|
|
Series:
|
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
Please note: This page will take about 15 to 20 seconds to load. I’ve been working on the problem but haven’t found the solution yet. Sorry for the delay!
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 3 Regeneration Spiritual Disciplines For Daily Life
Chapter 1 Self-Witnessing Your Life
Table of Contents
Access other Chapters and Volumes here: 1. Introduction: The Spiritual Dimension Within The Natural 1. The Inherited Self Vs. The Innate Idea Of God 2. What Is Being Regenerated? – The Proprium 3. No Yoga In The Church Hall? 4. How The Spiritual Can Be Approached. 5. Regeneration Requires Rational Consciousness 6. The Two Phases Of Regeneration 7. Turning A Moral Discipline Into Spiritual 8. If I’m A Good Man, Why Do I Need To Be Regenerated? 9. The Physical Body Hides The Spiritual Devil Within 10. Spiritual Insanity Chains Us To Hell 11. Spiritual Sanity Is To Return To God And To The Word 12. Macro-Behaviors Are Regenerated By Means Of Micro-Behaviors 13. Self-Witnessing Our Micro-Behaviors 14. Overlap Between The Mind And The Spiritual World 18. Enlightenment From The Letter Of The Writings 19. Regeneration Disciplines Are Spiritual 20. Innumerable Things In Every Evil 21. Relationship Between Interior Evils And Exterior 22. Do We Need To Confess Our Sins? 23. Without Self-Monitoring Our Evils They Cannot Be Removed 24. Six-Phased Process of Removing Evils 25. Conditions That Prevent Removing Evils 26. “To Give No Thoughts To Sins” 27. “What Have I To Do With This” 28. Five Summary Steps In Regeneration 2. Snatching Things From Sudden Memory 1. What Makes Our Life Moments Spiritual 2. The Most Ancients Prior To The Split-Brain Evolution 3. Self-Witnessing Sudden Memory As A Spiritual Discipline 4. Filled With Blasphemous Thoughts And Curiosities 5. The Natural Mind Must Be Compelled To Realign Itself 3. Conscience And Temptations Are The Methods Of Regeneration 1. Creating More And More Angels 2. External And Internal Methods Of Cooperation 4.The remains of good and truth in the afterlife 5.The Regeneration Of The Threefold Self: Willing, Thinking, And Acting Out 1. Self-Examination: Monitoring The Threefold Self 2. Keeping Track Of The Motives We Have 3. The Agony And Ecstasy Of Regeneration 4. Head In Heaven, Feet In Hell 5. Seeing The Ugly Scary Proprium 6. Regeneration Is By Spiritual-Rational Correspondences 7. Teachings Regarding Doctrine And The Spiritual Sense
Access other Chapters and Volumes here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Every
spiritual truth in the Writings
Preface to Volume 3
You may want to read the Preface to Volume 1 and Volume 2 along with this. See Table of Contents for the location of the Preface to Volume 1.
This Volume is called Regeneration. Volume 1 is called Reformation, and Volume 2, Enlightenment. These three represent the three steps that the New Church mind lives through in order to mature in old age into the innocence of wisdom. Thus prepared, our mind is celestial and can enter heaven. It is not until then that we are fully human. We begin Reformation sometime in adult life, early or late with a variety, when we begin worshipping the Letter of the Writings as the Lord Himself in the Word of His Second Coming. This acknowledgement, when sincere, is always passionate and exciting. It is the feeling that we have at last found the vision and consciousness we had been searching for. It replaces everything that was there before. It is all consuming, all pervasive, a new birth. What an amazing difference it makes to pick up a book of Swedenborg and read it, versus to pick up the Word of God through which the Lord Himself speaks to our mind. This new vision, enthusiasm, passion, and content leads immediately to reformation, for how can we mean it and still think as before?
When we read the Writings as a Divine Scientific Revelation we are undergoing reformation. It can take just a few months, or longer, depending on how intense our study of the Writings is. For my part, I could not read anything else since I started reading the Writings. Whenever I read other books I soon begin to feel that I’m wasting my time, and with relief and joy, I reach for a book of the Writings. I make sure that I’m always surrounded by the Sacred Volumes. It is with joy and interest that we take up the truths, the new information, the new science, the new insights, the new concepts and the new reasoning from them. We become erudite and intelligent and rational in our ability to think, to distinguish, to trace, analyze, evaluate. With our rational-mind formed from the Writings we complete our reformation, a new man, looking in everything towards heaven, instructed by the Lord Himself, walking out into life with new powers to wage war against our inherited character or proprium.
The truths of the Letter of the Writings give us this new power. Volume 2 explains the process by which we are enlightened from the Lord when we apply these truths to our daily willing and thinking, hour by hour, minute by minute, and second by second. The Writings gives us a scientific understanding of regeneration. It is a process of rewiring millions of bundles of fibers in our inherited will. These spiritual fibers have grown and matured into degenerate organs that coil in the opposite direction of the heavenly will. Consequently our will is a receptor of evil affections from hell and we have these affections in us. They make our life, and were the Lord to remove them, we would have no life left. Hence regeneration is the gradual process of replacing these degenerate fibers, one by one, and replacing it with a heavenly affection that coils in the heavenly direction. This new will then becomes a receptor for heavenly affections, and it is being regenerated or purified more and more. As the heavenly affections are instilled, the Lord removes the infernal ones. In this way we do not feel that we are losing life, but gaining it. Our new affections are far superior to the old, giving us new perceptions and understandings, new powers to act and execute.
To be enlightened is to acquire the spiritual consciousness or conscious awareness of spiritual-rational correspondences. These are appearances of Divine Truth accommodated to the individual’s intellect by discrete degrees. Volume 2 explains how we can extract a spiritual sense from the Letter of the Writings. This spiritual sense cannot be described in natural language except by means of correspondences. In the initial phases of reformation, the New Church mind sees the literal meaning as the spiritual sense when it is deepened by comparisons and outlined rationally in our mind. But when enlightenment is given, we begin to see that these expert knowledge systems we develop for ourselves, are not the spiritual sense.
