Scientific discovery of Spiritual Laws given in Rational
Scientific Revelations
|
|
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
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 3 Additional Regeneration Disciplines
Table of Contents
Access other Chapters and Volumes here: Additional Regeneration Disciplines 2. Laundry And Housecleaning Disciplines 3. Daily Disciplines Of Studying The Writings 4. Monitoring What’s In My Mind 5. Monitoring What’s On My Face 6. Monitoring What Are My Eyes Doing 8. Conjugial Grooming Rituals. 9. The Discipline Of Junk E-Mail 10. How To Handle Junk Phone Calls 11. The Spiritual Discipline Of Eating Half-Portions 12. Arrival And Departure Rituals With The Wife 13. The Spiritual Discipline Of Colon Cleansing 14. Acknowledging The Lord’s Co-Presence 15. Talking To The Lord Is To Apply The Letter To The Letter 16. Rational Consciousness Of The Lord Now Conjoins 17. Rational Consciousness From Applying The Letter To The Letter 18. So Far As The Lord Is Present, So Far He Speaks With The Man 19. Cleanliness And Health Disciplines 20. Not Detachment, But Right Attachments 21. Self-worth, Self-esteem, Self-efficacy 22. Remains Are The Cornerstone of Self-worth 23. Shunning The Rage-Depression Spin Cycle
Access other Chapters and Volumes here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html Every
spiritual truth in the Writings
Chapter 3Additional Regeneration Disciplines
It is said in the Word, that everyone shall be judged according to his works; for the end, or the love of his will, and the cause, or the reason of his understanding, are together in the effects, which are the works of his body; thus the quality of the whole man is in them. (ISB 7)
These are briefer treatments of additional spiritual disciplines for helping to form the New Church mind in ourselves. It will be easy for you think of new ones that suit you. If you’d like to share these anonymously, please email me at leon@hawaii.edu and I will include them in this list. It would be helpful if you added an explanation as to how you’re making it a religious discipline.
Always do your work as if TV cameras are all around, recording everything for all to see. It’s an issue of “truth in advertising” regarding the reputation you enjoy as someone who has respect for others. Do not touch their food with your hand, pretending you used a serving spoon. Do not give them a drink from a bottle you drink from. Etc. Volunteer to take over certain things on a permanent basis so that people depend on you for it. Examples:
q Washing all dishes after meals. q Washing pots, utensils, counters, etc. while someone is cooking or afterwards. q Preparing lunch bags for others. This includes shopping for the ingredients. q Be responsible for maintaining and adding items to the weekly grocery shopping list. q Go shopping with whoever does it for the family and help find and carry things. q Volunteer to prepare meals and insist on cleaning up after yourself. q Offer to mop the floor when needed (extend the offer to vacuum the carpets). q Etc.
After several years of the discipline of washing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, I find amazing mistakes and ignorance about basic things in my willing and thinking. Recently Diane pointed out that I’m doing the last wipe of the pan with the sponge before putting it away. What about contamination by the sponge? I denied that the sponge is contaminated by bacteria since I squeeze it dry under running water with each dish. After seeing that I’m continuing to disagree, she fetched the hydrogen peroxide bottle and I poured some on the sponge, just like we had seen it done on TV. It bubbled and frothed! The truth of the evidence convicted me! I apologized to her with a kiss and she walked off no doubt in conjugial victory. Since that hour I use a paper towel for the final wipe off and wash the sponge itself at the end of each use. How could I be so blind as to assume that the sponge itself needs no cleaning?
2. Laundry And Housecleaning Disciplines
Doing it Folding the clothes the way she wants it and while they are still warm Knowing where they go in the drawers
3. Daily Disciplines Of Studying The Writings
Our ability to cooperate in our regeneration requires that we study the Writings as often as possible. I believe that daily study is necessary. Find different way of doing this. For instance:
q Read the volumes systematically so that you get through each Work, one by one, from the first page to the last. Keep a marker so you can start each time from where you left off. The point is not how fast you can get through but whether you do it daily.
q Keep a note book or cumulative folder with your thoughts as you read, or when you’re done, or at any time you’re inspired by an idea. Mark it with a reference to the Number in the Work so you can go back to it when you want to.
q Consult your notes and make summary statements. Try representing the content in the form of lists, tables, and diagrams. Use your school literacy to do an effective job.
q Learn to use New Search, either on your computer, or on the Web. Spend time searching the Writings by subject or topic. Do it until you’re skilled. Try to enjoy it or else, act like you do. Use your skills to study and develop topics of interest.
q If you read articles and collateral works about the Writings, check the references to the passages—are thy really relevant and do they actually support the claims being made?
q Acquire audio books of the Writings (General Church Recording Library) and practice listening under appropriate conditions. I found that it’s excellent for listening during my physical workout, in waiting rooms, on airplanes, while driving, and especially when going to sleep.
q Enroll in group study and lessons about the Writings.
4. Monitoring What’s In My Mind
We do not know accurately what’s in our mind until we monitor ourselves by taking systematic samples through self-witnessing. Some cumulative record of these samples needs to be kept in some form—notepad, audio recorder, form sheets that list items you can circle, etc. These records should specify how many minutes you spend thinking and daydreaming about various subjects, and in what way—e.g., with anger, with denigration, with compassion, with humor, etc.. Also, what are the topics you discuss with others. Also, how many minutes you spend watching TV and movies, and what type of content it has. Also, how much time you spend with your wife doing what specific activities and talking about what specific topics. Also, how many times certain events occur: a fight with her, a disagreement, having a good time together, how many you made her laugh, how many times you kissed her, or praised her, and the like.
Obviously this is not an easy or insignificant task in terms of involvement and effort. One way to make it more manageable is to specialize in certain topics or activities depending on what seems to impede your progress in conjugial union. It may be helpful to share the data with your wife so that she can give you her advice.
5. Monitoring What’s On My Face
The Writings reveal that the face is a mirror of our thoughts, feelings, and mood. For example:
The face, with the ancients, signified internal things, because internal things shine forth through the face; and in the most ancient times men were such that the face was in perfect accord with the internals, so that from a man's face everyone could see of what disposition or mind he was. They considered it a monstrous thing to show one thing by the face and think another. (AC 358)
The “disposition” of the mind in the celestial or regenerated individual projects itself by correspondence to the physical features of the body and face. While we are regenerating in the physical body we struggle to hold in aversion our inherited “face” which denotes the evils and falsities in our unregenerated mind. It makes sense therefore that we watch our facial expressions so that we can become conscious of what our inherited evils are (CL 202).
As I got older (I’m now 63) my face wants more and more to settle into a few caricatures of my uncles and cousins whom I haven’t seen for decades. My wife was the first to sound the alarm when she briefly met one of my uncles in his 50s and afterward began noting that my face made certain expressions that were almost identical to those of my uncle. As is normal for me to do, I dismissed her idea. Of course there is a resemblance—I noted that myself, but I rejected the notion that my expressions were a near copy to his. After all, I was modern, educated, enculturated, and he was still somewhat from the old country in his ideas and orientation. Nevertheless, as my wife kept up her conjugial anti-face campaign, I started looking at my face at other times than the morning shaving routine.
1. Look at your face in the mirror. Completely relax it. This takes a little while. Tell yourself what our Yoga always says in rest pose: “Let go of all muscles that create expression. Let your flesh fall off your bones.” Observe your face at rest. Monitor your reactions and thoughts. Repeat this exercise on different days for awhile. It will give you a baseline familiarity for your facial expressions.
2. At different times of the day, look for opportunities to see your face. When you’re in the bathroom, or other place where there are mirrors around—department stores, restaurants, restrooms. You can also carry a mirror, of course, though the size limits the view to a portion of the face. Doing this will allow you to get to know what your face is doing. Others see it clearly so we need to know what others can see. This is called objectivity on oneself.
3. When you have occasion to look at your uncles and cousins monitor their facial expressions by being conscious of them rather than merely being reactive in sudden memory (see Chapter 8 Section 1).
Get to know their expressions so that you’ll be able to recognize these expressions in your face. You can have a similar focus when you see photographs or videos of them. Explore the kind of emotions you experience as you recognize yourself in them and them in you. At first I was sort of proud and reassured. It gave me a belongingness, and upon occasion I might even feel some close connection and love for them. But this was followed by a feeling of embarrassment when I became educated and enculturated and was inspired by the feeling to put my origins behind me and to be the new modern man. I thought I had put them away from me, until my wife started telling me that my face was them.
4. Search the Writings and talk to the Lord about your face. There may be a difficult conflict for you to overcome here on account of our inherent attachments to family and race. There is a nonduality to fight and get out of the way of regeneration. This is the corporeal idea expressed in popular logic as “blood is not water.” Every institution in our society raises family loyalty to a virtue and patriotic duty. And this is indeed commendable. But in the New Church mind. more needs to be added to this picture.
First, familial ties are for the most part not recognized in the afterlife (AC 3815[2]). Parents do not know their offspring and vice versa except at initial stages of arrival when we are still in the external natural memories of our life in the physical body. And this makes sense because everyone can know that their thoughts, opinions, feelings, emotions are often not like those of their parents and family. Hence conflict, disputes, and anger, which are quite common. Since our interiors are therefore different and even opposed to our family members we are not going to be with our families in the afterlife where only those who are interiorly similar can be present to teach other (HH 193).
Second, the Writings reveal that the hereditary line is totally mixed so that we inherit and pass on innumerable evils that tie us to the hell societies in everything we do all day long (CL 202). From our families hereditarily we only have the infernal and the animal (AC 1438). Anything genuinely good must be acquired for ourselves by rebirth and regeneration. You might be vexed at this and naturally think in protest: “But what about the good things I have from inheritance? Like my desire to be a perfectionist. My compassion for people in need. My loyalty to religion and patriotism. My muscular body build. Most of us in our family have these things.” Perhaps. But in any case we need to remind ourselves that whatever good we receive from any source is not from that source but from the Lord alone. Therefore we ought not to attribute spiritual value to what we inherit in the unregenerate natural mind.
These two important points allow us to free ourselves from the bondage of the family face, to the extent that we take them to heart. This means monitoring when we are prejudiced on some issue and automatically favor our family or our race. We must systematically undo these harmful connections in our mind. They are harmful because they impede our regeneration. The target goal in our regeneration is to leave all that is in our mind from natural sources, and replace it with things from spiritual sources only. Then our external mind, still natural, will be in the Lords’ order and obedient to spiritual affections.
When our mind reflects our spiritual affections, our face is no longer similar to our inherited family face. It is a new face to go with the reborn character. This new face is celestial and is similar to the faces of the angels in the heavenly society in which you live (AC 4797; HH 47).
Remember that your face-control program is going to be successful to the extent that you let your wife give you feedback at any time she is moved to do so, and then only to the extent that you take her feedback to heart and do not dismiss it as exaggeration or imagination. This I have been guilty of for years.
The face is an external vessel for representing the mind’s life and spiritual orientation. It stands to reason that building a new face for yourself ought to go together with building your reborn character. Further, as the face solidifies with age into family caricatures, the new spiritual affections we are trying to foster have nowhere to settle, and like Noah’s dove must return to the Ark unable to find dry land to settle on (Gen. 8:6-9). The solidified family face impedes our regeneration. Wives whose conjugial has been nurtured by the husband, sense and know all this about them. They know from the Writings that their husband in heaven is not going to look like her husband looks now: as he scowls at her, or tightens his lips in anger, or clamps down on his teeth tightening the cheek muscles, with eyes that are cold with self-determination, lips that purse in arrogance and derision. She knows this is not her celestial husband but a devil who has hijacked her husband and speaks to her through him. How tenderly she longs for the day when her husband begins to change his face and starts looking like he is truly hers, not his family’s. This is the Divine commandment that a husband leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, that they might be one flesh to eternity. (AC 5354)
Similar things as were said concerning the face need to be applied to the way we laugh, the way our voice sounds by which it is recognized by others, and the style of body activity—gestures, posture, sitting position, and moving.
6. Monitoring What Are My Eyes Doing
Everyone knows the old adage that the eyes are the window to the soul. It is preserved in our linguistic socialization so every individual is cultured into that idea. In our unregenerate state we do not know what kind of a window this is. We imagine that it’s like partition between two places, one called the soul and the other called the eyes. We realize that eyes are out there in the open while soul is in there, hidden from observation. Yet somehow by looking at the eyes, we imagine, one can see into the soul. These are natural ways of thinking about it.
But when we gain in understanding of the dualities in the Writings we realize that there must be a correspondential relation between the soul which is in the spiritual world and the eyes which are in the natural world. The eyes react by correspondence to what is going on in the soul. This is why we can say rationally that the eyes reveal to outside observation what type of willing and thinking is going on in the mind. Have you ever tried to look at someone in the eye and see what they are willing and thinking? My own observation has been that this approach yields almost no results. I cannot know what another is willing, intending, thinking, or reasoning no matter how much I stare in their eyes. The closest where I do have some success is babies and infants.
So there must be another way of understanding the statement that the eyes are the windows to the soul. The solution lies in thinking about our own soul and our own eyes rather than another’s. Yes, our own willing and thinking is very obscure to us, we hardly know a very tiny fraction of one percent of it. This is not very much. For instance, if we think two thoughts per second, say, and are awake for sixteen hours, we’ve had about xx thoughts on that one day. How many of them do we know what they were? Very few. And fewer for yesterday, and how much the year before, and the decade before? You can see that we get to know a tiny fraction of one percent even when we have an introspective personality. So we must conclude that our willing and thinking is largely unknown to us. This is why it is referred to as the “unconscious” or the “subconscious” (xx).
Now back to our eyes. It’s a feasible task to monitor our eye movements for brief periods. We can do this more easily than we can witness our willing and thinking. Now the old adage applies perfectly: monitoring what my eyes are doing reveal to me what I’m willing and thinking.
I have found this to be an informative discipline in some specific situations. I have gained more specific knowledge of my unruly affections and imaginations. When I drive my eyes used to constantly rove around to pick up things of interest—what other drivers are doing, what they look like, what expressions they have, what they are doing with their hands. When a car passes me I had to look to see who is doing this to me. When I passed a car that was moving slower than traffic, I had to look at the driver to see who is this person doing such an annoying thing. As I used to walk to my office from the parking lot, my eyes roamed around at will. Whatever I had an affection for, the eyes were obedient in delivering it to my attention and focus. Passers by: I would look at their body parts, their clothes, the condition of the clothes, the folds on the clothes, the shape of the fingers, the kind of shoes they wore—everything that I felt a delight in.
