian religion, but also in all religions. And there may be those that are of the New Church religion who also have this belief. But religion does not save. What saves is a life according to the Doctrine of the Word. All religions that are legitimate are based on the idea of God who commands people to obey Him, as a result of which we have our fate in heaven or in hell. A religion or belief system that doesn’t teach this is not legitimate, meaning, that it is not from God but from self and the devil (xx). Nevertheless, religion cannot determine our fate but only how we live our life in accordance with our understanding of religious doctrine. This makes sense as the following discussion will show. Further, those who do not have religion can be saved equally with those who have a legitimate religion. This is because anyone can be saved merely by obeying their conscience and leading a life consistent with it. The Lord can then unconsciously guide such an individual to Himself with a life that leads to heaven.
In the new age of the Second Coming, no one can be regenerated except through the Writings and the truths with humankind that henceforth will come from the Writings . Those who do not know the Writings in this life are instructed in its truths by the angels when they arrive in the afterlife (HH 512, 516).
It strikes people as hyperbole or dogmatism to say that one can regenerate only through the Writings when the Writings have remained a minute part of the readership on this planet even though they’ve been around and public for 231 years. Why would God choose such an ineffective method of regeneration when His purpose is to save as many as He can? And would it be fair and loving to keep the Writings from most people and then to condemn them for not habit it around? By way of answer let’s study this next passage from the True Christian Religion, the last work of the Writings that was published by Swedenborg in 1771, just a few months before his passing on to the world he had described in so much detail in these books for the last 27 years of his life in the physical body. The passage deals with how every individual on earth is regenerated by the Lord.
The reason why everyone can be regenerated depending on his state, is that the process is different with the simple and the learned, with those who have different pursuits, and undertake different duties; with those who research into the externals of the Word and those who research into its internals; with those whose parentage has brought them into natural good and those who have been brought into evil; with those who from childhood have plunged into the world's vanities, and those who have sooner or later distanced themselves from them. In short, there is a difference between those who make up the Lord's external church and those who make up the internal one. In this there is infinite variety, just as there is in faces and characters. But still each can be regenerated and saved depending on his state.
[2] The truth of this can be established from the heavens, to which all who are regenerated come, being three, highest, middle and lowest. Those come to the highest who through regeneration have acquired love to the Lord; to the middle one those who have acquired love towards the neighbour; to the lowest those who only exhibit external charity, and at the same time acknowledge the Lord as God the Redeemer and Savior. All of these are saved, but in different ways.
[3] The reason why all can be regenerated and so saved is that the Lord is present with His Divine good and truth with every person. This is the source of his life, and of his ability to understand and will, and of the free will he has in spiritual matters; no one is without these. Moreover the means are given. Christians have the means in the Word, non-Christians in any religion at all, if it teaches the existence of God and commandments about good and evil. From this it follows that everyone can be saved. Consequently, if a person is not saved, it is not the Lord who is to blame but the person; and he is to blame for failing to co-operate. (TCR 580)
Note especially this in paragraph 1: “each can be regenerated and saved depending on his state.” So this is the first thing to establish from the Writings, namely, that everyone can be regenerated. There is no condemning of the Lord to hell because someone has never heard of the Writings, or even, having heard of it and read some, have walked away from it. There are no exceptions to this Divine rule: each can be regenerated.
1. Everyone Can Be Regenerated
Next, we can note that the process of being regenerated is unique to each person’s “state” or “character.” This makes sense because reformation is the process of character modification and regeneration is the ensuing process of character rebirth and up building. Therefore the modification and up building of a regenerated character is going to depend on each unique individual and character. Note also that even those who have the Writings are regenerated according to their own state. Those who focus on the literal of the Writings, “those who research into the externals,” are regenerated differently than those who focus on the spiritual sense of the Writings, “those who research into its internals.” And the character we form for ourselves prior to reformation also influences how we are regenerated. Those who ignored the voice of their conscience, “those who from childhood have plunged into the world's vanities,” are regenerated differently than those who listened to their conscience instead of their evil desires, “those who have sooner or later distanced themselves from them.” It makes sense therefore that regeneration is accomplished by the Lord in “infinite variety, just as there is in faces and characters.”