To see the spiritual sense we need to look at the literal expressions as natural-rational correspondences. Once this is acknowledged, we are prepared for enlightenment. This happens the moment we apply some doctrine or principle to our willing and thinking. We are then enlightened as to this one thing we were applying. It may not seem much at first, but the new perception of this one thing is so powerful, so real, that it is enough to be proof that we are capable of spiritual consciousness in the physical body. Applying the natural-rational correspondences of the Writings to the stream of willing and thinking, has a built in mechanism of enlightenment. The Lord enlightens every time this is done by anyone. Thus it functions as a new psycho-physiological mechanism for the human race. Hence we may call it a scientific mechanism, knowing as always, that every mechanism is maintained in place by the Lord on a continuous basis by influx of good from within.
Enlightenment of this or that truth builds and cumulates so that it becomes a permanent background to our personality.
Rational consciousness is the method the Lord has provided for the new human race to be conjoined with Him. He has now revealed Himself as the Divine Human within whom there is the Divine Rational. Henceforth the new celestial mind of the human race is to dwell in new heavens built out of these new rational truths. Our enlightenment continues to grow in regeneration. It is a gradual process of using higher correspondences as the basis of our thinking, as explained in Volume 2.
But regeneration is not an automatic process. Nor is it easy. It is a commandment of the Letter that we cooperate with the Lord in the process of His removing the degenerate fibers in the will. He cannot create new heavenly fibers without us letting go of the old infernal fibers. It cannot be done like the weight control surgery popular today, of mechanical suction or aspiration of the surface layers of fat under the skin. Regeneration is more like a heart transplant. The new heart has to fit the genius and life of the old individual, or else it cannot survive. The new heavenly affections that the Lord implants must be loved, or else we feel that we don’t have our life back. But they cannot be loved without first detesting or rejecting those in place now, to which we are committed and by which we are delighted.
This is where the hard part comes in: How do you learn to hate what you love?
This difficult struggle is regeneration. This Volume is about regeneration disciplines for husbands. A discipline is a method of procedure we use when the outcome is of great importance to us. Nothing is more important to us than regeneration, for it is the only path available to salvation and heaven. First it is necessary to focus on the Letter of the Writings from a perspective of enlightenment, as explained in Volume 2. This builds up the Spiritual Doctrine in our understanding. The level of thinking by which we operate when thinking about the Spiritual Doctrine is called interior-natural, or spiritual-natural. This is effective in proportion to our gradually increasing enlightenment. This basis of thinking is called spiritual-rational correspondences and is a discrete degree above the Letter of natural-rational correspondences.
Physiologically, natural-rational correspondences operate in the upper portion of the natural mind, but spiritual-rational correspondences operate in the interior-natural mind, which is within the natural-rational mind. This is why thinking with spiritual-rational correspondences is called enlightenment while thinking in natural-rational correspondences is not.
It is the Spiritual Doctrine we need in our mind to lead us through regeneration. The angels are doing the leading and we must understand them in a spiritual-rational way, not merely in a natural-rational way. When we understand the angels’ leading us at the level of natural-rational correspondences we are not yet being regenerated because we are not yet willing to look upon the evil delights we are to give up. Spiritual-rational correspondences in our thinking are for more powerful in fighting against the evil delights we want to hang on to. We need interior spiritual truths to be able to fight interior spiritual evils. There is always a balance between heavenly and infernal loves. The highest heaven must have the lowest hell, the lowest heaven must have the highest hell. There is an exact correspondence so that one supports the other. The formation of the Spiritual Doctrine in our mind is a Divine operation, as explained in Volume 2.
Without regeneration disciplines can we cooperate with the Lord?
I give many illustrations from my own regeneration journey. It’s obvious after studying regeneration that it is a general process of spiritual biology. It has to do with willing and thinking moment by moment. This is our human life. Without it we are no longer human. We never go to hell for the sins we’ve inherited, nor even for the sins we’ve committed. We only go to hell for the sins we are committing in the world of spirits. In the afterlife, we bring with us a psychological disposition that defines our preferred relationship styles with others. All our preferences in the spirit-body now become intense loves that cannot be resisted.
We are then at the complete mercy of our preferences, loves, affections, delights, motives.
This is why regeneration is so crucial. It is the only biological process available for getting rid of the infernal affections, replacing them at the same time with heavenly affections.
This must be done while we still are tied to the physical body. It cannot be done after we wake up in our spirit-body.
Since we express a preference or delight, moment by moment, every day in our willing and thinking, you can see that there are thousands of individual distinct items of willing and thinking chained together as an act or decision. There is no time to waste if we are seriously engaged in cooperating with the Lord regarding our regeneration. We are not going to be regenerated by floundering or relaxing or going slower or using any of the many tactics men use to oppose their regeneration. This is a serious matter of life and death, of eternal misery versus eternal conjugial bliss. Nothing can be more important!
You will see that I emphasize the wife’s role in the regeneration of the husband. The regeneration discipline of the Doctrine of the Wife presented here is that the husband needs to learn to love to act from his wife’s will, more than he loves to act from his own will. I have discovered the great efficacy of this spiritual method.
There is no area of life that does not need to be regenerated. The illustrations I present are only points on a map. The map is your ego. It is the ego that needs to be regenerated. And the ego starts with being the all in all in our self. Thus, the ego must be dethroned and the Writings enthroned as a Divine King. This is done my the daily study of the Writings and applying it to life.
DEDICATION
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 man of the field is the living husband
Chapter 1Self-Witnessing Your Life
A person's mind is his spirit, or the surviving personality which lives on after leaving the material body. (TCR 816)
A man who examines himself for the purpose of practicing repentance, should explore his thoughts, and the intentions of his will; and there he ought to examine what he would do, if he were at liberty; that is, if he were not afraid of the laws, and the loss of reputation, honor, and gain. A man's evils are in his thoughts and intentions; and the evils which he does with the body are all from thence. Those persons who do not explore the evils of their thoughts and of their will cannot practice repentance; for afterwards they think and will just as they did before; and yet willing evils means doing them. This is meant by self-examination. (NJHD 164)
Chapter 1, Section 1
1. Introduction: The Spiritual Dimension Within The Natural
Today on the car radio on my way home, I heard an interview with a famous lawyer known to millions from his TV appearances, books, and the famous cases he had successfully pleaded. At one point he was asked to give his definition of what is “right.” He said that would be a very difficult thing to define, that it would be impossible for him to do so, since he didn’t know what is right. He said the world knows what’s wrong, what’s evil, when we see it, like the Nazis and what they did. But no one knows what is right, he said. Who is going to decide what is right? “No one to my knowledge,” he said has ever heard God say to them what is right. I do not believe that for a moment. A human being is always looking to know what is right, and the answer evolves. Anyone who says that he knows what is right, I feel sorry for him, because he has lost one of the chief reasons we are human, which is to look for what is right, but never actually find it, though his understanding of it gets better.”