In restaurants my eyes would focus and stare at how people put food in their mouth. It seems that I had an endless collection of affections that were satisfied through control of the eyes. My wife would have to remind me from time to time as we were sitting at table: “Honey, you’re staring.” I was embarrassed, but only for a moment. Mostly I was fascinated by the difficulty I had in controlling my eye movements. I asked how she accomplished it and she answered that she had to train herself to accept the idea that it was rude and an invasion of privacy. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” I’m still working on the problem, at age 63.
When I was in my adolescence there was a song popularized by Dean Martin that had a refrain: “Standing on the corner, watchin’ all the gals go bye” etc. This was a delightful idea to me. I used to pick dark sun glasses to wear so that I can willfully look at whatever I pleased without being detected. Instead of shame, I felt power. I was my own god. I was alone in my mind. I was the ruler in that domain. I did what I pleased. Then in my early forties I began to read the New Testament as a book of God. And I was amazed to read in there that what I did in my mind was no different from committing adultery with the body. Until then my colleagues in psychology encouraged their clients in adulterous fantasies which they claimed are beneficial for a healthier or zestier sex life for married partners who did not cheat on each other. But mental pornography and fantasy adultery was not considered cheating. But now, since the Lord commanded it, I knew I had to reform. And then I discovered how difficult it was to keep my eyes from being taken over by illicit affections.
The mere conclusion in the mind, that adultery is not sin, renders a man an adulterer; - [shown] from those things which have been said on this subject in The Doctrine of Life. Every conclusion in the mind constitutes endeavor in the body, which is the essential act.
I told adulterers, that, in heaven, there is perpetual potency; and they said, if they had known this in the world, they would never have committed whoredom, so that they might come into heaven. But I said, that, in heaven, it is permitted to love only the married partner, in hell to commit whoredom at pleasure; [and I asked] whether, in this case, they would wish to be in hell, or in heaven; but I was unable to extort a reply from them. (SE 6110)
I continue my struggles by which I can corroborate the statement that my eyes are a window to my affections. I discovered thereby many disorderly and evil areas in my mind. Besides scortations, as mentioned above, I became aware how critical my thoughts are, moment by moment, as I’m in the company of others. For instance, as I sit in the doctor’s waiting room, my eyes detect something about somebody and my affections respond with criticism, ridicule, envy, superiority, arrogance, lack of compassion. The eyes are responding to the affections, and these come to my awareness through the thoughts they produce. Now I assess those thoughts and I find them disorderly in various ways, depending on the unregenerate affection.
By keeping a record of your eye movements and the affections and thoughts that accompany them, you are creating a map which is the spiritual geography of your mental landscapes. Now you are armed to be effective in your regeneration disciplines.
So far as anyone indulges in the lusts of the flesh. He is a beast and a wild animal; but so far as he takes delight in the desires of the spirit he is a human being and an angel (TCR 328)
It may seem far fetched to discuss this familiar phrase as a spiritual discipline. But recall that EVERY natural event or act comes into existence by means of the spiritual event or act that corresponds to it. A stone cannot fall, an atom cannot whirl, an earthquake cannot happen without the spiritual cause within it, to which the natural event corresponds. Similarly, you could not raise your hand to the mouth, could not swallow or digest something, could not put on your pants, were it not for the spiritual event to which these little actions correspond. Think of this amazing scientific fact! Every movement of your tongue, eyes, and fingers—which are active every second, are nothing but natural effects of a spiritual cause that is within them as cause is within the effect, or, as cause is prior to the effect, since what is prior in successive order is within in simultaneous order (xx).
So then, now consider, the familiar thought of “holding in my stomach.” The act of holding in the stomach requires a spiritual cause. For instance, when I was in my college student years in my early 20s the self-regulatory thought of “hold in your stomach” was motivated by corporeal vanity. I saw in my mind images of body-building models from magazines and movies. I was too naive to realize the role of editing in movies and photographs, and compared my stomach, thighs, and biceps to theirs, coming far short to what I thought would be attractive to the girls who then would find me irresistible attractive, come up to me saying, “O can I touch your firm stomach.” How insane the unregenerate man appears from hindsight!
In my 30s and 40s my motive for holding in the stomach had risen from corporeal to sensuous. It felt better when I had strong abdominal muscles. Also, my clothes had a better fit. And I could lift things or stand erect without feeling exhausted or hurt afterwards. In my 50s and beyond my motive became natural-rational. I saw a bulging stomach as the sign of a spiritually insane lifestyle. In our youth we hold in the stomach out of self-love and the desire to be admired and found physically attractive. When we get married and grow middle-aged, men no longer care about their physical attractiveness as much as other things and “let themselves go.” This means they let their stomach bulge, an act of letting go of physical discipline, thus of a healthy lifestyle. Our stomach is therefore a sign post, a signal of our spiritual life.
The stomach reflects and represents the order or disorder in our natural mind. Such as is the willing or thinking we do every day, such is the stomach from without and within.
The stomach represents our natural mind. From without it represents our lower mind—corporeal and sensuous. From within, the stomach represents our higher mind—the natural-rational mind.
The world of spirits, which is in the midst between heaven and hell, and into which every man first comes after death, and is there prepared, corresponds to the stomach, in which all the things put in are prepared either to become blood and flesh, or to become excrement and urine, the latter having a correspondence with hell, but the former with heaven. (AR 204)
The expression “holding in the stomach” refers to the outside of the stomach, hence the lower mind. To “hold in” the lower mind means to control it, to manage it, to compel and coerce it to obey the higher rational mind. The expression “to let it all hang out” means the opposite of “to hold in your stomach.” One voice is from hell, the other from heaven. Those in the hells who are connected to our natural mind congregate at our stomach and act into it. The passage above indicates that the stomach is a correspondence for the spiritual world, and especially the portion of it where we first arrive, a few hours after the time to the physical body has been broken by the Lord.
The passage also points out the parallelism between the body’s duality of “to become blood and flesh” vs. “to become excrement and urine.” The expression ““to become blood and flesh” signifies to be regenerated for life in heaven. The expression “to become excrement and urine,” signifies to remain unregenerate, such as one was born, that is infernal. To put things in our stomach therefore represents to acquire ideas and experiences in daily life. As the popular saying goes, “Garbage in, garbage out.” A protruding stomach cannot be held in despite determined effort. The spiritual cause of the protruding stomach is the state of disorder of our natural mind. It is filled with nondualities that allow and permit the protruding stomach. For example, men of renown in society are admired for their accomplishments equally whether they have a protruding stomach or not.
This shows the operation of the human level of thinking which is in the lower or external mind. Here, the spiritual does not exist. Not even the moral, since moral thinking and concerns about God and the afterlife, are rational concerns. These concerns operate only in the higher self, or higher portions of the natural mind called the natural-rational mind.
The relationship between our afterlife and holding the stomach in, becomes obvious when we consider the correspondences just discussed. In order for stomach-control, outward and inward, to become a regeneration discipline we must apply the Spiritual Doctrine we extract from the Letter of the Writings to it (see Volume 2). Stomach-control must first be acknowledged as an image of our regeneration. What it takes to control the stomach is the very thing that is needed for regeneration, namely, the application of the Letter of the Writings to our willing and thinking all day long.
To control the outward appearance of our stomach we need to undergo reformation, and to control the inward content and operation of the stomach we need to undergo regeneration. The outward control of the stomach represents the control of the outward mind, which is called the organ of understanding (xx). As described in Volume 1, reformation is the activity of rearranging everything in our mind from nonduality to duality, using the Writings exclusively as the defining meanings. This application of the Writings to our beliefs and reasonings creates a new natural mind that is like the stomach Adam and Eve had in their pristine earthly paradise, prior to their disobedience. This is not a protruding stomach but an aesthetically pleasing one, shaped to maintain the ideal human appearance and anatomy.
the human body is a perfection of rational creation. The Lord’s infinite wisdom designed the human body and the Lord’s infinite power keeps its created form, as evidenced by Swedenborg’s observations as to the beauty and perfection of the appearance of angels. Angels have a spirit-body that is the ideal for the perfect physical body on earth. An angel’s stomach does not produce any waste! The gross eliminations of the physical body are not a necessary part of life that has been tied to the physical body by creation. If the human race were to return to regeneration, and have offspring as regenerated parents, the generations of the future will be celestial minds, and they have an ideal physical body—ideal and perfect in appearance outwardly, and in operation inwardly. Thus there ought to be now waste, and the environment will offer no substances for producing waste, as it does now.
What we put into our stomach is a spiritual decision that has consequences to eternity for our personal fate.
Is this not a scary thought, given the lifestyle of our culture today?
Controlling what we eat and holding the stomach in successfully, are very important regeneration disciplines for the formation of the New Church mind.
The method of self-witnessing is essential for success given that everything in our lower self, as aided by the forces of the hells, oppose our attempt to gain control over the outward appearance and inward content of our stomach. The stomach belongs to heredity. Initially. And our task is to wrest it from this infernal enrooting. We can win only with the help of the angels that the Lord sends to rescue us and deliver us from this hereditary and cultural entrapment. But angels can only enter and empower rational loves.
Therefore we must first acquire rational loves through reformation. This is represented by controlling the outward appearance of the stomach. We do sit ups. We buy exercise machines. We run. We dance in aerobic groups or to a video of it. These are the sensuous attempts from the sensuous mind that is above the corporeal mind but below the rational mind (see the anatomy diagrams of the mind in Volume 2). The corporeal mind doesn’t wish to control the appearance of the stomach by means of exercise to build abdominal muscle and by means of burning calories to trim the stomach from its unsightly and deadly glob of fat, accumulated by eating excessively of dead animals and sugar products. Instead, it makes more sense to the corporeal level of thinking to take drugs, to have liposuction, or the surgical removal of portions stomach or the stapling together of its parts. The corporeal mind is averse to discipline, while the sensuous mind loves discipline.
Rational loves are above the sensuous. All spiritual ideas begin in the rational mind. Ideas have love within them and in fact, are nothing but the outward from of love (xx). Rational loves are ideas within which angels can enter and empower us to control the natural mind. Every sentence and expression in the Letter of the Writings, is a rational idea. They are natural-rational correspondences for spiritual ideas. The angels that empower us to control the stomach depend on finding an entry point into our mind, and this entry point is constructed out of natural-rational ideas WHEN WE CONSIDER THEM CORRESPONDENCES.
This I consider to be most important and critical, as you can see by my capitalizing the idea!
This subject is discussed in detail in Volume 2. Here we only need to make the connection to stomach control as regeneration discipline.
Why is it so crucial that we consider stomach control a correspondence for a spiritual event or idea?
First, this is the condition for a discipline to be a regeneration discipline rather than a natural or moral discipline. The spiritual can only be understood in rational ideas, and rational ideas are laid down in the natural-rational level of understanding. Our understanding of the spiritual cause of any natural event depends on understanding rational correspondences (xx). There is no other way the Lord has provided. We cannot climb up to the moon on an airplane, balloon, or upward moving air current. We cannot have a spiritual understanding of spiritual topics except by understanding correspondences. So the first step in creating a regeneration discipline out of holding in the stomach, is to see it as a correspondence.
I have discussed above what the stomach corresponds to, and what holding in corresponds to, both in terms of control of external appearance and inward content or operation.
For decades now I have exerted stomach control as a regeneration discipline. As the years pile up I have a deeper rational understanding of my struggle and victories. To be effective, I need to think about the correspondence of what I am doing in my willing and thinking around the stomach. For example, when I clean up the kitchen after serving a meal, my wife sometimes has one or two bites left on her plate. In the early years I thought this was ridiculous—Why not just finish it off. This “Garbage in, garbage out” philosophy I had from inheritance and upbringing. Now as I think of correspondences, I admire her rational stance. It is like that of angels who eat the most delicious foods instantiated by the Lord on their tables—never to full stomach, which they consider a gross involvement of the mind and not at all compatible with the celestial state (xx).
After I stopped denigrating her for her celestial behavior, I still continued to practice the “Garbage in, garbage out” philosophy of eating, and popping the bites into my mouth before holding the dish under the running water. I’m aware of the shamefulness or spiritual opprobrium of this habit, as shown by the fact that I sometimes turn around as I’m about to do it, to make sure no one is watching me. I hate the thought of my looking that way, stuffing my mouth with wet hands, eyes darting like a vulture in the air to see the next bite I can pop, or like a dog of the prairies sniffing the air for carcass. Sure enough, I’m 10 lbs. overweight. Right now as I type this, my mind is searching with the ceaseless search for food, for snacks, for something to place in my stomach. My stomach is trying to gain control over my mind even as my rational tries to gain control over it. It s a battle for the soul, that is, for my fate in heaven or in eternal hell.
One of the rational strategies I use to control my stomach is the discipline of half-portions, discussed elsewhere in this Section. Another involves substituting a healthy low-calorie snack for chocolate, ice cream, cake, cheese, or leftover chicken and pizza. I like fruits and nuts as worthwhile and satisfying substitutes. I learned from my wife to stop buying larger and larger sizes in pants and underpants. Let the discomfort of their tightness be a constant reminder and motivator to stop stuffing my stomach.
The most important strategy I discovered is superior to all the diet programs in this country, whose populations spends many billions a year on controlling the stomach—and without any lasting success. What I discovered is this rational truth: To control my stomach I must value being hungry.
A very obvious scientific and practical principle, but not followed. Instead the opposite principle is followed, namely, how not to feel hungry.
Feeling hungry is aversive, unpleasant. From inheritance and upbringing I have developed a panic button which gets pushed at the first sign of feeling hungry. I start looking around thinking “I could eat something.” It’s animal. So I had to undergo reformation regarding the feeling of being hungry. From it being an aversive experience, I had to engineer feeling it as a good pleasant experience. When I feel hungry I reinforce my lower self by saying, “Good. I’m losing weight right now. Thank you Lord.”
And so my struggle continues. Stomach control is the very symbol of my regeneration. My willing and thinking in relation to my stomach control struggles, seeks to be rational and spiritual by thinking of its correspondences in as much detail as possible. Sometimes you’ll need to keep a record of what you put in your mouth in the course of the day. Also, what your emotions and thoughts are prior to eating something, during eating, and afterwards.