All those who are regenerated by the Lord enter heaven, and since they are all of different character it must be that there is an infinite variety of heavens, though they are grouped into three main regions or lifestyles. The highest group, called the Third Heaven of the Celestial Angels, are those who have been regenerated to the highest level of their mind called the celestial. This type of regeneration is effected by one’s love for the Lord. Since we can struggle against our evil affections from many motives and goals, the outcome will also depend on what the goal or motive was. Those whose motive was their love for the Lord, and especially, as the Divine Human, are regenerated to the highest level of human existence. They are “those who have acquired love towards the Lord.”
But doesn’t every good person love God? Yes, but not in the same way. People who are regenerated to the level of their spiritual mind, which below the celestial, are congregated in the Second Heaven of the Spiritual Angels. They are “those who have acquired love towards the neighbour.” They love the Lord, but they love His Word and Church more. They have religion and faith, while the celestial angels do not have religion or faith but perception, which is an more direct way of relating to the Divine Truth, and they have this as a result of their love for the Lord. While the spiritual angels have understanding of the Lord, but not perception, because their affections are centered on the Writings first, and then, and the Lord. Both love the Lord and the Divine of the Writings, but not in the same way. And those who are regenerated to the natural-spiritual level make up the First Heaven of Natural Angels. They are “those who only exhibit external charity” by obedience to religious duties and therefore they only acknowledge God and the Writings as the highest authority, but do not rearrange everything in their mind according to the Writings. Internally they retain their passion for their culture, interests, and activities.
Note this statement in the last paragraph of the quote above (TCR 580): “The reason why all can be regenerated and so saved is that the Lord is present with His Divine good and truth with every person. This is the source of his life, and of his ability to understand and will, and of the free will he has in spiritual matters; no one is without these.” This is an affirmation of the fact that the Lord’s relationship to each individual is independent of their religion or belief system! This new idea and revelation runs smack against almost all other religions and human associations. It is generally believed that your group is closer to God than another group, and that to get close to God everybody must do what your group is doing and believing. And yet this is not true any more today and for all the future to come. With the Second Coming the Lord has completed the creation or evolution of the human race (xx).
And He now has revealed Himself in His Divine Rational so that our rational mind can fully understand and perceive Him. Nothing more is left to reveal on the outside, but only on the inside. Hence the Writings are the last of the threefold Word, the Crown of Churches (xx). From now on to forever the Lord is with every individual independently of religion, worship, and knowledge. “This is the source of his life, and of his ability to understand and will, and of the free will he has in spiritual matters; no one is without these.”
So now the only requirement for regeneration is for the individual to acknowledge the reality of the Lord’s presence in him. This acknowledgment, when sincere, then leads to the desire to reform and regenerate. This activity is the preparation for one of the many heavens. And if there is permanent unwillingness of the individual to acknowledge the Lord’s presence, there is no preparation for heaven, in which case, the individual who arrives that way in the afterlife, sinks down from the evil affections that are still present. And they take the individual to one of the varieties of hells, in accordance with the variety of their evils. There they live with others like themselves, amidst their evils.
The passage ends this way: “Christians have the means in the Word, non-Christians in any religion at all, if it teaches the existence of God and commandments about good and evil. From this it follows that everyone can be saved. Consequently, if a person is not saved, it is not the Lord who is to blame but the person; and he is to blame for failing to co-operate” (TCR 580). For the New Church mind “Christians” here means those who are forming a New Church mind for themselves through the Writings. “Non-Christians” refer to all others who have a religion and live according to the doctrine of their religion. All religions are animated by the Lord no matter what its content is, as long as it is legitimate. This means that they teach the existence of God and God’s commandments or rules for life in relation to heaven and hell. All others who have an illegitimate belief system contrary to the legitimate one, as just defined, cannot be regenerated. The Lord assures us that those who are born into an illegitimate belief system can still be regenerated if only they obey their conscience, which is independent of the belief system and culture, and is activated in their mind by the Lord (xx). Therefore the conclusion in the last sentence makes sense: “Consequently, if a person is not saved, it is not the Lord who is to blame but the person; and he is to blame for failing to co-operate” (TCR 580).
The Lord never insists that people change their childhood religion in order to be admitted to their Heaven (LJP 98). For those who are forming the New Church mind in themselves, only the Writings must be used as a source for spiritual truths. This is asserted in the Writings where it is said that only the Word can be a source of intelligence and wisdom for angels and for those on earth who are of the New Church (AR 707) (see also the Introduction to Volume 1 above).