This is an approximate rendition, as I can recall it. You can see that this philosophy of what is right, is a nonduality because it denies the absolute duality between human beings and God. Those who accept this duality, know what is right because God reveals it to them in the Word or in teachings based on the Word, and in their conscience—for the idea or concept of God’s existence is “inscribed” on the mind of every human being, and along with it, an innate cognitive ability to distinguish between good and evil, and consequently between right and wrong (xx). This famous lawyer no doubt had both, besides being literate in history and literature, having written book and articles on this subject. He also has a conscience by which he could know that there is God (xx). He thus had to work actively to neutralize and eliminate these sources of knowledge of God and what is right in a Divine absolute sense.
Note how we all accomplish the same thing while we are in our unregenerate state. Prior to our conscious free choice of reformation in adulthood, the New Church mind-to-be is equal to everyone else regardless of religion, race, or education.
The idea of God that everyone has through conscience from within, is something we own. It feels like our own idea because it comes to every human being from within (xx). We already know it as children when we first hear the idea of God from an adult or a TV show. Children instantly accept it, acting as if they already knew about God. They may have questions about God, but not ignorance of Him. This “implanted” idea of God (xx) is necessary to guarantee that no human being under any circumstance of time and place, will have the free choice of living life in accordance with God’s wishes or in accordance with the wishes of the self. This is the fundamental innate absolute duality of human life upon which every right and rational idea is based. It therefore enters into every concept of right living, regeneration, and heaven. It is the only means of salvation the Lord has provided for the human race. The result of every individual’s choice in this fundamental duality is the final outcome of their destiny: eternal bliss in heaven with a conjugial spouse vs. insane and cruel misery forever in hell. Could anything possibly be as important as this?
1. The Inherited Self Vs. The Innate Idea Of God
And yet the unregenerate mind, whether a New Church mind-to-be, or a famous popular lawyer in America, defender of individual rights, willfully sets aside the God in our conscience, calling it a mere self-produced concept, and leading a life guided by the search for what’s right, rather than by a knowledge of what’s right. While we do so, our understanding and intellectual scholarship are drawn more and more into the stream of unregenerate affections, which are infernal. Rejecting the fundamental duality of God’s definition of right vs. ours, is a self-condemnation to eternal misery in an infernal mind that would scare us to death, could we see it as the angels see it, in its true nature. The Writings reveal that the self, called our very own or “proprium” in Latin, appears in the afterlife as a bony skeleton-head charred black, sometimes “grayish-white like a plastered wall” (SE 5464). In either case it is ugly and inhuman.
When we willfully silence and turn away form the inborn living idea of God, we turn ourselves to the proprium. We are then led by the hells, as detailed in this horrendous description of what we are in ourselves from birth and self-guidance, and what to destiny it leads us:
(1) They place themselves at the back, below and above, and there they thrust in their thoughts; they turn the thoughts of another spirit, and thus of a man, to himself, to his own power, to his own praise, in a word, to the proprium. Almost all infernals know how to do this.
(2) Others gaze upon various parts of the body and upon the head and, where they see anything black, they know the proprium still rules there - for the proprium is black, because it is of the love of self - and, then, they seek to learn what of self is there, and, when they find out, they infuse their own thoughts there, and lead [their victim] whithersoever they will.
(3) Some look into the forehead; and, if it appears black, they then lead him; likewise, if it is grayish-white like a plastered wall, inasmuch as this indicates simulated external sincerity; but from him in whom they see human flesh they withdraw, and him they do not lead.
(4) Some cast a black veil over his face and also over his breast, and thus they magically take away his thoughts of the neighbor, and oblige and compel him to think of himself; and so they lead him, but not like they do others who are black of themselves: the former return immediately.
(5) Some enshroud another in darkness and convey [him] into the dark, and so compel him to think of self.
(6) From the color around a spirit or man - black, white, flesh-color, or yellow - they conclude something about the man's state as to his proprium, or self-love. Where it is black, there is self-love: such a one is led; and it is according to the intensity of the black.
(7) Some only perceive by means of the thoughts of another - for there is a general law of thoughts - and these insinuate themselves into them and turn them to [the victim's] proprium and love of self, in all ways - by phantasies, by magic; and by the aid of many of the hells; and, so, they drive him to thinking about himself; and, when it comes to that, he is in their power.
(8) Sirens know how to insinuate themselves into the various affections which are the ruling love of a man; and so they take him with them. Also, they know how to reduce the thoughts of another, magically, even to the sensual, which is the extreme external; and, when he is reduced to that, they induce various phantasies and lead him whithersoever they wish. It is the sensual of man where his self-love, or proprium, resides: so far as he can be drawn up, or elevated, out of that, as to the thoughts, towards interiors, so far he can be led away from his proprium. Man's sensual, at this day, is, with most people, wholly corporeal, and has not anything spiritual.
(9) It was granted me to perceive when I was in the proprium, and when not in the proprium. When in the proprium, I was fit for nothing; wherefore, I was led out of it by the Lord, as far as that could be done. Hence is manifest what the love of self, and the love of the world for the sake of self, is. When [any] are led in the proprium and borne away, they appear to be led down through the surrounding places; which is according to the changes of the state of the thoughts. There were some such of the Swedish nation, whose desire it had been thus to reduce the thoughts of other spirits to subjection, and so to lead them whithersoever they would; but they did not know how, save one or two of them. They were in the western quarter. (SE 5464)
When I read this, I am scared! What scares me the most is the idea that I was headed to this destiny as a result of my willful rejection of God. I didn’t know the magnitude of the consequences, though I could have known had I wanted to. It’s scary to think how close I came to having that destiny of passing to the next life with an unregenerate proprium.