Monitoring what our mouth is doing while eating is a very important aspect of holding in the stomach as a regeneration discipline. My wife eats slowly compared to me. My plate is cleaned off as she gets through half of it. Therefore what she does with her mouth and mine while eating are very different. The Doctrine of the Wife requires me to love to act form the wife more than from self (see Section 1). It’s not compatible with my Doctrine to love mouth activities that are contrary to her loves. Will I be able to share a table with her in her heavenly mansion? Not if I love to do with my mouth one thing and she is aversive to it, or loves another thing. For instance, I love to swallow a larger bite than she does. My observation of this has revealed that I have a unregenerate corporeal affection for greater pressure on the walls of the throat and the back of the mouth cavity while swallowing. She has learned to give that up as not comely and heavenly.
Many such details in our daily corporeal routines need to be monitored, identified, analyzed, deconstructed, judged, inhibited, and at last, detested.
Look for opportunities to hang around while your wife gets dressed. It’s an awesome ritual that is fascinating to observe with respect and friendship. It allows intimacy and discussion on clothes, etc. This is on her mind, so it should on yours too, don’t you think—in view of all that has been said about sweetheart rituals? (see Chapter 9 Section 7). Then if you’re there, doing nothing, just hanging around her, she will say to you “Zip me.” That’s your victory, savor it, for she has elected you to intimate friendship, so precious from a conjugial wife.
The same applies when she gets undressed. Hang around, be pleasant and light, don’t introduce topics—let her choose all the topics when you hang around her. But be animated and interested in your responses. Your victory will come when she says: “Unzip me.” What a privilege! If this seems a bit exaggerated, you don’t have to trust that opinion. Perhaps it seems strange because unfamiliar, or perhaps some prejudiced assumption wants to nix the idea. Do not be deterred, but valiantly let your rational loves dictate what your sensorimotor behavior will be. Compel your lower yourself to obey since it has no vision of a rational reality such as is described in the Word of the Second Coming. What does this lower self know about conjugial love except as something to be ridiculed or feared?
9. The Discipline Of Junk E-Mail
Most people I know use email. The volume of increase in exchanging messages is astonishing. Tens of millions of people send out billions of messages to teach other daily. Business minds are finding all sorts of ways to use this steady exchange traffic so that their many email messages enter your mailbox daily and hourly. Now it’s up to you what your move is. Some are good moves, some are not.
One is to read everything, then decide to answer, delete, or save in a folder. The second is to look at the Subject line and delete without looking at the messages whatever seems like “junk” mail, as these unsolicited and illegal messages are called. This choice is better, while the first contains risks you need to be aware of.
One type of risk is a colossal waste of time. Another is that you fill your external mind with scortatory images which many of the messages contain. Your rational mind is then going to have to fight against and eliminate these scortatory images. To do so is a Divine Commandment and is a necessary part of our required regeneration (AE 734). This is because every scortatory image is from hell and if we delight in it in any way, we are tied to that infernal society where the scortatory delight issues from in endless billows into the natural mind, and pollutes it. This makes it much harder to regenerate, and from a ”light burden” it becomes heavy to bear (Matt. 11:30, AC 905). It makes sense therefore that we would want to protect our outward mind from unnecessary exposure, more than what we actually have no choice about. Here we can delete using the Subject line as clue. And in a few cases where it is ambiguous and you rather check, do so, but do not read, just check.
Another risk is to expose yourself to all sorts of business deals and investments that you then have to figure out what to do about. This is relevant to those who are active on the Internet in various ways. In my case I have an active presence being the author of a book on Road Rage which frequently puts me and my wife (the co-author) in news articles whenever the topic is discussed around the country and the world (see Note 17 at end). I’m known on the Web as DrDriving and receive dozens of email daily. I have to sift through what is a request for advice (“Dear DrDriving”), what is junk mail, and what are business propositions. I’ve become skilled in not reading more than what I need for each message.
Here is one example of an email I received this morning:
Subject: Please Reply (Help)
Pleading for your help!!
Dear Dr. Leon James, Following the sudden death of my husband General Damu Taraba the late former head of state of Nigeria in August
My finger hits the delete button at the word “August.” The total amount of time the message was on the screen was about two seconds. As the screen changes I catch in the corner the words “300 million dollars.” When I first got this kind of letter I read most of it, but subsequently, I delete all others like it as quickly as I identify them. Pretty soon one gets to recognize the various types of junk mail, especially if you monitor the process analytically. You can simply assume that every junk email or “spam” message is about getting money from you. This is the bottom line purpose of all spam. Millions respond to spam, which is what keeps them coming. It’s a business balance sheet issue. Therefore we need to develop a spiritual discipline to keep in check the normal and cultural attraction we feel towards an offer which seems will bring us financial benefit.
Here is just a sample of the spam I got today that I automatically delete after reading the Subject Line or part of it. It takes me less than one minute to process 40 or 50 messages in this way:
Don't get caught by rising interest rates. Growth Stock of the Week: (OTC BB:GTWY) Returned mail: User unknown For Parents who buy School Uniforms for their kids Give me a call Looking for some CHEAP videos? Rebuild your credit with Gold LOSE WEIGHT NATURALLY! No Spam! No Pop-ups! With a FREE NowBox. Leon James / Status: Winner Leon, New Human Growth Hormone Releaser, as seen on NBC, C Leon, Master many popular computer programs in less than 1 Perfect Golf Gift for Dad Joke Email - The Morning After the Night Before.. Unbelievable Prices On Cell Phones And Accessories Reply Requested {thisisjustfor4u!} Leon, Your Credit has been Approved! $150 Free!! Play Now! Attract The Opposite Sex Instantly! URGENT ASSISTANCE NEEDED Look, my beautiful girl friend Your Disney Vacation Awaits! Viagra Delivered See The Sexiest, Naked Celebs Here !! Your Free Amateur Videos Something different!!!
There are several steps to take in order to turn email behavior into a spiritual discipline. First, you need to work out in your mind in what way this is a religious issue. This is the first step for all spiritual disciplines discussed in Volume 2. The nonduality view is that “It’s theoretically possible that at least one or more of these offers could be genuine or would be worth taking up.” This belief is what I would call “the con” which was portrayed in the movie The Sting (xx). This belief is what keeps spam going. So let’s leave spamming to the industry, and let us make a rational decision in freedom, that we are not going to ever respond to anything when it comes to you in that modality or arena. This is a behavior rule that protects us from invasion and trouble.
But there are other aspects to email use that can be placed under discipline. People are relying on email communication more and more so that it enlarges the scope of our daily self-witnessing opportunities (see Note 20 at end). When I compose an email message I remind myself to keep in mind the highest use in the exchange—which is to love my neighbor. This means first and foremost that I am to avoid doing evil to the neighbor. Nothing I write should give offense or express any negative emotions or intentions. If I decide it is incumbent upon to answer a message I remind myself to do it fully. What is it that the neighbor wants to know—I must give that information or point to where the information can be taken from. When I have to write email about a service problem (e.g., tracking an order on Web shopping) I must suppress the desire to complain or use any strong language that merely shows how a person feels and doesn’t contribute anything practical to the exchange. Email venting is to do harm to the neighbor.
I also remind myself that I have to present enough information, not too much, not too little. It often helps to answer various pieces of an issue separately—marked by blank lines or a separator line (I like to use all +++++ as it reminds me of the cross, and the Lord). It also helps to copy and paste selected pieces that speak to the relevant portion. I resist the easier way of merely pasting or retaining the entire message at the bottom. I do this also, but then in addition, I select and paste just the relevant portions in the reply, as I address them. When you choose the “Include Reply” it pastes the entire message up front. You can then delete the portions as you go along, making sure you answer all points.
10. How To Handle Junk Phone Calls
I have a firm policy with telephone calls. I quickly establish the purpose of the call (“Who do you want to talk to? Can I take a message? What is this about?”). I do not respond to “Hi, how are you today?” I get to the point within seconds: “I’m very sorry, but we do not accept telephone solicitations. Please send it to us in the mail.” The salesperson at the other hand sometimes accepts this, sometimes attacks from another angle: “We are not selling anything. We just want you to know that you can upgrade…” At this point I know I need to be very categorical in order to be effective: “I’m sorry to interrupt you. But we do not accept telephone solicitations. Please send it to us in the mail.” With some salespeople even this second insistent repetition does not get them to quit. My limit is one more time, and then I hang up.
I have the occasion to monitor myself with these phone calls several times every week. My wife said after one of these calls that I sounded pretty mean. I was taken aback (as normal for me). My first reaction to her observation: “I was not impolite. These people are sharks. They just put on the nice person act for a few seconds, and if they perceive they won’t get to me, they become nasty and even say profanities as they hang up on me. So I’ve got to be pretty forceful and unequivocal, don’t’ you think?” I felt myself justified in not loving my neighbor. Was this a case of me not loving my neighbor? I reflected and consulted the Lord’s Word. I asked the Lord: “Lord enlighten me about this.” And the answer that came to me was that I consult the Lord’s Word for only there will He speak to me about answers.
I read passages in the Writings about loving the neighbor and how to do that (see Chapter 6 Section 7). I then clearly saw that my wife was wise in her observation. She was telling me not to be mean. She perceived I was, and she knew from her wisdom that this is an infernal act. She intelligently figured it out that I can achieve my goal of effective junk call management by being nice rather than mean. Being mean was not part of the effectiveness. So now I saw her real message: Get rid of any behavior that is mean to people. I saw that this was the religious motive. I saw that this is what the Lord said to Peter who had asked Him how many times one should forgive the neighbor:
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. (Matt. 18:21-22)
From this comes the signification of the number "seventy" which comprises seven ages; for an age, in the Word, is ten years. When anything most holy or sacred was to be expressed, it was said "seventy-sevenfold" as when the Lord said that a man should forgive his brother not until seven times, but until seventy times seven (Matt. 18:22), by which is meant that they should forgive as many times as he sins, so that the forgiving should be without end, or should be eternal, which is holy. (AC 433)
And so: When I’m being not nice to junk phone calls I’m being mean. And this is infernal. And it cannot be justified by their behavior or intent—as clearly said in the passage above. Therefore I have no other choice but to be nice even as I continue to be effective. Now I have the religious motive and the discipline is spiritual. I continue to struggle. Further, I extend the practice to other areas, like phone calls by students “who should be emailing or asking in class.” I can see that whatever I’m thinking about the “foolishness” of others, there is no justification for not loving the neighbor. I cannot allow them to control my religious duty. The love for one’s neighbor cannot be lifted or suspended, but it needs to be accommodated to each situation rather than give everyone the same treatment (see Chapter 6 Section 7). No one deserves insults or rudeness, and so I must find ways of being nice but firm. Even in the worst case scenario when I have to hang up on the caller, there is no need for me to feel anger or annoyance, or to do it by adding a verbal insult. “Sorry I must hang up now.” is adequate enough.
There are many opportunities through an average day to keep relearning this lesson. For years I carried a tape recorder in the car and spoke my thoughts aloud behind the wheel (see Note 17 at end). I was quite amazed at how I sounded on the tape when I played it back—blasphemous, insulting, critical, denigrating, fault-finding, prejudiced, irrational, emotionally unintelligent. I knew I had to change and wowed to become a reformed driver. I first used secular methods of self-modification from my field of social psychology. My success was limited. I reduced overt expressions most of the time since I became convinced I was flirting with dangerous situations. One never knows what the other driver is going to do if you enrage him. More than one thousand drivers are seriously injured every year in road rage violence in the U.S. So it was prudent to keep it to myself. But I knew I had to reform my attitude and my thinking, not merely my overt behavior. My internal reformation as a driver began when I made it into a matter of religion.
What gives me the right to denigrate my neighbor? The Lord commands that we forgive as often as the neighbor sins against us (see Chapter 6 Section 7). This means that I’m hating the Lord when I’m hating the other driver. And I won’t pretend that these things are anything but hating: “I’m only retaliating when provoked” ,“I’m only defending my rights” , “I’m only thinking it so I can feel better” , “It’s just the way it is in traffic, a hell hole” etc. If I lapse in any one instance, I must repent and resolve to avoid it. But I must not allow it as an exception. Not one such affection against the neighbor can be kept if one steps through the heavenly gate. So I must keep struggling. Striving to be a reformed driver is to remain a religious discipline with me.
11. The Spiritual Discipline Of Eating Half-Portions
A Christian email correspondent who was reading the Writings (somewhat) asked me what sins he can keep and still go to heaven. My answer was none. Take for example the question: Can I go to heaven if I’m overweight?
My thoughts led me to this: It must depend on the motive or purpose. Every affection that is not from heaven, without a single exception, cannot enter heaven which is protected by the substances involved.
To no one who enters the spiritual world is it denied to ascend to heaven; but when one who is in the delight of hell enters heaven his heart palpitates, his breathing is labored, his life begins to fail, he is in anguish, distress and torment, and he writhes like a serpent placed close to a fire. This is so because opposites act against each other. (DP 324)
Every affection is either from heaven or from hell (TCR 115; AC 904). The infernal affection cannot enter into the sphere of heaven any more than a small brick can enter into a larger brick and occupy the same space with it. The spiritual coils of fiber that make up an affection are either turned one way called the heavenly way, or turned in the opposite way, called the infernal way. Ask yourself: is being overweight from heaven or from hell? It is from hell because it is disorderly, hurtful, and opposed to a heavenly personality.
Clearly then we cannot enter heaven if we are overweight when we retain an affection for being overweight.
It is said in the church that no one can fulfill the law, and the less so since anyone who sins against one commandment of the Decalogue sins against them all. But this conventional maxim is not as it sounds; for it is to be understood in this way, that anyone who purposefully or deliberately acts against one commandment acts against the rest, since to act purposefully or deliberately is to deny altogether that the action is a sin, and anyone who denies the existence of sin regards it as nothing if he acts against the rest of the commandments. (CL 528)
Look at yourself in the mirror and look at the numbers on the scale and compare them to what they should be for a man your build. The excess in pounds is called being overweight. Consider that what you know about being overweight—that it is unhealthy and makes you sick and less able to function effectively. The Lord commands us to be prudent (Matt. 10:16). Thus, you have no choice but to shed the extra fat and to work them into muscles that are useful and healthy. But how? Millions of Americans spend billions annually on services for losing weight. Surveys indicate that most weight loss is quickly regained and the national mass of fat on people is increasing to the detriment of the nation’s health and happiness.