At this day the spiritual sense of the Word has been revealed from the Lord, because the doctrine of genuine truth has now been revealed, which doctrine is partly contained in the Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, and now in the small works, which are being given to the public; and because that doctrine, and no other, agrees with the spiritual sense of the Word, therefore that sense, together with the science of correspondences, has now for the first time been disclosed. That sense is also signified by the Lord's appearing in the clouds of heaven with glory and power (Matt. 24:30, 31), in which chapter it treats of the consummation of the age, by which is meant the last time of the church. (De Verbo 7)
“At this day” refers to the regeneration of the New Church mind. “The Word” refers to the Writings. Thus, the regenerated New Church mind is enlightened by the Lord so that it can see the “spiritual sense” of the Writings. The spiritual sense of the Writings are called the “Doctrine of the New Jerusalem” which is given “to the public,” meaning, to all of the human race from any religion or belief system. Doctrine in the New Church mind cannot be equated with the literal of the Writings but only with the inner sense in it. Prior to our reformation, which takes place in adulthood, we believe that the Writings are the spiritual sense of the Old and New Testament. This is an inevitable impression which we get from our exclusive focus on the literal of the Writings. The Writings use natural language to describe the details of the correspondences in the Old and New Testaments. It necessarily talks about the inner sense of the Old and New Testaments. We therefore assume that what we are reading is the inner sense of the Old and New Testaments. But this is only an impression made possible by our inability to understand that natural language cannot express spiritual content (xx).
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)
2. Regeneration Leads To Enlightenment
But after reformation and when regeneration begins, the Lord gives enlightenment as we read the Writings and apply it to our daily willing in thinking. Now we can perceive new meaning in the old familiar sentences. This new meaning is the spiritual sense of the Writings. This sense is given gradually and in parts, in exact proportion to our progress in regeneration. Now for example, when we read anything in the Writings about “the Word” we can perceive that it is talking about the Writings. (See Chapter 8 Sections 3 to 5). Now we can see that the Heavenly Doctrine cannot be expressed in natural language and that the spiritual sense being discussed everywhere in the Writings is not in the literal sentences but in the understanding when enlightened.
The literal of the Writings are for the external rational level of thinking. This is in the unregenerate rational mind. These external rational ideas and reasoning must be then be taken into our mind, digested there, and finally understood in a spiritual sense when enlightened by the Lord. This new inner understanding is called Doctrine (TCR 245). Therefore Doctrine in our understanding is at first natural, but later, spiritual.
This spiritual Doctrine in the understanding must be the basis of our willing and thinking in our everyday activities and judgments. Of course, without the external literal of the Writings, this spiritual Doctrine could not exist in our mind, or anywhere else. The spiritual Doctrine in our understanding is the spiritual meaning perceivable within the letter of the Writings when enlightened, and therefore the spiritual sense can only exist in our mind and never in the literal of a natural language. It is in the interior of the understanding that we receive enlightenment from the Lord. Without this enlightenment from within, there is no spiritual Doctrine in our mind but only the literal statements of the Writings (TCR 226). Clearly, then, ideas that come to us from elsewhere than the literal of the Writings cannot be so enlightened by the Lord and cannot produce any spiritual Doctrine. This is because the Lord enlightens only that which comes from Him, and everything in the Writings comes from Him (TCR 779).
This mental process of regeneration shaped exclusively by the Writings applies to the generations on this planet born since the Second Coming. Prior generations or civilizations each received their own revelations from the Lord (AC 10632). But in the course of time these revelations (or the Church) are consummated by the love of self and the world (DP 328). Until at last there is not a single truth left in that Church and it is called a “dry land.” (AC 806). The Lord then raises a new Church through new revelations given through an individual. These new revelations are specifically suited and adapted to the genius of the new human civilization (or mind). Not a single spiritual truth given to an earlier Church can be transferred or used by the new Church (SPECIMEN 14, INV 5). To attempt to do so would be to commingle what is false with what is true, and this permanently destroys the rationality of the New Church mind.