Whether we say self or love-of self, it is the same in the unregenerate state prior to reformation. We are born with the inherited tendency to love our self more than God. This is called the Fallen human race. It is the proprium or self that is our god from birth so that it kills off the other innate tendency which is to obey God. As children, every unregenerate person goes through a state of innocence in which the Lord walls of the inherited love-self and its related infernal affections. The child’s unconscious spiritual mind is surrounded and infilled by angles, an activity which results in an outward natural behavior that is innocent and full of the love to obey and be close to others. This is the period of life when the idea of God becomes conscious, and the child’s natural mind gets trained to know consciously what is right and wrong.
But soon the Lord can no longer continue walling off the inherited loves because this would take away the individual’s inner freedom to choose. We could then choose heaven, but not from our free will, and therefore, we could not love that choice. And whatever we do not love is not appropriated to our being, hence it is not there in the afterlife. Therefore the Lord is compelled to free the inner dams of infernal loves, whereupon the angels are forced to withdraw, and the individual is then led by the infernals. But after adolescence, when we enter young adulthood, we once again are given the desire and power to turn ourselves away from the proprium by turning ourselves to God, and this gradual turning is called reformation. Upon completion of reformation, which can last months or years, we are ready to begin regeneration and undergo the spiritual rigors of temptations.
By means of these temptations, carefully managed in a sequence and timed by the Lord, we become aware of our infernal delights, and are forced to face them, and do battle against them. In these battles the Lord draws near the individual, very close, and the angels are present ready to battle the hells. For when one individual on earth fights with a temptation, the entire hells are united in that battle. No one could withstand this unimaginable line up! In the quote above (SE 5464) it is said: “these insinuate themselves into them and turn them to [the victim's] proprium and love of self, in all ways - by phantasies, by magic; and by the aid of many of the hells.” Note the phrase “by the aid of many of the hells” which tells us that the infernals use each other’s “magical” powers to fight battles against us in any temptation. This is the awesome work of regeneration that lies ahead of us in forming the New Church mind in ourselves.
2. What Is Being Regenerated? – The Proprium
You can see that “regeneration” refers to the self or proprium. It is the proprium that needs to be regenerated. And it is revealed that the proprium cannot be “fixed” but is lost forever. One can only be saved by the proprium being reborn, the old being laid to rest, the new being an image of the Lord’s Proprium or Personality. The Lord is the only actual Human! This is a physiological or genetic fact about the human race existing on this earth. The proprium, being a spiritual organ, cannot die. If it is “fallen” or degenerate, it cannot be fixed. But the Lord loves the human race for the sake of which the universe exists, and the Lord is omniscient and omnipotent. To Him the entire human race appears as one, and He evolves this race in the image of His Own Proprium. This is an inexorable evolution for there is no other power in the universe than the Lord’s power within each and all things. The Lord can withdraw His power from anywhere anytime and the “it” falls into an inanimate thing, or vanishes altogether from existence (xx). There is no want of power in the Lord to do anything.
It would be a grave error to believe that the revolting degenerate proprium we are born with, has evolved because of a want of power in the Lord to prevent it.
The Writings explain this fully in a rational way by means of the Doctrine of Permissions, and why the Lord has allowed this sorry evolution. And yet when the Lord’s work of evolution and creation is viewed from a spiritual perspective, it is seen as Divine and perfect work. It would be an imperfect creation if people were condemned to hell on account of their birth, would it not? Similarly, condemning people on account of how they behaved, as a means of punishment, would also be imperfect, when viewed spiritually. The Lord does neither. He does not condemn anyone to hell, for whatever reason, no matter how evil and cruel a person’s deeds were. (xx)
The truth is that the Lord instructs everyone who arrives in the afterlife. They are given instruction, therapy, real-world experiences recreated on a kind of spiritual holo-deck (xx). They are taken for visits to heaven. They are given anything they need and want, and then they are required to make a choice: to enter heavenly life or life in hell. This proves that the system and the process are perfect, since both heaven and hell can only exist in a free choice!
Note also this statement in sub-paragraph (8) of the quote above (SE 5464):
It is the sensual of man where his self-love, or proprium, resides: so far as he can be drawn up, or elevated, out of that, as to the thoughts, towards interiors, so far he can be led away from his proprium. Man's sensual, at this day, is, with most people, wholly corporeal, and has not anything spiritual.
The only method we have of accessing the spiritual is by means of thoughts, that is, by means of the truths we think about and with which we reason and draw conclusions. These truths in our conscious mind are not spiritual truths but representatives and correspondences of spiritual truths. These are the truths that save us because they are our own and feel like our own. Therefore our freedom of choice is maintained even though we obey these truths against our preference.
The truths we understand give us the power to align ourselves with new powerful affections, higher powerful loves implanted in our interior-natural mind by the Lord. Therefore, even though we compel ourselves, we do so in freedom. These spiritual truths, in their natural correspondences, are rational truths, not sensuous experiences. They are in our natural-rational mind or understanding. These truths cannot be discovered when we are in the state turned to the proprium. Self-intelligence, natural science, mental disciplines, physical initiations—not of these things can discover a single spiritual truth no matter how advanced they become.
Spiritual truths in correspondence are available only from the revelations the Lord gives the human race in His Word, and for the new age of the Second Coming, His Word is the Writings, which will endure forever (xx).
Note this statement in sub-paragraph (9) of the quote above (SE 5464):
It was granted me to perceive when I was in the proprium, and when not in the proprium. When in the proprium, I was fit for nothing; wherefore, I was led out of it by the Lord, as far as that could be done. Hence is manifest what the love of self, and the love of the world for the sake of self, is. When [any] are led in the proprium and borne away, they appear to be led down through the surrounding places; which is according to the changes of the state of the thoughts. “
Swedenborg was given to see what we cannot, namely a conscious perception of his proprium and of being in and out of it. But all we need is his description, if we take it as the Divine Truth the Lord wants us to know for our regeneration. “When in the proprium, I was fit for nothing”—what a devastating confession by the man whose mind was prepared by the Lord from his early childhood to develop into the first of the new race called the New Church mind.