I was overweight since my days in college. I went through several weight-loss / weight-gain cycles. But I was able to break this cultural pattern when I made it into a religious discipline. I first acknowledged that infernal affections will keep me from heaven, even one infernal affection, as long as I consciously went along with it without constantly fighting it. This one infernal affection will cling to my spiritual mind at the entrance of heaven, and keep me from entering into its sphere. Then I got scared. So I was going to get myself with the range of the a medically recommended weight for my built. I lost the weight and from a 200-lb. overweight man with slacks size 42 I went to a 160-lb. man wearing size 32. And I’ve kept this shape for the past ten years without any relapse.
I use two techniques that work. First, to never give up managing and feeling fully responsible for my weight. This I maintain as a Divine Commandment for the Lord commands us to be prudent in all things (xx), and to be overweight is not prudent. Second, to eat half portions.
This is the simplest of all diets since you don’t have to change what you eat if you’re already eating healthy, as I was. My problem was that I was “feasting every day” and eating more frequently than was necessary. So merely by compelling myself to eat half the normal plate, I started losing weight steadily. At home, it’s a matter of serving half a portion and not having seconds or things on the side during preparation (I’m the cook and clean up man). In restaurants, my wife and I learned to stop after one-third of the plate, then request it to be packed. This is a great boon to a short-order cook like me as it gives us two more fine meals on the next two dinners at home, with my job being merely to add some fresh steamed vegetables.
Portion control is to be exercised in all things we place in our mouth. We love ice cream and double-double chocolate cakes and brownies. Portion control means two bites freely enjoyed, and then we must ask ourselves whether it’s time to quit. The essence of control is to avoid going overboard, since the corporeal self wants to keep going. It feels like tearing yourself away and it is painful. But the rational mind looking down marvels and laughs at this corporeal slavery. Thus control is retained in the mind and our regeneration proceeds unimpeded.
Once in a while we lapse or slide back and either alone, or in company, we break all the rules and eat all that we feel like, giving in to the delicious slavery. After that it’s crucial that you compensate on the next day or two and eat less than the usual half-portion. This keeps your weight down and teaches your corporeal self that you’re in control after all. Compensatory eating combined with half-portions is an effective program of permanent weight control.
But this is not all. I had to follow a self-witnessing discipline to monitor not just how much I ate but how I ate. All sorts of infernal affections are associated with overeating. I observed such things about myself. For instance, I would eat as I walk, which is dangerous because food particles can get stuck in your trachea. So I had to control that. I would put food in my mouth before I swallowed what was there, increasing the rate of eating. And especially, I noted as I was trying to resist the habit, the sensation I received from swallowing a large amount going down “the gullet” was more delightful than small bites. This attachment is infernal because corporeal without obedience to the rational. I had to learn to eat like my wife who had taught herself these things while a young woman. She will not eat that last bite on the plate if she judges she had had enough, whereas I want to throw it in my mouth instead of the garbage. I feel a sense of regret letting go of it. It’s a delight I will not have—says my unruly corporeal self.
Eating slowly and chewing well must be combined with eating half-portions and compensating for each occasion of excess. The appetite control in food behavior becomes a religious discipline that puts us well ahead in our regeneration.
12. Arrival And Departure Rituals With The Wife
Remember what it felt like to see your girl when you were in love and dating her? That should be the baseline level for how we must treat our wife if we are going to make progress in conjugial union. If you are home and your wife arrives, be prepared for this momentous event. For a few minutes prior to her arrival walk around the house and arrange things into proper order, the order she picks when she is at home. Every room should be orderly and clean. Be sure this includes yourself—shave, wash your body, clean your mouth, put on clean clothes. If others are also in the house, prepare them for the arrival in a similar way. Then wait. Look for her to arrive. When you hear the car or see her walk closer or she opens the door, be there. Do not be engaged in some activity so that you have to interrupt it and then turn your attention to her. Jump up and greet her at the door.
Do not block her way at the door by standing there. Do not hug her before she is ready for it. Observe carefully what her usual routine is when she arrives. Do not make comments about her being late or about her not calling or about her being away for so long. Do not inundate her with house topics, messages, or schedules. Understand that she needs to transition.
A wife is a complex human thing. When she leaves the house she has to set her entire existence and inner readinesses to a different level or measure. A wife outside the house has to protect herself from strangers and strange events and topics. When she arrives home it takes a little while to undo, unwind, and soften up. She has to make herself vulnerable again and available to her husband and children. This takes a little time. She does the unwinding by going through her normal arrival rituals. Do not interfere with them. Part of this unwinding ritual is to have you around without your active input. She doesn’t want you to walk away and go do your thing. She wants you to accompany her with a cooperative, helpful, and pleasant disposition.
She goes from room to room, inspecting and doing. She asks a few questions—make the answers informative but brief. Details, later. She makes some comments—Why didn’t you do this or that. Never get defensive or offensive. Let her say it. Give her leeway. Smile a lot and nod your head. Keep explanations at a minimum. Act like she is your sweetheart and you’re so happy again. Help her with her clothes, if she asks, otherwise just stand or sit there, and admire.
Slowly but steadily your wife reconnects herself to the house sphere, to you, and to her children and pets. The arrival ritual is then over.
Now the departure ritual. When she leaves the house and you stay home, arrange your activities so that you are “on call” as she starts to prepare. Do not ask her when she is leaving. Do not ask her are you going to do this or that, are you going to take this or that with you. You can help her by doing these things in a subtle way. Only intervene when there is something obviously wrong or she miscalculated or forgot. Do not let her fall into mistakes or mishaps. Save her by monitoring in the background and noticing.
Be with her as she gets dressed, but do not be in her way. She likes to consult you about her clothes. Be helpful, sincere, knowledgeable. When she is ready to leave the house, be there. Hold the door open for her. Kiss her, bless her, and tell her you’ll miss her and will be waiting eagerly for her return. As she walks away or as the car drives away, wave at her. As she disappears in the distance or around the corner, bend your body out of shape so you can catch one last glimpse of your beloved.
As you walk back inside, you will feel good, complete, right, happy. This is what she gives you for what you give her.
13. The Spiritual Discipline Of Colon Cleansing
People who have been both cruel and adulterous like nothing more in the next life than filth and excrement. To them the stink of these is most sweet and pleasant, and they prefer such odors to all other delights. The reason why lies in their correspondence. Those hells lie partly beneath the buttocks, partly beneath the right foot, and partly in a frontal direction, deep down. These are the hells to which the path through the rectum leads. Once a certain spirit was brought there, from where he spoke to me. He said there was nothing else in sight but latrines. Those there talked to him and led him to various other latrines, which were very numerous there. (AC 5394)
The discipline of oral hygiene and flossing was discussed in several sections in this chapter. The discipline of enemas is even more prone to our resistance, given our cultural training. Yet the practice of medicine is based on regular and repeated assessment of body fluids and excretions. Part of my yearly annual involves giving them urine, blood, and stool lab samples. Enemas are a limited part of the practice of modern medicine. They are used prior to certain procedures such as colorectal inspections, childbirth, certain types of cancers, and some others. But they are not on the recommended list of home hygiene. All sorts of legends and superstitions adhere to it, like the idea that your intestines will get used to it and stop working on their own. Another is that it depletes the good bacteria culture in the colon, leaving yourself open for infections. Also, that it is painful, gross, embarrassing, etc.
I have been practicing the discipline of a weekly enema for many years. It is a religious discipline because I connect it to my hygiene duty. I must keep my body clean, my mouth clean, and my colon clean. They stem from the same motive of the prudent servant who takes care of the body’s health. I have spoken many times about it to an expert in the field: a colonic therapist whose services I have used every six month for the past 30 years. A colonic introduces water into the upper regions of the colon and intestines and requires a machine set up and operator. An enema is self-administered using an enema bag sold at drug stores. It takes about 45 minutes to complete an enema from beginning to end.
After the water is introduced by gravity flow, it is let go on the toilet. Out it comes along with much fecal material. It is advisable to flush repeatedly so that you minimize spreading the offensive odor through the air to the rest of the house. But before you flush, you should stand up and inspect briefly what is in the bowl. Notice the sickly smell, the awful color of the water, the twisted gaseous ugly excrements, and the quantity. This only need take a few seconds, then you quickly flush it away. But the inspection leaves a profound effect of disbelief and disgust. And in my case I find it helpful to remind myself as I sit back down for more of it: O how gross! This came out of me! This is in me every day! This is what’s in people and they refuse to take enemas! This is what makes me sick! This stays in my body and oozes out poisons that are then absorbed back into the blood stream—O how gross! This represents the hells! The evil spirits love this stuff! (see AC 2755).And so on. The purpose of this thinking is to reinforce the religious issues involved.
Enemas reduce offensive flatulence, besides relieving bloating, and eliminating poisons. Passing gas is something many couples get used to doing with each other. Also, roommates, locker room buddies, and surreptitious releases that befoul the air of the room. Who did this? We hide our cowardice, saying nothing, looking innocent. What right do we have to offend the smell and quietude of others around us? Where is the love of neighbor if we allow ourselves to pass offensive gas and even, make a joke of it. It’s human to fart! The point is: enemas take care of the degraded festering putrid materials in the intestines. The Writings say that offensive body odors is a legitimate cause of separation in marriage! (CL 253) How sexy can it be for your sweetheart if in her mind she is thinking, “Is he going to fart on me again?”
The discipline of enemas are best practiced as a couple. The two look out for one another, making sure one of them isn’t skipping it, which is so easy to do, given the built in cultural resistance and negative connotation. But in addition there may be spiritual reasons that go deeper into the causes of an anti-enema society. I understand that in some European countries and in Russia enemas and high colonic treatments are considered part of what you do at a spa or health recovery facility. One physician told me that there is no research on enemas in the medical profession and it is not considered part of medical practice. Nevertheless it is a thing of common sense. We clean drawers and pipes, and keep them unclogged, then why not the lower part of the colon and large intestines? Should they not be cleaned?? What is the justification for not cleaning those tubes? They for sure do not clean themselves adequately given that fecal materials remain in the colon for days, weeks, and months. Certain medical practitioners discourage the use of chemical drugs as a routine method of treating all ailments. They regularly stress the importance of cleaning the colon and clearing it from its contents. According to them a healthy colon eliminates three times every day. So you can gauge your own performances in accordance with this standard.
Incredibly to me, physicians tell patients they’re not constipated if they move their bowels once every two days. But to convince yourself take an enema every day for a week and you will see no abatement in the foulness that comes out day after day. My high colonic practitioner tells me that it’s not uncommon for him to see during a colonic irrigation treatment, feces come out that have impacted and been in the colon for several years. The longer they were there, the more black they turned. In colonic irrigation a double tube is inserted into the rectum, with clean water going in one and the resultant wash coming out in the other. This goes through a glass tube allows observation of what passes out.
Who exactly constitute the province of the Intestines in the Grand Man will become clear to some extent from those who correlate with the stomach. For the intestines are a continuation of the stomach, and the functions performed by the stomach increase in them and are intensified right through to the end of the intestines - to the colon and rectum. The spirits in the latter are therefore close to the hells which are called the excrementitious ones. In the region of the stomach and intestines are those on the lower earth. Because these have brought with them from the world forms of uncleanness clinging to their thoughts and affections, they are therefore detained for a while in that region until such forms of uncleanness have been wiped away, that is, cast away to the side. Once these have been cast away to the side those people can be raised up to heaven.
People on the lower earth are not yet in the Grand Man, for they are like food which has been sent down into the stomach but which, until it has been purged, is not introduced into the bloodstream and so into the body. People contaminated with even worse earthly defilements are below those in the region of the intestines; but the actual excrement passed by the intestines corresponds to the hells called the excrementitious hells. (AC 5392)
It is obvious from this that the New Church mind is fully aware of the hellish significance of fecal matter in the intestines. Is it possible for this mind then to say, like the physicians say, “Well, I moved by bowels yesterday, so I’m still O.K. True, I let out terrible farts, but I don’t mind so much. After all, as long as I’m in this stinky physical body, it’s going to be gross. But my spiritual body in the afterlife will have clean colons.” But this would not be an enlightened view from a man who is regenerating! Instead we would think about what those hells in those feces in my colon are doing there! They’re up to no good, we know that. What allows us to give these hells a platform in our colon? Let them be somewhere else. I’m going to clean my colon. And that’s where the discipline of enemas comes in. That’s how I think about it myself. How about you, friend?
Those who in the life of the body have made mere pleasures their end and aim, loving merely to indulge their natural propensities, and to live in luxury and festivity, caring only for themselves and the world, without any regard to things Divine, and who are devoid of faith and charity, are after death first introduced into a life similar to that which they had in the world. There is a place in front toward the left, at a considerable depth, where all is pleasure, sports, dancing, feasting, and chatting together. Hither such spirits are conveyed, and then they know no otherwise than that they are still in the world. After a short time however the scene is changed, and then they are carried down to a hell beneath the buttocks which is merely excrementitious; for in the other life such exclusively corporeal pleasure is turned into what is excrementitious. I have seen them there carrying dung and bemoaning their lot. (AC 943)
Note well: I’m not saying that New Church people who do not clean their colons with enemas are going to end up as excrementitious spirits in hell!
It says here, and elsewhere, that those people turn into excrementitious spirits who “have made mere pleasures their end and aim, loving merely to indulge their natural propensities, and to live in luxury and festivity.” The issue I’m raising is whether or not a person is of this sort who cares not about cleaning the colon. In other words, is there a relation between:
“loving merely to indulge their natural propensities, and to live in luxury and festivity” (AC 943) and “being a person who cares not about cleaning the colon” (Leon James)
It stands to reason that there is a relationship here. There is a rational connection between lifestyle and the state of our intestines and colon: What we eat; how much; how often; how well we chew; whether we are overweight; whether we are physically active enough; what our toilet training was like and what impressions it left on us; and other such things that are related to how our colon is functioning. The New Church mind must draw a rational connection between eating and elimination, and this makes it into a religious duty. By making this connection we protect ourselves from becoming excrementitious spirits. Once the connection is made there are numerous consequences for what kind of lifestyle we have. And one of these consequences is that we begin to feel spiritually responsible for how we maintain colonic hygiene. It’s not something we can just forget about and leave to nature. Colonic cancer is quite common among older men and this is just another proof that colonic cleanliness has been neglected, not considered part of eating and exercising.
"WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE" Would you like to feel healthier, have more energy, be more regular and less constipated without using a single drug, laxative, vitamin or protein drink? Let me explain how you can accomplish this.
The source of many of today's commonplace health problems are being traced to the colon, also known as the large intestine (diagram). Our high fat, low fiber diets of hard to digest foods are clogging the very canal that was designed to eliminate them. The longer this waste stays in the body the more toxic and encrusted it becomes. Our bodies are being poisoned because the moisture that is absorbed from the colon has to pass through this toxic waste that has attached itself to the lining of the colon. This toxified moisture is then distributed throughout the body poisoning our vital organs and deteriorating the body's own immune system. The resulting toxemia can become a chronic condition but for most of us it means constipation, sinus problems, allergies, chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis, migraine headaches, immune related illnesses, colds, flu, etc. Also the risk of colon cancer seems to be increasing everyday with no known cause or cure. Doesn't it make sense that meat and other waste that has been trapped inside your colon for years could become so rotten, putrid, and toxic that it begins to slowly poison your organs and your entire body, possibly even causing colon cancer. Wouldn't you rather be proactive and safe now rather than reactive and sorry later? Other symptoms. Colon hydrotherapy does not treat disease or illness.
Now there is a way to thoroughly cleanse the colon of this waste that has been collecting there for years and what's even more exciting is that you can do this in the privacy of your own home by using my Home Colonics Kit. The safest and easiest method of colonics is the gravity flow method. (“A Safe Gentle Irrigation and Cleansing of the Colon” on the Web at www.homecolonics.com/ Accessed June 2002)
I don’t sell these devices and I have not used them myself. I use the old fashioned enema bag (water bottle), a method I learned form my mother as a child. But whatever you decide to use, remember that you’re doing it for religious or spiritual reasons, as well as heath reasons.
14. Acknowledging The Lord’s Co-Presence
Prayer, regarded in itself, is speech with God (AC 2535) Whenever I was praying our Lord's prayer, morning and evening, almost every time I was raised up, in different ways, into the very inward realm, and in fact [this raising up,] together with the change, was so perceptible that nothing could have been more so. (SE 258)
A mental discipline that is indigenous to Christians is the practice of talking to the Lord and acknowledging the Lord’s presence before us even as we go about doing our daily tasks. Many people automatically and somewhat unconsciously say “O God” many times in the course of a day. But this is not a discipline but a cultural habit. Having been raised in an Orthodox Jewish family I found it relatively easy to say my morning/afternoon/evening prayers, as well as saying a different prescribed blessing (“Brocho”) for particular activities such as washing hands, eating particular foods, using the bathroom, hearing the thunder, noticing a rainbow, putting on new clothes, kissing any doorpost that had a “mezuzah” case nailed to it, and many more in the hundreds.
This discipline was relatively easy because it was inculcated in us as an invariant routine so that it ran itself off without much thought accompanying it. I did not even have to interrupt my thoughts and secular concerns even as I was reciting the prescribed prayer. Of course I realize now, being a regenerating New Church mind, that this type of prayer keeps the person at a safe distance from God, so that prayer and religion don’t influence the inherited loves and delights, which are infernal.
These devotional activities are carried out in Hebrew (called “Holy Language”), a language mostly incomprehensible to the majority of Jews of all denominations (who are Yiddish speakers besides the country’s vernacular where they live). I was taught to read Hebrew prayers phonetically and very fast, with a sing song chant, but the emphasis on comprehension of the sentences was not so much emphasized or even required (“The Holy Name knows what you’re saying”). These ritualized vocalizations were accompanied by the requisite body-shaking called in Yiddish “shockle” (=shaking). The shaking was an aid to concentration. It was taught that if you concentrated “all the way” you come before the Almighty.
There were saints in every generation, known for their great concentration ability. One sign of concentration is that if someone calls your name while you’re shaking, and bowing, and yelping, or crying out to the Almighty, you’re so much into the praying, that the physical world disappears and you can’t hear your name being called. and other such things are taught to young boys, as I was.
But after I abandoned this lifestyle as an adult and came to see myself as a Christian person, it took many years to teach myself the discipline of consciously acknowledging the Lord’s co-Presence minute by minute while I was awake. And if not minute by minute, I thought I did well if I could remember Him at least once an hour. Even this I could not do. Hours would go by and I was absorbed in my day, then suddenly, the consternating thought: I’ve forgotten about You, Lord! You were present all these hours and minutes and seconds, making things happen all around me, connecting my days, and foreseeing my future, which You desire to be life in heaven. My forgetting Your Co-Presence, Lord, is sheer insanity! It is insane to suppose that things happen by chance or by human planning. The moment an angel thinks this, he feels himself cast out of heaven (xx). We are told that as angels we have the Lord constantly before us, no matter which way we turn (xx).
This mental discipline only started in earnest several years after I started reading the Writings when I became imbued with the fear and regret that I was not sufficiently loving the Lord and acknowledging that He is ceaselessly present as a Divine Guide and Therapist overseeing the sequence of my thoughts, bending them this way and that, hiding things from my awareness until I’m ready to deal with them, and bringing me into contact with this or that spiritual society to excite this or that emotion in me.
Failing to continually acknowledge His co-participation and co-presence is thus being like a sleep walker who lives in non-reality and does not see or talk to the people around.
To acknowledge the Lord’s Co-Presence in a practical way, rather than merely theoretical way, we need to act it out in our willing and thinking. As mentioned, praying or talking to the Lord is a way of actualizing or acting out our theoretical acknowledgment of His Omnipresence. An additional way is to ask Him a question when we are wondering about something we’re trying to figure out and can’t quite see the precise answer. It’s useful to remember that talking to the Lord is not like talking to another human being. The Lord knows what we are going to say prior to us knowing it. This is because He is the regulator of all that a human being says since saying something is an event and He manages all events by His Omnipresence. Asking the Lord a question can be done with the innocence of childhood (xx) or with the innocence of wisdom (xx). Children in all innocence talk to the Lord as they talk to an adult or powerful person. When we are regenerating as adults we are called “wise” because we are committed to act from the Letter of the Writings, which we have taken up as Doctrine in our understanding and thinking.
To talk to the Lord from the innocence of wisdom is to ask Him a practical question to which we desire the answer, right at that moment in the sequence of our activity, or of our willing and thinking.
This mental act acknowledges the Lord’s Co-Presence in an actual way. It is a practical thing to do to ask a partner a question when something comes up in their teamwork. “Do you have their number?” or “What time did he say he’s going to call?” To ask the Lord like a wise man would, we want to avoid asking Him a type of question for which He has a stated policy not to answer. This makes sense. It’s childish, not wise, to ask the Lord anything at all. The wise man honors the Lord with happy obedience to His stated policies, otherwise known as the Divine Commandments in the Letter of the Writings.
Everything we understand from the Letter is a Divine Commandment when we act the wise man.
With regards to asking the Lord questions, we must figure it out with what we already know. I would suggest that we think about the distinction the Lord wants us to learn between sensuous and rational consciousness (see the discussion in Chapter xx Section xx). For instance, the difference between His First and Second Coming is the difference between knowing Him through our sensuous mind and knowing Him through our rational mind. The rational is a discrete degree above the sensuous and therefore is a far higher and deeper way of knowing Him. The New Heavens the Lord created in His Second Coming were created out of the interior-rational truths contained in the Writings.
The Doctrine of the Lord is in our natural-rational mind from our understanding of the Letter of the Writings. The details of this Divine Doctrine in our mind are the cognitive vessels at the natural-rational level of thinking about the Lord. Within these natural-rational vessels, the Lord inflows with spiritual and celestial correspondences in the interior-natural mind, which is located within the natural-rational mind. In this way, the Divine Doctrine in our natural-rational mind becomes animated and alive by means of the spiritual-rational within the interior-natural (or spiritual-natural) mind. This is the conscious level of thinking about the Lord when we are in the state called “wise” by the Lord.
What kind of question would we ask? What do we dare to do? Isn’t it easier just to prostrate ourselves before the King of the universe and not pretend we have questions and answers to figure things out about His creation? The point is that the Lord wants us to ask Him questions—the right kind of questions.
One obvious type of question to avoid asking is something that gives us information that human beings give each other in the course of their interactions. A wise man would not speak to the Lord saying, “Lord, what time is it?” or, “Lord, what that man’s telephone number?” or, “What’s the least congested way I can get there?” or, “Should I buy this car or that car.” These are not questions related to our rational consciousness of the Lord. Remember that the purpose the Lord wants us to ask Him appropriate questions is for our sake, namely that we might gain a more interior understanding of the Lord. This is what He longs for and for which He has created us, namely, an interior-rational consciousness of Him. This is the way the highest angels in the Third Heaven know Him. This is the way He makes Himself known to us in the spiritual sense within the literal of the Writings. The Literal sentences of the Writings are mere correspondences of Him. He enlightens us to the actuality of Him by means of giving us perception of Himself within the literal correspondences of Him in the Letter.
15. Talking To The Lord Is To Apply The Letter To The Letter
The Lord speaks with every man, for whatever a man wills and thinks that is good and true, is from the Lord.
There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two angels. The evil spirits excite his evils, and the angels inspire things that are good and true. Every good and true thing inspired by the angels is of the Lord; thus the Lord is continually speaking with man, but quite differently with one man than with another.
With those who suffer themselves to be led away by evil spirits, the Lord speaks as if absent, or from afar, so that it can scarcely be said that He is speaking; but with those who are being led by the Lord, He speaks as more nearly present; which may be sufficiently evident from the fact that no one can ever think anything good and true except from the Lord. (...) [3] The presence of the Lord is first possible with a man when he loves the neighbor. The Lord is in love; and so far as a man is in love, so far the Lord is present; and so far as the Lord is present, so far He speaks with the man. (AC 904)
Since the Word was written the Lord speaks with men by means of it (HH 305)
The Lord speaks with the man of the church in no other way than through the Word, for He then enlightens man so that he may see truth, and also gives him perception to perceive that it is so (AC 10290)
The Lord speaks with the New Church mind through the Word of the Writings, which He has given for the salivation and future of humankind. This is the method the Lord has provided for conjunction with the human race since the event of His Second Coming. A child thinks of the Lord as a person who could sit across the room and hear our question and answer us, and so on. But this is thinking of the Lord not rationally, but sensuously. The Lord has revealed in the Writings that everything He speaks to a human being is in pure correspondences accommodated to the level of thinking of the individual. The Lord cannot speak to us as human being with human being because He is not a human being. The Lord is the Divine Human, not a human being. The human race is created by the Lord, and there is no ratio possible between the Creator and the created, between the Infinite Wisdom within which is Infinite Love and the finite wisdom of ours within which is finite love.
Therefore the Lord has provided that His conjunction with the human race shall be through correspondences. In the Word the Lord speaks by pure correspondences. In the Word of the Writings the Lord speaks in rational correspondences. This is an evolutionary step beyond the Word of the New Testament where He speaks to the human race in sensuous correspondences. And this was an evolutionary step beyond the Old Testament where the Lord speaks to the human race in corporeal correspondences. The consciousness of the human race was therefore raised by means of the level of correspondences by which the Lord gives His Divine Truths. This is the only source the human race for understanding rationally the science of reality. This theistic science has now been given to the human race through the Writings. The mystery of religion and Divinity has evaporated, has been dispelled. Mystery was but a “spell” cast upon the race by its worst elements, those led by the human ego elevated to the level of a god to itself.
After many generations of suffering under the delusions of mystery, superstition, and magic, the human race has been freed of all mystery by the rational scientific revelations in the Writings.
The Lord can now speak with the race through rational correspondences.
This is an immense step forward in human evolution, incalculable in its awesome and dramatic consequences.
Rational correspondences constitute the content of our natural-rational mind. This is the highest portion of the natural mind. The culmination of human achievement in science and art is the work of the natural-rational mind. And its power is so great that the endless future won’t be too daunting for its understanding. This is the level of human thinking and reasoning by means of rational correspondences of reality or the Lord.
A man can declare himself an atheist. He points to his secular humanistic and scientific achievements and claims them for himself: “My own intelligence has accomplished this. My own intellectual struggle and victory over ignorance.” He may be awarded a special prize of recognition by this or that segment of society. And yet the reality behind this appearance is that the man is insane when he thinks within himself (xx). He acts, thinks, and talks sane when he is with others, but inwardly he maintains a parallel life of insane thinking and imagined acts which he carefully hides and cannot be detected. But when this man arrives in the afterlife, he can no longer hide anything that he harbors within his will (xx). The insanity then bursts forth from him and he has to be restrained in a hell with others who have a similar insanity (xx).
How can a man who is insane within himself be so intelligent as to win prizes of achievement for his original work?
The answer is that neither the achievements of the sane man within, nor the achievements of the insane man within, are attributable to the man’s intelligence and intellectual effort.
The Lord maintains everything in its perfect order by means of correspondences in a long chain of causation from the spiritual Sun to the ultimates in the natural world (xx). Hence the expression in the Word of “From Firsts to Lasts” (xx). The Lord leads society, leads knowledge, leads performance, and therefore determines achievement. Only the Lord is the actual power and wisdom behind these events in the ultimates. But the Lord grants the appearances of self-leading for the sake of the human race, that each individual might feel self-mastery, self-efficacy, self-confidence, self-determination—for without these no one would feel free, and without feeling free nothing of love can be appropriated to self, hence no cumulative life is possible, no human life.
The achievements of science and art are therefore the details in the biography of a society than the Lord brings out. The moments of reality are put together and held together by the Lord through the chain of correspondences from Firsts to Lasts. Nothing whatsoever in the successes and achievements of science and art can be attributed to the self-intelligence of those involved. You can see therefore that the man who has insane thoughts and feelings within that he hides from without, can be one of those contributors of science or art, or business, etc. Swedenborg has observed this insanity in spirits when they are experimentally taken from their sane external into their insane internal (xx). Spirits cannot stay for long in their external state because their internal state is overpowering and dominates.
All these things are said to show that the unregenerate mind lives in an insane state of mind from within and it has this from hereditary infection of the spirit of every individual born on this earth. It is similar with the New Church mind prior to reformation in adult life. Until then we believe in the Divinity of the Writings and we are loyal to the worship of the Divine Human. But this worship is the worship of the unregenerate mind. It is not a worship that can save. Only if we learn to put the internal worship into the external, are we a New Church mind. For the worship without the internal is not a true worship (xx). Our understanding of the Writings is not a spiritual-rational understanding but only a natural-rational understanding. But all this changes completely when we undergo reformation, as discussed in this book throughout.