The revelations historically retained by the many forms of Eastern nonduality may have had beneficial uses to those generations in Asia prior to the Lord’s First Coming. And it is conceivable that even today those revelations serve a useful purpose in life for those who are unable or unwilling to align their faith with the Lord’s First Coming (Historical Christians) and His Second Coming (New Church Christians). But for Christians to admit into their understanding and faith any ideas from nonduality is to commingle old and new revelations—a spiritually fatal act, as the Lord says explicitly in the New Testament (Matt. 9:17, Luke 5:39, see AE 376[28]) ) and in the Writings (DP 202, 234). Their power needs to be neutralized by identifying them in memory and withholding our approval:
Fourth: When man is in evil many truths may be introduced into his understanding, and these may be stored up in his memory, and yet not be profaned. This is because the understanding does not flow into the will, but the will into the understanding; and as it does not flow into the will many truths may be received by the understanding and stored up in the memory, and yet not be mingled with the evil of the will; and thus what is holy may not be profaned. Moreover, it is incumbent upon everyone to learn truths from the Word or from preaching, to lay them up in the memory and to ponder over them. For from the truths that are in the memory and that enter the thought from the memory the understanding must teach the will, that is, must teach the man what to do. This, therefore, is the principal means of reformation. When truths are only in the understanding and from it in the memory, they are not in the man, but outside of him. (DP 233:7; see also DP 234)
One commentator of an earlier draft of this book objected to the idea that not a single spiritual truth can be admitted in the New Church mind if its source is not the Writings: “Notice, for example, how the Lord made use of plenty of truths from the letters of Paul in the Writings. As long as we view all things in the light of the Writings, it can be used in the New Church.” My answer is that we could not do that. We could not read Paul and derive spiritual truths from it if we had not read it in the Writings. The useful ideas of Paul are taken up in the Writings and explained. They then become truths, not from Paul, but from the Writings. This is shown by the fact that we cannot go to the New Testament and extract truths from it that are not in the Writings or through concepts from the Writings. If we had been able to do so, the Second Coming would not have been essential for salvation. The Lord could have wrought regeneration in us through the New Testament.
Since, then, everyone in every religion knows the evils and falsities from evils that must be shunned, and having shunned them knows the goods that must be done and the truths that must be believed, it is clear that this is provided by the Lord as the universal means of salvation with every nation that has any religion.
[2] With Christians this means exists in all fullness; it also exists, though not in fullness, with Mohammedans and Gentiles. The remaining things, by which they are distinguished, are either ceremonials which are of little consequence, or are goods that may be done or not done, or truths that may be believed or not believed, and yet man be saved. What these things amount to man can see when evils are removed.
A Christian sees this from the Word, a Mohammedan from the Koran, and a Gentile from his religious principle.
A Christian sees from the Word that God is one, that the Lord is the Savior of the world, that all good that is good in itself, and all truth that is true in itself, is from God, and nothing of it from man; that there must be Baptism and the Holy Supper, that there is a heaven and that there is a hell, that there is a life after death, and that he who does good comes into heaven, and he who does evil into hell. These things he believes from truth and does from good when he is not in evil. Other things that are not in accord with these and with the Decalogue he may pass by.
A Mohammedan sees from the Koran that God is one, that the Lord is the Son of God, and that all good is from God, that there is a heaven and that there is a hell, that there is a life after death, and that the evils forbidden in the commandments of the Decalogue must be shunned. If he does these latter things he also believes the former and is saved.
A Gentile sees from his religious principle that there is a God, that He must be regarded as holy and be worshiped, that good is from Him, that there is a heaven and that there is a hell, that there is a life after death, that the evils forbidden in the Decalogue must be shunned. If he does these things and believes them he is saved.
And as many Gentiles perceive God to be Man, and as God-Man is the Lord, so after death when they are instructed by angels they acknowledge the Lord, and afterwards receive truths from the Lord that they had not before known. They are not condemned because of their not having the ordinances of Baptism and the Holy Supper; the Holy Supper and Baptism are for those only who are in possession of the Word, and to whom the Lord is known from the Word; for they are symbols of that church, and are attestations and certifications that those who believe and live according to the Lord's commandments in the Word are saved. (AE 1180)
Here we see again that the Lord has taken charge of all religions and of all individuals. There is something more important than religious membership, namely, shunning evils as sins against God. This formula is of the New Church mind and for everyone else. The same formula henceforth for all of humankind. Religion itself is only an introduction to the process of regeneration or salvation, and is not required for it. Religion is a set of cultural activities and affirmations in relation to God and these are not the essential things but “the remaining things, by which they are distinguished, [and] are either ceremonials which are which are of little consequence, or are goods that may be done or not done, or truths that may be believed or not believed.”