About two years before I discovered the Writings I had a disturbing vision. I believe I was just falling asleep, when I saw from a distance a person wrapped in a black robe. It was coming closer to me but I could not see legs or feet. I then saw the head in bright light. It looked like a mummy that had been unwrapped, with a bony head that was extremely emaciated with hardly any flesh. It had no hair. I couldn’t tell its gender but I thought it might be a female. Then as it got close to me it seemed that it projected something at me with extreme power and violence. It felt that my personality or self was shattered, imploded from within, annihilated. I woke up from the terror of it. I thought about this vision over the years. First I decided it could’ve been a male, not a female. Second I couldn’t decide whether it was benign or hostile. It sure didn’t feel good to be shattered like that, but I thought maybe that’s how earthlings feel when they are visited by a higher power, like those who saw angels in the Bible and fell on their face as dead. But eventually I decided it was inimical to me otherwise I wouldn’t have felt so terrified. I did not think about again until just recently as I was rereading the passage quoted above about the proprium (SE 5464). After discussing it with my wife, I became convinced that what I saw was my proprium!
When I interpret my vision this way, it all makes sense. The appearance of the image was that of the proprium as described in this passage. The amazing hostility and violence it expressed against me makes sense when I consider that the proprium has an insane murderous love to destroy the individual. The proprium fears and hates the New Church mind-to-be more than anything because in this mind it is destined to die, to cease being active forever. It is tragic, and a sign of spiritual insanity, that we love the proprium, this ugly monster that is bent on destroying us and our effort to regenerate. Regeneration marks the death of the old proprium.
This idea also helps me to understand a long-standing insight my wife has had for years as she tried to help me in my regeneration. She saw that I had a streak in me for self-destruction. To her this was plain to see by how I behaved, what I considered more important than something else, how I buried myself in my own unhappiness, how I kept myself from knowing what I needed to know, and so on. To me this was a big mystery. How is it possible that I should wish for my own destruction? It didn’t sound logical to me. The self is animated by self-preservation not self-destruction, or else the race could not survive—I thought. Also, it didn’t seem to me that I was bent on destroying myself and I was a student of the self, practicing self-monitoring techniques, analyzing my life, and so on. Surely I would be aware if I was so aberrant in my tendency—I told myself. So I would never believe it and my poor wife had to patiently and without letting up, remind me of her perceptions.
All this makes sense when I consider what in fact my proprium is—this infernal monstrosity filled with insane hatred against anything from heaven. Definitely my proprium would be happy to destroy me, to take over, to pull me into hell, to make me its vile slave or zombie. This is quite a paradox to resolve, isn’t? The proprium whom I identify with and love is a monster that desires to destroy me!
All this should tell us that we are to take charge of our regeneration in a conscious and disciplined manner, using whatever methods of discipline we can invent to carry out our expected and required side of the regeneration equation: the Lord does everything but we must do just one thing, namely, to face our proprium, to monitor our willing and thinking in the light of Doctrine in our understanding, and to make a free choice of rejecting the evil delights, one by one, daily, hourly, and by the minute. This alone is the real and actual work of regeneration.
3. No Yoga In The Church Hall?
It’s likely that some of the attractiveness Americans feel toward nonduality and non-Western spiritual disciplines is due to our deep rooted desire for self-improvement and the quest towards ever greater achievements and victories. The interest in attaining greater control over one’s body is widespread in the Western world, as indicated by lifestyles that feature body-building workouts, muscle man contests, beauty pageants, and the varieties of physical disciplines imported from the East such as the many martial arts, Tai Chi, Tae Bo, and Yoga, which are sweeping the country today. My wife and I have attended Iangar Yoga classes in a Church hall for several years now. In this connection, a reader of this book sent me this clipping about a Church hall in England:
Wednesday August 28, 2002 The Guardian
Adopting the lotus position may seem harmless but be warned it could well be the first step on a slippery slope to damnation - especially if it follows the cobra or the lion. For those who believe they can combine the pursuit of yoga with the practice of Christianity it is time to roll up the yoga mat and think again, according to the Rev Derek Smith. Having banned classes from his church hall at St Michael's church in Melksham, Wiltshire, the vicar has called upon Christians who indulge in the activity to "examine their consciences".
Yoga, he believes, is "incompatible" with Christianity because of its associations with the Hindu faith. Even if followers in the west use yoga purely for fitness purposes, spiritual leaders in the east insist it is inseparable from Hindu devotional practice, Mr. Smith said yesterday. "I would ask people who do yoga to think about whether they believe they were in breach of their faith or not. If they genuinely believe what they are doing is acceptable - and I know people that do - of course, I would ask them to follow their consciences." (...) The Church of England defended Mr. Smith's decision, backing the right of clergymen to take a stand against any practices which "do not square with Christian teachings". "Yoga is used as a kind of generic term for exercise and stretching, but there are many different types of yoga. But some have a more spiritual basis as handed down from eastern religions," a spokesman said. "It's reasonably understandable that someone can say so if they don't want something with a spiritual basis taught in their church hall." The church was keen to promote good relations with other religions, he added, but that did not involve being "wish-washy or mealy-mouthed" about distinctions in faith.
Our Yoga teacher ends each class in the Church hall with prayerful hands extended before the chest and the greeting “Namaste.” Once in a while she explains to newcomers that it means “The God in me greets the God in you.” She never said anything else about it and there are no other signs of Eastern nonduality. For me, it’s just a convenient place for an excellent physical discipline. I thought about discussing with her the idea of how God can be in each of us, but my wife nixed the idea—and rightly so, as I immediately saw it. What would be the point of such a discussion? How could it possibly have a useful ending? But it never occurred to me that I should stop attending classes because she ends each class with Namaste.
I discussed in Volume 1 how we are to deal with nonduality—not by confronting those who think from it. Our job in forming the New Church mind is to confront ourselves. For in us is all of the hells. We do not need to go fight the hells on outside territory. We may have to fight those who attack our country, but this is fighting men, not the hells. To fight the hells we must confront ourselves, for nowhere else is hell but within ourselves. We are to fight the nonduality in our mind, and this is an internal struggle, not visible to others.