You can see that the unregenerate New Church person and the unregenerate Old Church person and the unregenerate atheist person have all three something in common, namely, being in the unregenerate human state. The Lord has made it crystal clear in the Letter of His Word: the unregenerate person is entirely infernal regardless of background or belief system (xx).
This is the deeper meaning of Nunc Licet, namely that from now on there is no need for an intermediary mechanism of salvation such as there was in the sensuous revelation of Himself in the New Testament. Now all intermediary mechanisms of religion, baptism, initiation, worship, sacraments, prayers—which were required before, are now no longer required. Now the Lord talks to every individual’s rational mind. Now the individual is the actual Church in which the Lord is the priest and preacher. This is accomplished through the Letter of the Writings. Now anyone from anywhere anytime can pick up a copy of the Writings and save himself from eternal damnation by following the rational revolution in its pages. Salvation is then obtained if we compel our willing and thinking all day long to conform to this rational paradigm. Anyone can now do this anywhere on the planet, without equipment, facility, permission, or instruction. This is all that is required for salvation, for eternal conjugial bliss in heaven as an angel couple.
16. Rational Consciousness Of The Lord Now Conjoins
The demystification of religion is the greatest boon to the human race on this planet.
This one on one conversion of an individual regardless of birth or belief is the new hallmark or crown of the generations to come to eternity. This is the spiritual meaning of Nunc Licet.
“Nunc” is Latin for “now” which signifies the new state of the human race as a result of the new rational consciousness the Lord has made available through the Word of the Writings. “Licet” is Latin for “it is allowed” which signifies spiritually that it is required. When the divine creates a new way for being conjoined to the human race, this new way then becomes the required way, the only way for conjunction. “Nunc Licet” in the internal sense therefore signifies that rational consciousness will henceforth be the only way for being conjoined to the Divine Human. The New Heavens that have been created at the Second Coming are made of these new spiritual-rational truths, also called rational loves, since love is always within truth.
Now it is required that we enter into the mysterious of faith in a rational way. Only rational consciousness can henceforth conjoin us to the Lord. This rational consciousness is what enlightens the New Church mind.
This new mode of conjunction of the Lord with the human race depends on the evolution of our rational consciousness of Him. This is the purpose of the Second Coming, namely, to establish the rational truths for this new role for the human race--the rational consciousness of the Lord. Today, it would be injurious for our spiritual life for the Lord to speak with us through a living voice such as was heard by the people in the Old and New Testaments. It would be injurious of our spiritual life for the Lord to appear in the clouds of our skies and gather the faithful about him, catching them in the air, and taking them off to a new place of living. By sensuous consciousness of Him the human race was advanced to a higher plane of thinking than was possible before the Lord’s First Coming. At that time He announced that He must come again after departing from them. To depart from them meant that He would no longer be present to them in a sensuous way. He said He would be present with the human race by means of the Holy Spirit. This was the rational consciousness by which He was planning to bring about the final step in the creation of the human race. This step was to attain a celestial mind prepared for the highest heaven possible.
These final heavens are the completion of the human race, its final evolution. These heavens are in the New Church mind and nowhere else. This is because the final heavens are created out of the truths of the Word of the Second Coming. These are the truths by which the New Church mind is formed.
So to ask the Lord questions as a wise man is to apply the Letter to the Letter.
17. Rational Consciousness From Applying The Letter To The Letter
Before we are wise, we read the Letter of the Writings in its sensuous, as a child, addressing the Lord in His Divine Corporeal. We are not wise because one cannot actually talk to the Divine Corporeal, but only to the Divine Rational within the Divine Corporeal. In the innocence of childhood we do not know, and could not believe, that the Letter of the Writings is in itself dead, and that the literal understanding we have of it is an understanding of mere natural correspondences of the Lord’s Divine Rational. But when we become like a wise person, we address our focus and question to the Lord’s Divine Rational which is within the Divine Natural of the literal meaning.
And to apply the Letter to the Letter is to address the Lord’s Divine Rational.
This is then how a wise man talks to the Lord and asks Him questions of the appropriate kind. This kind of communication with the Lord constitutes conjunction with Him to the extent that we love this way of communicating with Him. What is applying the Letter to the Letter but to see Him rationally? The Letter of the Writings are correspondences of Him in the external rational degree and when we inquire about these natural-rational correspondences we are inquiring about His Divine Rational. It is His Divine Rational truths that are laid down within the Letter of the Writings. Interior-rational truths are laid down within external rational truths. Correspondences are called external rational truths. When we think and reason about the Lord by means of our natural-rational thinking, we are seeing Him as His Divine Natural correspondences appear to the human race.
By asking what these correspondences stand for we are asking the Lord to enlighten us regarding His Divine Rational. We must never ask anyone else about these correspondences regarding His Divine Natural. We must not consult our own intelligence, nor must we consult the intelligence of a teacher, priest, or writer. We must ask the Lord alone, and that is the Letter of the Writings, for the Lord speaks to the New Church mind solely through this (xx). You can see therefore that applying the Letter to the Letter is asking the Lord regarding Himself, about the holy correspondences that represent and signify His Divine Rational truths within which is Divine Rational Love. This is the Divine Human.
We are conjoined to the Divine Human of the Lord when we see the Letter of the Writings as correspondences of Him and inquire of Him what these correspondences stand for. This inquiry process is nothing else than the process of extracting Spiritual Doctrine form the Letter of the Writings. The Spiritual Doctrine is in our interior-natural mind, is of spiritual and celestial origin, and is Divine.
This new spiritual consciousness is the understanding of interior-rational truths by means of higher correspondences of the Divine Human.
Applying the Letter to the Letter is asking an appropriate question of the Lord. The Lord then always answers. When the Lord answers us, we are enlightened, for the Lord answers by giving heavenly light and when we understand by heavenly light we are spiritually enlightened. Enlightenment is therefore nothing else than understanding interior-rational truths by means of higher correspondences.
As discussed elsewhere, there are lower and higher correspondences that we can be conscious of while we are regenerating. Lower correspondences are the natural-rational truths of the literal meaning of the Letter of the Writings. Higher correspondences are the interior-natural truths we understand when we are enlightened. The content of enlightenment is therefore the perception of higher correspondences called interior-natural truths.
You might wonder: if these interior truths are also correspondences when do we get to the state where we see the actuality rather the higher and higher correspondences of the actuality?
The answer is that the idea “truth” and the idea “correspondence” are parallel ideas and can practically be taken to mean the same thing. If we see higher correspondences, we see higher truths. That is, if we understand the correspondences for higher correspondences, we understand ever more interior-truths. When we are angels we continue to grow daily in wisdom through the Letter of the Writings (xx). How is this daily increment achieved? By seeing the new truths received each day as correspondences. In this way, the new truths we receive today will be seen in a still more interior light tomorrow. This progression from interior to more interior is achieved by means of the vehicle of correspondences. Such is the process of enlightenment that it can increase day by day to eternity.
18. So Far As The Lord Is Present, So Far He Speaks With The Man
It is written that “the Lord is continually speaking with man, but quite differently with one man than with another” (AC 904). When I read this Commandment, I wondered how was I to acknowledge this Divine intimacy?
I could say prayers at mealtimes and study the Writings daily, and this I was able to do. But not so much talking to Him and actually acknowledging and being rationally aware of His presence and teamwork as the day unfolded. I kept forgetting to do it and hours would go by before I realized in shock that, in my conscious awareness, I had totally ignored His Co-Presence and Co-Participation. And so I keep my practice up and amazing to say, I’m only partially succeeding after decades of trying. But this is the spiritual discipline of it—to keep striving for progressively better performance in the face of opposing forces from interior sources.
The angels never for one instant forget the Lord’s presence before them and they see the Lord amidst the spiritual Sun no matter which way they turn or walk (DLW 131). This is the attitude we can strive to achieve in our life of discipline as a regenerating New Church person. For to live one hour of the day without remembering the Lord’s co-presence and co-participation is to live in unreality for that hour, like day dreaming while eating and not being conscious of what we just put into the mouth, chewed up, and swallowed.
The Lord speaks with every man, for whatever a man wills and thinks that is good and true, is from the Lord. There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two angels. The evil spirits excite his evils, and the angels inspire things that are good and true. Every good and true thing inspired by the angels is of the Lord; thus the Lord is continually speaking with man, but quite differently with one man than with another. With those who suffer themselves to be led away by evil spirits, the Lord speaks as if absent, or from afar, so that it can scarcely be said that He is speaking; but with those who are being led by the Lord, He speaks as more nearly present; which may be sufficiently evident from the fact that no one can ever think anything good and true except from the Lord. (…) [3] The presence of the Lord is first possible with a man when he loves the neighbor. The Lord is in love; and so far as a man is in love, so far the Lord is present; and so far as the Lord is present, so far He speaks with the man. Man knows no otherwise than that he thinks from himself, whereas he has not a single idea, nor even the least bit of an idea, from himself; but he has what is evil and false through evil spirits from hell, and what is good and true through angels from the Lord. (AC 904)
This is an astonishing scientific revelations about the human race, totally unsuspected by scientists today, and if they’re told about it, totally unbelievable to them. I call it our membership into the vertical community of spirits and angels, in contrast to our membership in the horizontal community of counties and nations on the planet. We are never alone in our mind! Entire societies of thousands of people are connected to our thoughts and affections through the one or two “subject spirits” that are directly near our spirit-body (xx).
The New Church mind is maintained in spiritual sanity and in actual reality by conscious knowledge of the vertical community and the Lord’s ceaseless co-presence and co-participation in our willing and thinking. Certainly the Lord knows more about us than we do, about our inmost desires and hidden thoughts, and especially about how to hold them together for us so that we are able to think sanely despite our spiritual insanity.
The New Church mind is kept sane by means of the daily study of the Letter of the Writings, which reminds him of true reality in a rational way, and therefore spiritually as well. It is normal for us to speak among family and friends about reality, that is, about correspondences and spirits.
We need to examine records we keep about topics we discuss in the course of the day and week. Carrying a notepad or small voice recorder is essential for this type of record keeping. Now you have the data in front of you: How many times in a day have you spoken about correspondences and spirits as explanatory concepts in events and in our thinking and willing? How many times a day have you thought about it yourself?
I ask myself this as a regenerating person: How can I train my mind to be sane if I only think about correspondences and spirits while I’m reading the Writings or attend a class? I know theoretically that everything around me happens by means of the Lord’s management laws, including what is happening in my thoughts and feelings. The Lord is like a Great orchestra director, upon whom every musician on stage focuses attention and obeys the rhythm of his baton. All day long my mind is busy figuring things, explaining things, deciding this, expecting that. This busy activity keeps my experiences coherent to myself—I know what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, what I don’t know, etc. I explain and interpret what happens here, and then what goes on over there. As an unregenerate man, I construct these accounts and understandings solely from myself since I think I’m alone in my mind.
But following reformation, I read the Writings every day, by which I immerse my understanding in the reality of correspondences and spirits. Now everything I see must be explained differently than before or else the Writings are not really real. All the normal events around me must now be related to correspondences and spirits. To fail to do this would be to remain in insanity, for the unregenerate state is a universal state of spiritual insanity (xx). Natural sanity and intelligence appear on the outside surface of our behavior, so that the insanity within remains hidden until the afterlife where it bursts open like a genie in a bottle whose cork was popped off.
This obviously applies to how we talk to our children and teach them about reality.
Imagine you read a transcript of your interactions with your children in one week and nowhere do these words appear:
1. God 2. the Lord 3. the Writings 4. the Word 5. correspondences 6. spirits 7. angels 8. heaven 9. hell 10.sin 11.regeneration 12.conjugial lover 13.love of neighbor 14.love of self 15.love of the world 16.as-of self 17.natural mind 18.spiritual mind 19.discrete degrees 20.spiritual Sun 21.spirit-body.
What would it mean that only five of these appear in a week’s discourse in your life? What would it mean if ten?
The point is that I need to have such a list a conscious part of my sanity. Am I in training to create a celestial mind in myself? Is it logical for me to expect that I will just automatically and spontaneously have the kind of mind that can be happy in heaven where only rational loves can exist? Reason tells me that that I must prepare in an active way by figuring out the reality behind the appearances. The Lord has given us soap and water by which to wash and bathe. The soap represents the regeneration of our will and the water represents the reformation of our understanding. That the Lord gives us this soap and water means that our effort and power is from Him, not ourselves. That we are to wash our hands, feet, and body means that we are to exert as-of self effort in constructing a new understanding for ourselves, one that is faithful to the reality He reveals to us in the Writings.
To have these basic topics in our thinking and in our speaking all day long is a Divine Commandment (xx). These topics need to appear in our thinking all day long. They need to appear in our reasoning and decision making, in our interpretations and explanations of every ordinary thing I do. These topics also need to appear in my dialog with my wife, children, and friends. What does it mean if they are absent? I’ve been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times in the past five years regarding my expertise on road rage and aggressive driving (see my Web site www.DrDriving.org ). Not once have I mentioned what I think is the spiritual reality of driving in relation to spirits and regeneration. Not once have I mentioned the Lord’s work and role in auto safety and crash statistics. And this is a rational decision, as you can no doubt understand. Instead, I remain at the expertise level of psychology and of my own self-observations as a driver. There is also much discussion on surveys and polls of drivers and what they say about themselves in relation to who they are by age, gender, education, or geographic location.
But if you were to examine my own thinking and reasoning about driving and other drivers, the 21 fundamental topics of reality listed above, are involved and do appear. This is one point that needs to be stressed. The New Church mind grows into a celestial mind when rational accounts are in the mind, and the Writings as the Word provide the only rational account of those topics (xx). similarly in my discussion with my wife: These fundamental topics are constantly being mentioned by both of us since they are tied to how we orient and cope with the demands of our daily tasks.
It is an important regeneration discipline to make ourselves think and talk about the rational ideas that explain natural events and acts. These rational ideas must be those we take up from the Letter of the Writings by daily study. When we read the Writings is the same as worshipping the Lord and speaking with Him. The Lord speaks with man only through the Word (xx).
For a discussion on teaching children with integrated concepts see Chapter xx Section xx.