Chapter 3, Section 5
5. Mind-Body Nonduality and God-Cosmos Nonduality
There are concepts of nonduality in both Eastern and Western traditions since discrete degrees are unknown. A universal example is the widespread belief that spiritual forces from spirits or demons can inflow into the body and cause diseases. This is found in Hinduism and other Eastern religions as well as in Western forms of voodoo and Judaeo-Christian notions involving superstition, possession, and exorcism. In contrast, the Writings give us rational concepts of dualism to account for how diseases of the body are caused by the activity of infernal spirits:
It is only permitted for Hell to inflow into the cupidities and falsities pertaining to man - not into man's organs." (SD 4585)
Spirits can only inflow into the falsities and lusts of the mind since the mind and the spirits are in continuous degree within the spiritual world. Diseases of the body are caused by correspondence to these interactions in the mind between spirit societies and each individual on earth. Without the idea of discrete degrees, people’s thinking process must slide down into nonduality, and hence corporeal spirituality. The infernal spirits are in this state of mind.
Western nonduality is rooted in the traditions of religious mysticism that fosters the notion of a sensuous and direct contact with the Lord. Various specialized sensuous practices are said to facilitate this “ecstatic” state of consciousness—solitude, fasting, self-inflicted pain, vow of silence, vow of celibacy, repeating prayers over and over again, concentrating very hard while praying or reading the Bible, doing low level or denigrating jobs to punish one’s spirit for pride, abstaining from certain foods, special initiation rituals, etc. Mysticism and New Age spirituality are Western concepts of nonduality whose central goal is to achieve direct sensuous God-consciousness. This is a form nonduality because direct sensuous contact with God necessarily assumes that God and human beings are of the same discrete substance. Only within the same discrete substance can direct sensuous contact take place.
In contrast to this, New Church duality sets God apart from human beings into discrete degrees so that only rational or correspondential contact or communication can take place. The only way we can enjoy direct conscious communication with the Lord is through the Word, for the Word is the Lord speaking to our external rational (AC 8200). Swedenborg was a unique exception to this law and constituted the greatest miracle of all since the beginning of history:
The manifestation of the Lord in person, and introduction by the Lord into the spiritual world, both as to sight and as to hearing and speech, surpasses all miracles; for nowhere in history do we read that such an intercourse with angels and spirits has been granted from the creation of the world. For I am there with the angels daily, even as I am in the world with men, and now for twenty-seven years.
Evidences of this intercourse are the books published by me concerning Heaven and Hell, and also the memorable relations in the last work, entitled THE TRUE CHRISTIAN RELIGION; further, what has been there related concerning Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and concerning the inhabitants of a number of kingdoms; besides the various evidences which are known in the world, and, in addition, many others which are not known. Say, who has ever before known anything concerning heaven and hell? Who has known anything concerning man's state after death? Who, anything concerning spirits and angels? etc., etc. (INV 43)
There is a rational explanation why no one else can expect to duplicate Swedenborg’s unique experience. In the age of rational faith the Lord avoids sensuous communication or contact with anyone because this hurts the development of the person’s rational consciousness (AC 7809; HH 249). In the afterlife we need the interior rational consciousness to reach our celestial level from which we can then enjoy the sensuous experiences of heaven such as the surrounding beauty and the delights of conjugial love. But if we reverse this order so that we arrive in the afterlife with a sensuous consciousness of God in which there is little rational consciousness, the spirit sinks down into corporeal consciousness and existence, and this is infernal (HD 170). God cannot come to such spirits as the path outward to awareness in the spirit’s mind is blocked by the external rational. This external rational is turned outward (or downward) and believes only that which is sensuous in the external (AC 978, 4286; AE 355:14). In the afterlife such external beliefs of religion fall off and vanish, leaving behind a ferocious sub-human who believes only in self (TCR 69). Nonduality is nothing else than sensuous consciousness united to an external rational in which there is nothing spiritual whatsoever. For the genuine spiritual or celestial comes only from heaven through the interior rational that must be gradually opened by a life of genuine religion and regeneration.
For more discussion on sensuous and rational consciousness, see Chapter 5, Sections 3.