4. How The Spiritual Can Be Approached
Regarding physical disciplines, many serve a good use under appropriate conditions, but not under others. The difference is to be understood by considering things the Writings say in relation to the natural mind and spiritual mind. The management or planning function of the mind is called the natural-rational or “external rational” (AC 2657). This is not the “interior-natural” mind nor the “spiritual-rational” mind, which are in discrete degrees above the natural-rational mind and develop in adulthood in proportion to our progress in regeneration (AC 4038). The interior rational (or spiritual-rational) is of spiritual and celestial origin, but the external rational (or natural-rational) is of hereditary and cultural origin (AC 978, 4286; AE 355:14). There is nothing spiritual about the natural-rational mind and there is only spiritual/celestial things in the interior rational mind. This absolute dualism in the levels of the mind corresponds to the discrete degrees in which the heavens are in relation to each other:
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 things in our natural mind are corporeal, sensuous, and rational. Whatever we do in this plane of life has nothing spiritual in it because the spiritual cannot exist in the natural plane. Rather, the spiritual can exist in the natural plane indirectly, by correspondences. We can look at anything we do that is merely natural, like eating, talking to a friend, or driving a car. In order to communicate with the spiritual dimension we must look upon these natural acts as correspondences. When looked at this way, we are communicating with the spiritual dimensions that are associated with those natural acts. Every natural act has a spiritual dimension associated with it (xx). But we do not know or reflect upon the spiritual dimensions of our everyday acts. We may reflect on their legal and moral dimension, so that we think, “This is legal, this is illegal” or, “This is moral, this is immoral.” But if someone said, “This is spiritual, this is not,” we would not know what they meant, and in fact, no one would. Knowing what is spiritual is possible only from the Lord’s new revelations of the Word of the Writings (xx).
The Writings reveal that the celestial human mind, such as angels have, and such as the most ancient peoples had on this earth, can have a sensuous consciousness of the spiritual within the natural (xx). Their brain and respiratory physiology were different from ours—they had internal breathing instead of external, they spoke by lip movements instead of vocal cords, and their brain was not split into two halves (xx). They looked at every object around them and saw within each the spiritual dimension. A natural object was nothing to them but a correspondence to a spiritual event, which was taking place in the spiritual world. This is the “spiritual dimension” of any natural object, quality, or event. It is nothing but the spiritual event or quality that causes the natural event to occur. The natural event is nothing but an ultimate effect brought about by a spiritual cause.
For example, when they saw horses, their mind perceived the idea of intelligence from the Doctrine of their Church. Or if they saw rain, they perceived of truths in their various forms that correspond to the spring rain, the autumn rain, the river, the ocean, the lake, the putrid waters—which are falsifications of truths. The sun and the mountains represented to them the Divine Human whom they expected to arrive into the world. Being compassionate to a stranger represented to them charity from the Lord. When they saw a disorderly act by someone they were horrified because to them it represented rejection of the Lord. all day long, as they lived their lives on earth, they could think of nothing but what each thing in their environment represented in spiritual reality.
In forming the New Church mind we are emulating the celestial mind of the most ancient peoples on earth. Swedenborg was the first in this new breed of the human race. He was also an intermediary, thus not like all those who come after him. Since Swedenborg was the Lord’s architect of the new rational revelations, he had to have sensuous access to the spiritual world so that he may describe it to us in a natural language of events, history, and science. Those who now make use of this new revelation do not need themselves to have sensuous access to the spiritual world. In fact, such sensuous spiritual perception would prevent our regeneration. The Lord is careful therefore, not to expose us to the sensuous perception of the spiritual dimension, for this would totally compel our belief and instead of a rational revelation, we would be stuck in a corporeal revelation such as the First Coming of the Lord. What is needed now to complete the Lord’s work is a rational consciousness of Him and the spiritual. The new Heavens He created are made of this Divine Rational consciousness and only those who have this rational consciousness of the spiritual can exist in the heavens.
You can see therefore that we must approach the spiritual through the rational, not through the sensuous.
To approach the spiritual through the rational means that we use correspondences, that we see each natural event as a correspondence for a spiritual event which is primary, that is, the cause of the natural event. Physical disciplines like Yoga are natural activities. To the New Church mind, there is nothing spiritual about it, no matter how it is interpreted in Eastern religious practices. If you went to the market looking for a spoon to buy, and you find one that is just fine, but when you pay for it, the seller tells you that this spoon was used in idol worship ceremonies many years ago. Would this require you to give the spoon back? Of course not. There is nothing spiritual in the idea that the spoon was used in idol worship ceremonies by so and so. The only spiritual dimension in that spoon, as you take it home, is your reflection of what that spoon represents—information we can look up in the Writings for an answer:
A choir at a distance was heard one morning. From the choir's representations I was permitted to know that they were Chinese, for they exhibited a kind of woolly goat, then a cake of millet, and an ebony spoon, also the idea of a floating city. They desired to come nearer to me, and when they had joined me they said that they wished to be alone with me, that they might disclose their thoughts. But they were told that they were not alone, and that some were displeased at their wishing to be alone, although they were guests.
When they perceived this displeasure they began to think whether they had transgressed against the neighbour, and whether they had claimed anything to themselves that belonged to others. All thought in the other life being communicated, I was permitted to perceive the agitation of their minds. It consisted of a recognition that possibly they had injured those who were displeased, of shame on that account, together with other worthy affections; and it was thus known that they were endowed with charity. (AC 2596)
'The spoon-bill', 'the duck', 'the owl', 'the raven' stand for varieties of falsity which arise when Divine truths in the Word are rendered valueless. (AC 5044)
I was once allowed to perceive the nature of conjugial love among polygamists. ... After conversing with me for a while at a distance, the substitute sent me an ivory spoon and other tokens that they came from him. At the same time a passage was opened up to transmit the heat of conjugial love experienced there. It was perceived by me as resembling the fetid warmth of a bath-house; on feeling it I turned away, and the passage by which it was transmitted was closed off. (CL 344)
In other words, the spiritual dimension of the spoon I brought home represented something about foreigners and their innocent as well as perverted affections and beliefs.
When we discuss physical disciplines, we must also include mental disciplines like meditation, shamanism, and asceticism. Many people consider mental disciplines to be spiritual in contrast to physical disciplines. But to the New Church mind both are corporeal. Their spiritual content is called corporeal spirituality, as in Volume 1 Chapter 2 Section 7. The Writings call it “bodily thinking,” or “basing one’s thinking on bodily sense-impressions,” as for instance, corporeal idea of resurrection after death:
Finally I talked with the spirits of that world about the belief of the inhabitants of our world concerning their resurrection.
I said they were unable to conceive of people coming into the next life immediately after death, and then looking like people in face, body, arms and feet, having all their outward and inward senses. Even less could they believe that they would then wear clothes and have houses and places to live.