19. Cleanliness And Health Disciplines
In general, disciplines include physical, verbal, and mental domains of our daily behaviors. All disciplines are natural, not yet spiritual, but they create natural-rational “vessels” into which spiritual truths can descend (NJHD 51; AC 3508, 978, 4286; AE 355:14). Disciplines can be readily applied to many behavioral routines that we repeat daily. Physical habits of cleanliness and health often encounter resistance in our external mind, providing opportunities for overcoming them through discipline. For years I have monitored myself in daily struggles to floss my teeth. My research with college students shows that this is a common problem (see Note 15 at end). Another behavioral area where discipline can be effectively applied is cursing and the extremely common use of the “f” word. The New Church mind is greatly harmed by the facile use of “dirty” words and profanities which we speak when angry, or even for emphasis.
Regarding forms of speech: The things people say and the way they say them are like the ideas of their thoughts, for ideas of thought become words when they go out into speech. (De Verbo3:7)
Swearing appears to be a universal practice among humans. It takes years of dedicated practice to cut out these harmful verbal habits and at length be shocked at them. The key to success, as with all disciplines, is to monitor and keep cumulative records of one’s lapses and resistances. For to fail in profanations is to lose everything:
By "taking the name of God in vain" is properly signified to turn truth into evil, that is, to believe that it is truth, and nevertheless to live in evil; and it also denotes to turn good into falsity, that is, to live holily, and yet not to believe. Both are profanation (n. 4601), for believing is of the understanding, and living is of the will; and therefore in those who believe otherwise than they live, the thought and will are divided. But as the will continually flows into the understanding, for the understanding is the form of the will; that is, the will manifests itself there in light; therefore it is that when a man believes in one way and lives in another, truth and evil, or good and falsity, are conjoined; thus the things that are of heaven with man are conjoined with those which are of hell.
This conjunction cannot be dissolved, and thereby the man be healed, except by a pulling asunder which carries away with it everything of spiritual life; and therefore these persons are sent into a hell the most grievous of all, where they are direfully tormented.
This is what is meant by the words of the Lord in Matthew:
All sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy of the spirit shall not be forgiven unto men. If anyone shall say a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but he who shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in that which is to come (Matt. 12:31, 32). (AC 8882:2)
20. Not Detachment, But Right Attachments
Eastern nonduality promotes the view that detachment from life’s dualities must be the direction of our life’s struggles. The opposite is promoted in the Writings, namely, that the direction of our life’s struggles must be right attachments, and the more such attachments the better for our spiritual development and happiness. For what is “right attachment” but uses in life, which constitute the very foundation of celestial life. The highest consciousness and evolution of the individual is the ever increasing number of uses one can perform (DLW 65).
What is detachment? It is the weakening of the will to struggle and perform uses or good works. Attachment to falsities and evils bring spiritual death; attachment to truths and goods bring heavenly life. The human mind contains both motives: the love for detachment which is in the lowest region called natural, and the love for attachment which is in the highest degree called celestial. The natural mind feels attracted to the idea of detachment when it is turned towards the outward senses and builds is nonduality from there. Then detachment is the promise of bliss without struggle. By rejecting the good and the true equally with the bad and the false, one is no longer constantly making choices. This idea is attractive to the natural mind turned towards the outside world of nature.
But once we begin to be regenerated the natural mind turns itself inward toward the spiritual mind and waits for instructions. A constant stream of instructions comes down from the correspondences between the spiritual mind and the natural mind. Now the natural mind sees life’s struggle as the opportunity to perform uses in the natural world. The spiritual mind is created to experience blissfulness in uses. As regeneration progresses more interior uses are revealed to our natural mind and our bliss grows in proportion to our love of uses. These are the “right attachments” for the New Church mind.
It’s important to think about right attachments, or uses, in rational terms, not natural. For example, it’s a natural way of thinking when we think about the number of hours we should volunteer for charity work or services, so we may fulfill religious uses. There may a hidden sense of meritoriousness in this type of natural idea of uses (NJHD 124). Of course there may not be as well, especially in the case of people who do it in response to an urge by their good will. Such natural idea of charity is then counted by the Lord as good, meaning that He is able to turn it into a spiritual benefit to the person. (TCR 360) But the uses done out of a desire for acquiring spiritual “points” are not counted as good, for within them there is a selfish motive. This the Lord cannot turn into the individual’s spiritual benefit. Right attachments are of spiritual benefit; wrong attachments are harmful to spiritual development.
The nonduality of detachment is therefore to be turned into the dualities of attachments that are distinguished into good and evil uses.
Consider religious disciplines we do for our regeneration. They point towards uses in a rational way. We can see that uses depend on motive and therefore whatever we do from a motive to obey the Lord’s Commandments, is a use. Whatever it is. Take for instance the discipline of washing dishes (see Chapter 9 Section 6). It’s an activity that tends to take roughly the same amount of minutes at predictable times during the day. We can perfect that use more and more, day after day, without changing the number of minutes or the times. This is because any task that takes a few minutes to perform is composed of numerous sub-parts, each of which has its own numerous sub-parts. You can see this easily with a musician’s use of performing on an instrument. A piano concerto might require several thousand notes to be played by the fingers and each note can be played in many ways. No matter how many times the musician plays that piece improvement could take place with each new repetition. Each time the practice is repeated, a new use is performed. And perhaps many new uses with one repetition.
This rational view of uses shows that uses are infinite and that what allows us to perform new uses is the right attachments we struggle to achieve, note by note, sub-task by sub-task, dish washing episode by dish washing episode. Heavenly bliss is to be able to increase our right attachments hour by hour, and day by day, to eternity (AC 5354).
21. Self-worth, Self-esteem, Self-efficacy
The New Church mind is filled with everything that’s good and true form the Writings. We know that prior to our reformation in adult life we are in an unregenerate state (xx). We know that this is an infernal state (xx). The Fall of the human race refers to the permanent corruption of the human proprium, so that everyone since then has been born with a defective or degenerate proprium (xx). This proprium is a model of hell, is tied to the hells, and cannot be saved due its inherent opposition to every good and true of heaven that is brought near by the Lord (xx). Therefore the Lord has provided a means of salvation for every individual in the universe. This is the conscious acquisition of a new proprium by replacing the life of the old to the life of a new. Everything in the old proprium must be replaced and removed by the Lord. This is called the gradual process of regeneration and lasts till the end (xx).
If you merely remove the old proprium, we fall into a swoon or coma of unconsciousness since all our life and motive for being comes from the proprium. since the proprium is degraded, all our life in the unregenerate state comes form evil affections and delights. If the Lord were to suppress these evil affections and delights, we would have no affections and delights left as every one is infernal or evil. Without any delights and affections, we are in a comatose state of unconscious life as a human vegetable. We feel alive when we can enjoy something or do something for our enjoyment or goal. With no affections, there are no goals to strive for or live by. With no delights, there is no happiness, no enthusiasm, gladness of being, or emotional reaction to anything. Hence if the Lord were to remove our proprium, we would no longer be human beings.
Therefore before a single evil affection or delight can be removed, it must be replaced by a good affection or delight. For example, if you like to overeat and maintain such a habit, the moment you go on an honest diet (no cheating), you feel the joy of your life diminished in a significant way, sometimes so much, that you can’t stand it and willfully break the diet and go on an eating binge. The removal of delights in relation to eating causes depression and the feeling of losing some of our life. Therefore, the Lord has to give a new delight about eating that replaces the old, so that we may continue to feel alive, encouraged, and happy. There are numerous new heavenly affections and delights that individuals may obtain with a variety, depending on their character and genius. For example, there is a positive feeling of accomplishment and delight when seeing oneself gaining in ability to control the appetite.
I like to use the term “self-efficacy beliefs” to refer to these new feelings and their associated thoughts. Since we reject the old proprium as an infernal attachment we were born with, we need a new self-esteem that looks toward the new proprium. Self-efficacy beliefs are thoughts we have about ourselves that are compatible with the exercise of self-control over our disorderly affections and delights.
Regeneration is the struggle to find, reject, and suppress our evil delights and affections, and at last, to find them detestable. We then hate the old proprium as infernal and love the new proprium as heavenly. The new self is now called as-of self.
This name change marks a momentous actual change in our personality makeup.
The as-of self is a heavenly construction, therefore a rational one, since all of heaven is purely rational (xx). The as-of self has high self-esteem and strong self-efficacy beliefs. When we are willing and thinking in the state of mind called the as-of self, we are born in our activities by the current of Divine Providence like a ship is carried by the strong currents to a friendly port (xx). All things are then possible to us. No force exists that can stop us.
To gain this kind of angelic self-confidence we start by being grounded in the Letter of the Writings. There are many teachings regarding the as-of self and the angelic character. Taking up the Letter into our mind is accomplished by daily study in a cumulative scholarly procedure that strives to understand the literal meaning. The purpose of taking up the Letter must be that we can begin thereby our regeneration. Once the Letter is in our understanding it forms a plane for our thinking and reasoning. Now we can apply this way of thinking and reasoning to our daily life and evaluate it. We must monitor our willing and thinking acts by the minute, hour by hour, every day. In this way we can apply the Letter to our willing and thinking. This creates the Spiritual Doctrine in our mind, and this has the power to regenerate us, as is discussed in Volume 2.
22. Remains Are The Cornerstone of Self-worth
Remains are affections for good and truth that the Lord implants in every individual starting at birth and onward. The individual is not conscious of this process, nevertheless the remains connect the person to heavenly protection and influence. The angels inflow into those remains and activate a beneficial process of mental development that helps us direct our willing and thinking into good and truth.
Remains refer to both the individual and the race. When a civilization becomes vastated, a New Church is raised by the Lord by means of the remains of the old. If the old civilization or Church did not have these unconscious remains, everything in the race would be corrupted and no regeneration would be possible since what is corrupted cannot modify itself into genuine.
But still remains are always preserved, or some with whom the good and truth of faith remain, although they are few; for unless the good and truth of faith were preserved in these few, there would be no conjunction of heaven with mankind. As regards the remains that are in a man individually, the fewer they are the less can the matters of reason and knowledge that he possesses be enlightened, for the light of good and truth flows in from the remains, or through the remains, from the Lord. If there were no remains in a man he would not be a man, but much viler than a brute; and the fewer remains there are, the less is he a man, and the more remains there are, the more is he a man. Remains are like some heavenly star, which, the smaller it is the less light it gives, and the larger, the more light. (AC 530)
Remains contribute to our regeneration in a continuous way, the more of them present, the more we can be regenerated in our willing and thinking. This makes sense since remains are angelic influences within our new proprium. When we voluntarily choose to act on these inner positive influences, we are acting from these remains. Conscience is a common every day example. Dozens of times every day our conscience directs us in our willing and thinking. This is possible because of the angelic influx into the remains. These are located in the spiritual mind, which remains unconscious while we are still tied to the physical body. But as explained in Volume 2, the activity of the spiritual mind interacts with the interior-natural mind that the Lord creates within the natural-rational mind. These higher spiritual correspondences in our interior-natural mind give us the ability for rational consciousness of spiritual things, also called spiritual-rational truths. The consciousness of these truths make us genuinely human for the first time. In this regenerating state, the New Church mind becomes celestial and angelic.
The man who is in the good of charity and faith loves also himself and the world, but no otherwise than as the means to an end are loved. The love of self with him looks to the love of the Lord, for he loves himself as a means to the end that he may serve the Lord; and the love of the world with him looks to the love of the neighbor, for he loves the world as a means for the sake of the end that he may be of service to the neighbor. When therefore the means is loved for the sake of the end, it is not the means that is loved, but the end. (AC 7819)
The love of self discussed here is what we acknowledge as self-esteem in the New Church mind. This love is not for self as person but as state of good. We love the good in our self, for good is the neighbor we are to love wherever it is found, for all good is from the Lord and is the Lord (xx). Self-esteem in the New Church mind is the desire to do good from the Lord and the knowledge that the Lord grants us the as-of self in order that the good we do may be appropriated to our self. This increases the worth of the self. The more good we want to do, the more good is appropriated to our self, and the more it is worth. The worth of the self is not in the self but in the desire of the self to do good from the Lord. This desire is not the self because it is from the Lord and the Lord. But the Lord appropriates it to us to the extent that we desire to do good form Him and not from ourselves.
The New Church mind can think most highly and positively about the good and the true in our mind. This is the good and the true in our mind from the Writings, and it is appropriated to us to the extent that we love it, which is to install the good and the true as the governors of our willing and thinking all day long every day. When the good and the true from the Writings govern our willing and thinking, we have become celestial minds, which is the highest state of perfection for the human race.
There is no need or place for false modesty in the New Church mind. We must be clear about the science of self-worth and self-esteem. This science is the Letter of the Writings, and what it says about the New Church mind. The good and truth in the New Church mind is the Lord’s good and truth. Knowing this, we can feel enhanced because we are capable of loving it. The good and truth in us are the remains for which our mind has become a fertile field.
23. Shunning The Rage-Depression Spin Cycle
qqqq (to be completed)
End Notes and References
Note 1
A directory of all my publications, with full text access to most of them, is available on the Web at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonpublish.html
Leon James. “Substantive Dualism: Swedenborg's Integration of Biological Theology and Rational Psychology” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/dualism.html
Leon James. “Scientific Dualism.” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dualism.html
Leon James. “Religious Psychology or Theistic Science: A Guide to Spiritual Self-examination” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/religious.html
Leon James. “Swedenborg Glossary of Theistic Science” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss.html
Leon James. “Do the Writings Contain Scientific Revelations?” New Church Life , July 1995, 115(7), 325-330. Also available on the Web at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409ss99/nfile2.htm
Leon James. “Dualist Science and the Writings of Swedenborg” New Church Life , June 1995, 115(6), 264-270.
Leon James. “Overcoming Objections to Swedenborg's Writings Through the Development of Scientific Dualism” New Philosophy 2001 v.CIV n.3 & 4 pp. 153-217. Available online at: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/np98.html
Leon James. “The Fourteen Scientific Fallacies in AC5084: Implications for Science Education.” New Philosophy, July-December, 1996, XCIX(3 & 4), 439-450 www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/fallacies.html
Examples of promoting dualism in science in New Church literature include:
Gregory L. Baker, Religion and Science: From Swedenborg to Chaotic Dynamics (New York: The Solomon Press, 1992)
Linda Simonetti Odhner, The Bread of Life With Honey From the Rock: A Chaste Union of religion and science New Church Life March 1989, pp. 117-122
Leon James, Swedenborg's Religious Psychology: The Marriage of Good and Truth as Mental Health Studia Swedenborgiana December 1993, Vol.8, No-3, pp. 13-42
Ian Thompson, Foundations of the Theory of Spirit, Mind and Nature from Theism www.TheisticScience.org
Note 2
W. F. Pendleton Topics From the Writings (Academy, 1928)
Note 3
Leon James. “My Pre-Swedenborgian Discoveries and Inventions (1960-1980)” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl3.html
Note 4
Mark Carlson. “Evolution, the Limbus, and Hereditary Evil (Part 2)” New Church Life June 1990, pp.259-275.