1. God Is Separate From Creation
Nonduality in the Western mind forces an identity of substance between God, the cosmos, and self. This notion is clearly evident in the popular book “A Brief History of Everything” by Ken Wilber (Shambhala Books, 1996). The incompatibility between New Age nonduality and Christian dualism is explicitly pointed out in a review of the book by Douglas Groothuis, and published on the Web by the Christian Research Institute. (Accessed on the Web April 2002: www.equip.org/free/DN267.htm). Wilber’s cosmology is lukewarm in that it commingles nondualist and dualist concepts. He rejects the nonduality of scientific monism (only matter, space, and time exist), and wants to expand it to include “subjective experience, values, or mystical awareness.” These aren’t quantifiable yet they exist and are part of reality. Wilber’s name for these human dimensions is Spirit. One can see the damage of commingling when Wilber discards the dualist idea of God as Divine Person and instantiates a non- anthropomorphic Spirit. His rational idea of matter/spirit duality is immersed in the sensuous idea of a universal force dispersed in the universe. Quoting from the review by Groothuis:
"Kosmos is the manner in which Spirit manifests itself through certain invariant stages. … He views the source of the Kosmos as "Emptiness," which is "unbounded and unqualifiable" (27; see also 133). Wilber takes the mystical experience of Emptiness to be the highest state of consciousness. In this state, the subject-object relationship drops out and one realizes that he or she is one with the nondual reality." … "Wilber insists that the final reality is nondual an all-encompassing and absolute oneness (see 226-32).
It is evident that Western concepts of nonduality are commingled with remains of duality that are implied in the Western intellectual system and cannot be easily eradicated from the mind. But without the rational protection of discrete degrees and correspondences this commingling throws the mind into corporeal spirituality which invades the mind to the core and destroys the potential for opening the interior rational mind. This is the mind that sustains high consciousness levels (or heavens) in the afterlife. The absence of the rational is clearly seen in “mystical” statements such as this one, quoted by Groothuis:
“You are not in the Kosmos, the Kosmos is in you, and you are purest Emptiness. The entire universe is a transparent shimmering of the purest Emptiness. The entire universe is a transparent shimmering of the Divine" (229).
Groothuis clearly sees the absence of rationality in these nondual notions:
If nonduality is the comprehensive reality, as Wilber claims, this destroys all duality ... God's creation is one universe, but it consists of a great diversity of objects, events, and relationships. Neither God nor His creation will dissolve into a faceless oneness. ... One cannot have a personal relationship with Emptiness. If all is one, there can be no relationships, for a relationship involves at least two entities. Wilber says that "the twoness of experience is the fundamental lie, the primordial untruthfulness" (233).
Wilbers use of personal language for the impersonal absolute is a classic case of what Francis Schaeffer called "semantic mysticism"-- terms that have no philosophical application within a world view are invoked for a deceptive emotional effect. ... The problem of good and evil also plagues Wilber. Since Spirit is nondual, it is beyond ethical categories. Meaningful moral distinctions require an objective difference between the dualities of good and evil."
Here we see the spiritual danger: the denial of God’s Personhood which results in ourselves being God, an idea that is hostile to character regeneration since this requires a duality of superior to lower. If I am God, my salvation is not to change from evil to good with the help of God, but to let both fall off that I may awaken as God. In the end, Western nonduality falls into the corporeal spirituality called “mysticism” and “oneness with the universe.” Quoting Groothuis once more:
Wilber affirms that the ultimate reality is "unqualifiable" (137, 225). If so, then no one can logically affirm anything about it. What cannot be described cannot serve as an explanation for anything. Nevertheless, Wilber does qualify the Emptiness by saying it is the ground and goal of evolution, the source of all historical manifestations, the highest state of consciousness, and so forth. This is contradictory; he should remain silent (along with Emptiness)."
Chapter 3, Section 6
6. Christian Science Nonduality
New Age spirituality and mystical ideas of Spirit, Universe, or God-consciousness, enter the mind through nonduality which is the denial or ignorance of discrete degrees and correspondences into which the universe is created (DLW 173-281). Nonduality in the form of secular humanism, pluralism, and religious mysticism are systems of thinking that are opposed to the fundamental dualities we take up from the Writings. In the afterlife all of these natural belief systems fall off and are dissipated since they are not part of the internal mind. What is then left behind is the denial of God and heaven. Religion occupies the highest place in the human mind and without the worship and love of God as Person all that is below is false and of no use. Nonduality in the mind is antagonistic to the worship and love of the Divine Human in whom infinite distinct things make a one. The perfection of the Lord is that distinct things are united in Him. Were we to think that the distinct things commingle and are amalgamated into an “indistinct mass” of nonduality we close the mind to understanding the Lord’s perfection (DLW 352, SE 682). As the angels said to Swedenborg “what is indistinct is confused, whence results all imperfection of form” (DP 4).
The nonduality of Christian Science theology is evident from the core idea that permeates all sub-ideas, as here:
With the inspired Word of the Scriptures as its foundation, Christian Science reveals that God is infinite Spirit, the only Mind, boundless Soul, ever present Love, perfect Life, unrivaled Truth, omnipotent Principle. … Infinite Spirit never had |