This was entirely due to the fact that most people here base their thinking on bodily sense-impressions, so that they do not believe in the existence of what they cannot see and touch. Few of them can be withdrawn from outward sense-impressions towards inward ones, and so be lifted into the light of heaven in which inward impressions can be received.
It is for this reason that they cannot have any concept of their soul or spirit as being a person, but think of it as wind, air or some formless breath, which yet contains some vitality. This is the reason that they believe they will only be resurrected at the end of the world, which they call the Last Judgment, thinking that their body, though collapsed into dust and scattered to all the winds, must then be brought back and reunited with their soul or spirit.
[2] I added that they are allowed to hold this belief, because there is no other way that those who, as I said, base their thinking on outward sense-impressions, could think of their soul or spirit living as a person in human form, except by re-entering the body they carried around with them in the world. Unless therefore the body were said to be resurrected, they would at heart reject the teaching on resurrection and everlasting life as incomprehensible. (...) [4] For they are unaware that each person is inwardly a spirit, and the life of the body and all its parts comes from the spirit, not from the body by itself. They do not know that it is the spirit which is the real person, sharing its form, but invisible to the body's eyes, being visible only to the eyes of spirits. Hence it is too that, when a person's spirit has its sight opened, which is the result of the withdrawal of the body's sight, angels can be seen as people. So it was that angels appeared to the ancients, as related in the Word.
I have had several conversations with spirits whom I knew when they were people living in the world, and asked whether they wanted to be clothed again with their earthly bodies, as they had previously imagined. On hearing this they ran off to a distance at the mere idea of being reunited, in astonishment at having been led in the world to think so by blind faith without any understanding. (EU 165)
The afterlife is existence in the spiritual world. The spiritual world is a rational world while the natural world is a physical world. If we arrive in the afterlife with nothing but a corporeal idea of the afterlife, our mind does not contain natural-rational ideas, but only natural-corporeal and natural-sensuous ideas. The existence we have in the spiritual world is completely determined by the ideas we bring with us. Ideas based on sensuous impressions from the physical senses contain within them evil affections and delights. But ideas based on rational truths from revelation contain within them good affections and delights. Good affections and delights are incorporated into the heavens while evil affections and delights are incorporated into the hells. Good affections can only exist within rational truths; evil affections can only exist in sensuous fallacies. What is called spiritual in a genuine sense is related to rational truths within which are good affections. But sensuous and corporeal ideas are not rational and contain evil affections.
Meditation is a mental activity but the cognitive level of this activity remains natural, not yet spiritual. All mental activity in the natural mind is not yet spiritual, only natural. For mental activity to be spiritual, it must exist in the interior-natural mind, which is a discrete degree above the natural-rational mind. The interior-natural mind is purely rational, therefore genuinely spiritual. This mental activity is not from self, as is the activity in our natural-rational and natural-sensuous. The activity in the interior-natural mind is nothing but the reaction by correspondence to what’s going on in the interior unconscious spiritual mind that is occupied by the angels. Therefore the activity in the interior-natural mind allows us to be rationally conscious of the spiritual world, its events, heaven, and the Lord. This is no speechless ecstasy or religious swooning, but only rational understanding of interior truths. These interior truths are genuine spiritual and conjoin us to the Lord and heaven. The expression “higher consciousness” properly refers to this consciousness of the activity in our interior-natural mind.
How the this mind is opened by the Lord is discussed in Chapter 7 Sections 8 and 9.
5. Regeneration Requires Rational Consciousness
Referring to the New Church mind, there is no way that we can ‘break through’ to higher consciousness by meditating on the Lord or on the Writings, or by inhibiting content to one’s thinking while sitting in meditation or some posture of repentance. The only way for the New Church mind to draw near to the Lord and to the higher consciousness angels are in, is through rational consciousness, not natural (xx). This is because all the concepts of the Second Coming are rational, and all the ideas of the angels are rational, not natural. This is necessary since the New Heavens of the Lord’s Second Coming have replaced all the old heavens, so that the angels had to acquire the rational truths of the Divine Human revealed in the Writings. All those who now enter heaven must do so through these “interior rational” truths, also called “spiritual-rational” truths, and also “celestial truths.” The spiritual sense of the Writings is called the Heavenly Doctrines, and all the ideas of this Divine Doctrine are spiritual-rational and celestial.
Meditation and other specialized cognitive activities cannot contain any spiritual-rational concepts, but only natural-corporeal and natural-sensuous ideas, visions, or realizations. In Eastern practice of these specialized cognitive activities it is expected that such cosmic breakthroughs to God do occur. But the New Church mind is set in a different order where it is known that discrete degrees prevent continuous progression to occur between degrees (DLW 236-8). There is no way to acquire, receive, see, or understand spiritual-rational (or celestial) truths from the natural mind and its activity of mediation, ecstasy, or swooning. Everything that is from the natural mind is from self and the world, therefore totally devoid of genuine spirituality (AC 978, 4286; AE 355:14). Spirituality comes solely from the interior rational which is where the angels inflow in our mind with celestial truths. This unconscious activity arouses by correspondence the activity in the interior-natural mind, from which we are enlightened, that is, perceive by means of spiritual-rational consciousness. This is called “higher consciousness” because it is a discrete degree above the natural-rational consciousness that is from self-intelligence and natural science.
For us there cannot be a supreme moment of achievement in meditation whereby the Lord breaks through from within and presents Himself to us sensuously, as He did to Swedenborg, and others before him in visions, as the Bible testifies. In the new era of the Second Coming the Lord can only come to us in the interior-natural, after He opens it (AE 708[2]). And this opening can occur only to the extent that our natural-rational has been appropriately prepared by a life of discipline and virtue (reformation and regeneration). Meditation and Yoga, and etc., can be useful as lessons in discipline to the external man, but not as sensuous breakthroughs to the Lord in the internal man, or of reaching higher spiritual consciousness.
Those who receive the light of intelligence from the Lord as a sun are those with whom the intellectual and its rational have been opened, and who have, in consequence, thought rationally about what should be believed from the spiritual affection of truth; while those who receive light from the Lord as a moon are those in whom the intellectual and interior rational have not been opened, but only the natural, and who in consequence have thought from the memory about what should be believed; and to think about this from the memory is to think only from such things as have been heard from a teacher or preacher, which they call truths and believe to be truths although they may be falsities, since they are not seen beyond the memory.