Note 5
Barry C. Halterman. “Swedenborg's Influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883)” www.swedenborg.ca/swedenborg/r_w_emerson.html
Jane K. Williams-Hogan. Swedenborg: A Biography Available online here: www.glencairnmuseum.org/jkwh.html
Leon James “Swedenborg Revolution in the Social Sciences” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s98/shintani/logos.html
Leon James “Spiritual Psychology” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/spirpsy.html
Note 6
Wilson Van Dusen, The Distinctiveness of the Church of the New Jerusalem New Church Life March 1994, 112-114.
Peter Rhodes, Gurdijeff’s and Swedenborg General Church Sound Recording Library, Bryn Athyn, 1976.
Leonard Fox, Gurdijeff’s: Guide to Heaven or Hell? New Church Life June 1993; (see also his reply in the October 1993 issue.)
Note 7
Leon James “Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg, or Ritual, Faith, and Theistic Science: The Three Phases of Religious Behavior” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html
Leon James “Religious Behaviorism” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/relbehaviorism.html
Note 8
Leon James “De Hemelsche Leer--Part 1--Degrees of Consciousness” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl.html
Leon James “Spiritual Geography--Graphic Maps of Consciousness for Regeneration” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/geography.html
Note 9
Leon James “Overcoming Objections to Swedenborg's Writings Through the Development of Scientific Dualism” New Philosophy 2001 v.CIV n.3 & 4 pp. 153-217. Available online here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/np98.html
Note 10
Dr. James’ Student Reports on Swedenborg are listed in this directory: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/swedenborg.html
Note 11
Leon James, “Genes of Consciousness: Spiritual Genetics for Regeneration” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/harmonizing4.htm
Note 12
Ian Thompson, Foundations of Theistic Science The Theory of Spirit, Mind and Nature from Theism (containing several articles)
Note 13
Leon James, “Vertical Community” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/vertical.html
Note 14
Leon James, “The Will and the Understanding or The Affective and the Cognitive or Good and Faith or Heart and Lungs or Internal and External Mind” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/w+u.html
Note 15
Leon James, “Affective and Cognitive Resistance to a More Healthy Lifestyle www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/health1.html
Note 16
Leon James, “Notes on the Doctrine of the Wife: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow1.html
Note 17
See our Web site at www.DrDriving.org
List of Media Interviews with Leon James and Diane Nahl
Articles on Driving Psychology by Leon James and Diane Nahl
Leon James and Diane Nahl. Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare (Prometheus Books: New York, 2000).
Leon James and Diane Nahl. Heaven on Wheels: Principles of Christian Driving Psychology www.aloha.net/~dyc/articles/christ.htm
Leon James. “Drivers Behaving Badly: DBB Ratings” www.aloha.net/~dyc/articles/dbb.htm
Note 18
Hatfield, E., & Rapson, R. (1996). Love and sex: Cross-cultural perspectives. New York: Allyn and Bacon.
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Note 19
Leon James “The Universal Modes of Enactment in Human Experience: A Self-Witnessing Account of the Discovery of Sudden Memory and My Interpretation of Its Significance for the Human Race” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/enactment.html
Leon James “Autobiography: Sudden Memory as the Integrating Mechanism on the Daily Round” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/ethnos/es0.html
Leon James “Objective Autobiography: Sudden Memory” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/pederson/TOC.html
Leon James “Radicalist Empiricism. The Universal Modes of Enactment in Human Experience. A Self-Witnessing Account of the Discovery of Sudden Memory and My Interpretation of Its Significance for the Human Race” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/enactment.html
Leon James “The Hexagram of Sudden Memory “ www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/updates/lee/section8.1.2.html
Leon James “Discoveries and Inventions--Sudden Memory” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/discoveries.html
Leon James “The Hexagram of Sudden Memory” (excerpts) www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/qqlj2.html
Leon James “Pre-Swedenborgian Discoveries and Inventions (1960-1980)” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dhl3.html
Leon James and Diane Nahl “Workbook for the Study of Social Psychology” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/updates/lee/Section8.1.5.html
Leon James “The Analysis of Transactional Engineering Competence” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/tec.html
Leon James “Community Archives in Social Psychology” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/updates/lee/Section5.2.3.html
Leon James “Understanding Discourse: From Ethnosemantics to Transactional Engineering” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/pederson/discourse.html
Leon James “Genetic Culture: Primacy of the Affective over the Cognitive” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/already.html
Leon James “Lectures in Social Psychology (directory of chapters)” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/updates/lee/
Leon James “Lecture Notes on The Psychology of Knowledge: The Discovery of Sudden Memory“ www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/pun/knowledge2.html
Note 20
Leon James “The Method of Self-Witnessing” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/self-witnessing.html
Leon James “Religious Psychology or Theistic Science: A Guide to Spiritual Self-examination” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499ss99/man/religious.html
Leon James “Self-witnessing our emotions in daily life” www.aloha.net/~dyc/articles/red-blue.htm
Leon James “General Instructions for Your Research Project: The Four Options--Customizing My Daily Emotional Spin Cycle” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy16/g16reports-instructions.html
Leon James “Temptations entry in the Swedenborg Glossary” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/temptations.html
Leon James “Self-Witnessing the Threefold Self” www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/409as97/atakahas/499/atakahashome.html
Note 21
Rev. Ray Silverman teaches at the New Church Academy in Bryn Athyn. He and his wife Star are the authors of a successful book Rise Above It! – “a curriculum for spiritual growth based on the Ten Commandments.” A seminar program is based on the book and is called Touchstone Seminars: A Life-changing Experience. See Web site at newearth.org/user/touchstone/
Note 22
Harrie G.D. Groeneveld “The Second Coming of the Lord in the Doctrine of the Church” De Hemelsche Leer, First Fascicle, 38-43, 1930 (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8) Available online at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409ss99/thompson/mscan1.html See also its reprint version in the restart issues of De Hemelse Leer, April 2002 issue, Dr. Rutger Perizonius, Editor (Van der Heimstraat 5, 2582 RX, The Hague)
Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer “Elucidation of Mr. Groeneveld's Address” De Hemelsche Leer, First Fascicle, p.82-95; 127-131, 1930 (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8) Available online at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409ss99/thompson/mscan2.html See also its reprint version in the restart issues of De Hemelse Leer, April 2002 issue, Dr. Rutger Perizonius, Editor (Van der Heimstraat 5, 2582 RX, The Hague)
Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, “The second Education” De Hemelsche Leer, Third Fascicle, p.22. 1935 (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8; Chapter 8 Section 3) (Available online at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409ss99/thompson/mscan8.html )
Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, “The Internal Sense of the Chapter on Ecclesiastical and Civil government in “The New Jerusalem And Its Heavenly Doctrine. (March 1930)” Discovered recently and published in the restart issues of De Hemelse Leer, April 2002 issue, pp. 83-91. Dr. Rutger Perizonius, Editor (Van der Heimstraat 5, 2582 RX, The Hague) (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8 and 9; Chapter 8 Section 3)
James, Leon (2002) “The Substitution Technique: A Method for Extracting What the Writings Say About Themselves as the Word” De Hemelse Leer, Vol. XIV No. 2 (April 2002), 103-109.
Note 23
The following New Church ministers are quoted in this book:
Rev. Donald L. Rose, Sermon titled “The Colt Loosed For the Lord’s Service” General Church, Bryn Athyn. Undated (quoted above in the Introduction to Volume 1)
Rev. Erik E. Sandstrom, The New Age and the New Church (Part Two). New Church Life, June 2002, 251-260 (quoted above in the Introduction to Volume 1; Introduction to Chapter 2; Chapter 4 Section 6; Chapter 6 Section 3; Chapter 7 Section 2; Introduction to Chapter 8)
Rev. Mark Carlson. “Evolution, the Limbus, and Hereditary Evil (Part 2)” New Church Life June 1990, pp.259-275. (quoted above in Chapter 3 Section 7).
Rev. Dr. Ray Silverman’s review of Henry James, Sr. in Arcana 1996 v.2 n.4 p.56 (quoted above in Chapter 4 Section 2 and Section 3)
Rev. Grant R. Schnarr “Swedenborg And The Near Death Experience” on the Web at www.newchurch.org/faq/indepthfaq/swedenbNearDeathExperience.html Accessed June 2002 (quoted above in Chapter 4 Section 5)
Rev. Douglas M. Taylor “Self-Esteem” New Church Life March 2002 v.CXXII No.3 pp. 99-105 (quoted above in Chapter 6 Section 7)
Rev. Edward S. Hyatt, Sermons on the Word. Swedenborg Genootschap, 1935 (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8)
Rev. Hugo Lj. Odhner, “The Transition from Human to Divine Philosophy” Written in 1921. Published in The New Philosophy 1974; 77:43-71. Available online at: http://www.newchurchissues.org/SR/hlo74.htm ) (quoted in Chapter 7 Section 8)
Rev. Theodore Pitcairn, “The second Education” De Hemelsche Leer, Third Fascicle, p.22. 1935 (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8; Chapter 8 Section 3) (Available online at www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409ss99/thompson/mscan8.html )
The Letters and Memorials of Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated and Edited by Rev. Alfred Acton (Bryn Athyn, PA. Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1948) (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8)
Rev. Geoffrey H. Howard titled "The Transformation of a Man into a Husband and a Woman into a Wife through Marriage" appeared in New Church Life, June 2001 issue, pages 243-248. (quoted above in Chapter 9 Section 1)
Rev. Ernst Pfeiffer “Elucidation of Mr. Groeneveld's Address” De Hemelsche Leer, First Fascicle, p.82-95; 127-131, 1930 (quoted above in Chapter 7 Section 8)
I wish to thank Dr. Ian Thompson for his invaluable editorial assistance with several drafts and for supplying many of the citations to the Writings (see Note 12 above ). I also wish to thank Rev./Dr. Ray Silverman who spent much appreciated effort reading and critiquing an earlier draft (see Note 21 above). Rev. Robert Junge made critical comments on several key issues in an exchange of correspondence that greatly improved my discussion of them. I am very grateful for their contribution. Their astute observations helped me to avoid critical errors and to strengthen the presentation in numerous places.
The author, Dr. Leon James, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Hawaii. His Web site and information on his professional background is located here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leon.html
A directory of articles and books by Leon James, with full text access is available here: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/leonarticles.html
For comments and questions, I welcome your email: leon@hawaii.edu
The Web address of the latest version of this document is: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Titles for the Abbreviated Citations in the Book
Full text access to these works is free, with a search engine, at: http://www.theheavenlydoctrines.org
When printing this document use the Microsoft Word version since it retains the original pagination and formatting. The .doc file is available here: Volume 1: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume1-nonduality.doc Volume 2: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/volume2-nonduality.doc This document is in the process of being revised. Please note the draft version marked on top.
Volume 1 is located at this address: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html
Access Volume 2 here
Volume 1 is located at this address: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality2.html
The first of them was at that point taken back to a state he had passed through when he lived in the world; for anyone can easily be taken back to a state of his life when in the world because every state of his life is present within him. (AC 4658)
On the knowledge of the angels To speak only of the knowledge of the angels of the inward heaven, let just a single example suffice-their knowledge of the structures and forms of the body. For when one or another internal organ of the body is under consideration, they are able to find out not only that organ's whole structure and operation, but also whether any least answer that anatomical science has been able to detect experimentally is really true. They are also able to find out in an instant whether anything asserted regarding the individual internal organs, besides many other interior parts, is true-things which no one of the human race could ever possibly know, as I have experienced several times. They also know to which spiritual elements all these parts correspond. (SE 1625)
I was afterwards remitted into the company of those of this character, from whence respiration flowed in, that I might know their quality; the respiration was then separated from the pectoral region, and removed to the abdominal about the naval, nor did it extend itself any further; and this signifies a life separated from good and truth. There were then shown to me certain species of respirations, concerning which much conversation also was had, as, for instance, that there is conjoined with the usual respirations an external one, which is common to the world of spirits; then an internal with an insensible external, which is sufficiently good; then an internal without an external, which is better; and finally an insensible one that was to me scarcely perceptible, which is angelic. But these in general; there are still other genera, and an indefinite number of species, pertaining to different regions of the body and the determinations thence, concerning which, by the favor of the Lord, I shall speak elsewhere. I was first accustomed thus to respire in my early childhood, when saying my morning and evening prayers, and occasionally afterwards, when exploring the harmonies of the lungs and heart, and especially when deeply engaged in writing the works that have been published. For a course of years I continually observed that there was a tacit respiration, scarcely perceptible, concerning which it was subsequently given me to reflect, and then to write. I was thus during many years, from the period of childhood, introduced into such respirations, especially by means of absorbing speculations, in which the breathing seems to become quiescent, as otherwise the intense study of truth is scarcely possible. Afterwards, when heaven was opened to me, and I was enabled to converse with spirits, I sometimes scarcely breathed by inspiration at all for the space of a short hour, and merely drew in enough of air to keep up the process of thinking. Thus I was introduced by the Lord into interior respirations. I have also again and again observed, that when I was passing into a state of sleep, my respiration was almost taken away, so that I would awake and catch my breath. When I observe nothing of the kind, I continue to write and think, and am not aware of my respiration being arrested, unless I reflect upon it. This I may say has happened in instances innumerable. Nor was I at such times able to observe the various changes, because I did not reflect upon them. The design of all this was, that every kind of state, every kind of sphere, and every kind of society, particularly the more interior, might find in my own a fit respiration, which should come into play without any reflection on my part, and that thus a medium of interaction might be afforded with spirits and angels. (SE 3464)
The ability to confirm whatever one pleases is not an indication of understanding; but the ability to see that truth is truth, and that falsehood is falsehood, and to confirm it is an indication of understanding. (TCR 334)
|
|