If such while in the world were also in the faith of charity, they are in the heavens under the Lord as a moon, for the lumen, from which is their intelligence, is like the moon's lumen in the nighttime, while the light from which is the intelligence of those who are in the heavens under the Lord as a sun is like the light of day. (...) Their affection of knowing truth and doing good is, like themselves, natural, thus deriving more or less from the glory of being learned, and from reputation that looks to honors and gain as rewards, differing in this from such spiritual affection of knowing truth and doing good as those have who are in heaven under the Lord as a sun, for with these this affection is so separated from natural affection that the natural affection is under the feet. (...) To this is to be added, that there are three heavens that are under the Lord as a moon, a higher, a middle, and a lower; or what is the same, an interior, a middle, and an exterior, but yet all who are in these heavens are natural. These heavens are interior, middle, and exterior, because the natural like the spiritual is divided into three degrees; the exterior-natural communicates with the world, the interior with heaven, and the middle conjoins.
Nevertheless, those who are in the heavens under the Lord as a moon cannot enter into the heavens that are under the Lord as a sun, because their interior sight or understanding has been formed to receive the lunar light there, and not to receive the solar light. They are comparatively not unlike those birds that see in the night and not in the daytime, consequently when they come into the sunlight that those have who are under the Lord as a sun their sight is darkened. Those who are in these heavens are those who have been in charity according to their religious principle, or according to their faith; but such as are natural and are not in the faith of charity are in the hells under these heavens. (AE 708)
Note the statement in the next to the last paragraph in the quote: “the natural like the spiritual is divided into three degrees; the exterior-natural communicates with the world, the interior with heaven, and the middle conjoins.” Here the “exterior-natural” refers to the three levels in the natural mind: corporeal, sensuous, and rational. these are called external in contrast to the “internal man” which refers to the spiritual mind, here called the “interior degree that communicates with heaven.” And in between the internal man and the external man is “the middle that conjoins” the two. This middle portion is called the interior-natural mind.
Fore greater clarity of conceptualization, please consult the diagrams in Chapter 7 Sections 8 and 9.
6. The Two Phases Of Regeneration
The New Church mind ought to develop its own indigenous forms of regeneration disciplines based directly on the Writings, rather than fall back on imported disciplines. In an article in New Church Life a few years ago (xx), Wilson Van Dusen, who is an acknowledged expert in both Eastern disciplines and in Swedenborg, complained that the Writings, which he acknowledges as “most excellent,” lack one thing however, and that is, disciplines that help us in regeneration—hence he recommended we create them and recommends a mental exercise called “going within” and other forms of meditation.
But in fact disciplines are implied in the Writings where regeneration is discussed—which is indeed almost everywhere. The rational concepts of the Writings easily lead us to formulate any number of disciplines suitable for our regeneration, as illustrated in this volume. We shall call them “regeneration disciplines.” They are spiritual disciplines as well as religious disciplines because of the purpose that motivates us to perform the discipline repeatedly in daily activities, hour by hour, and minute by minute. Regeneration refers to the biological process of growing new spiritual fibers in huge quantities. A fiber is an organic part of the will and the understanding, which are the two organs that make up the human mind.
To grow a new spiritual fiber we must reconnect an old spiritual fiber. This is because the old fibers are coiled the wrong way in a permanent organic structure that is an image or model of hell, thus infernal, monstrous, and opposed to heaven. This mass of ossified, dehumanized, blob is connected to the hells, communicates with the hells, is influenced by the hells, and with irresistible force pulls the individual to hell in the afterlife. It is called “man’s proprium” (xx). This is the Fall of the human race. Now when any infant is born on earth its proprium irresistibly leads it to hell in the afterlife. In order to alter this biology, the Lord has provided the process of regeneration. This involves a rebirth phase called reformation of the understanding, and a regeneration phase of the will. The regenerated mind is new mind, not a repaired or fixed up old mind. The entire old mind must be put to sleep, and the entire new mind must be grown into a new understanding and a new will.
Any individual is regenerated who is willing. The process involves two phases.
Phase 1: Reformation of the understanding or cognitive mind.
This involves studying the Writings and having its literal sentences available in the mind in order to evaluate the concepts and ideas we have. The cognitive mind is made of our concepts and ideas, and the reasoning process we use to make decisions in all things of life. These life strategies run our daily and hourly decisions and dictate our attitudes. Thinking is involved in everything we do—getting dressed, driving to work, having a conversation, daydreaming, reading the Writings, etc. Every second of life occupies at least one thinking act, and possibly more, so that on any day we have a potential of performing more than 86,000 thinking acts. This is daily. Now we must examine as many of them as possible in the light of what we know from the Writings. Do they fit or do they not? It will be seen more and more THAT NONE FIT! The reason for this is fully explained in Volume 1. Reformation takes months, sometimes years, in order to rearrange everything in the mind. But sooner or later, enough things in the mind are rearranged that we can begin phase 2, even as we continue working on phase 1. The Lord provides for an overlap for the sake of maximum progress in our regeneration.
Phase 2: Regeneration of the will or affective mind.
The understanding is reformed from without, using the Letter of the Writings which we have taken up in our natural-rational mind (see phase 1). The will is regenerated from within, when we apply the Doctrine of the Letter in our understanding to our motives. This is called from within, while the understanding is called from without, because the organ to the will is a discrete degree above the organ of the understanding. This is why we say that the motive is within the act, “within” referring to a discrete degree above. Every act of thinking is performed FROM THE WILL. No act of thinking can take place on its own for it has no power, just as my electric toaster could not operate when I don’t plug it in. The will provides the power and the on/off timing of every act of thinking. The organ of the will is made of spiritual fibers that are tied to either hell or heaven. The will cannot live or exist when not so tied to either heaven or hell.
The unregenerate will is called the proprium or self. Human beings are nothing but affections that exteriorize as thinking acts, which in turn exteriorize as sensory and motor acts of the physical body. Human actions are therefore produced by a threefold self: the will, the understanding, and the sensorimotor or corporeal mind. This threefold self is the person, the body being nothing but an inanimate chemical plant under the control of the threefold self.
|
