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The Correspondential Sense of Sacred Scriptures Proving that there is a Unified Theistic Psychology Hidden Within the World’s Historical Sacred Writings
Dr. Leon James April 2009, version 2 Table of Contents
Relationship Between Sacred Scriptures, Religion, and Theistic Psychology The Incarnation Event: God Enters the World of History and Science How Divine Speech Descends In the Human Mind Through Discrete Layers Conceptual Charts of the Physiology of God and the Human Mind The Process of Enlightenment and Regeneration: The Scientific Meaning of Genesis 24 Quotes from the Bhagavad Gita and Their Correspondential Meaning The Source of Conjugial Love With Husbands: The Correspondential Sense of CL 88 Repentance as the Gateway to the Interior Sense of Sacred Scripture Correspondential Sense of Ancient Forms of Sacred Scripture and Their Derivatives The Trinity of God: A Correspondential Analysis of Concepts from Hindu Sacred Scriptures
Introduction
The purpose of this electronic book is to present the evidence for three Propositions about Sacred Scriptures. Proposition 1 The literal sense of Sacred Scriptures is a cultural and historical document associated with a specific religion. There is a hidden correspondential sense within Sacred Scriptures which reveals a universal biological science that may be called theistic psychology. Proposition 2: Any text that contains an extractable interior sense by the application of correspondences, is Sacred Scriptures. The interior sense is then arranged in a complete rational series of interrelated meanings and propositions about the development and anatomy of the human mind (or “spirit body”). Proposition 3: The Theological Writings of Swedenborg are Sacred Scriptures. Proposition 4: The holy books known in the major world’s religions today are Sacred Scriptures.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) wrote a verse by verse, and word by word, analysis of the first two books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus) and the last book of the New Testament in the Bible (Apocalypse or Book of Revelations). He identified the correspondential sense of every word, and then confirmed that sense by giving numerous examples from other parts of the Bible where the same word or expression is meant also in this correspondential sense. What is totally amazing is that the same correspondential sense is present across all the books of the Bible, even though these books were written by different prophets over the course of two millennia.
And even more stupendous is the amazing possibility explored below that all the books of Sacred Scriptures from around the world comprising all the major historical religions across millennia, also contain this same correspondential sense that Swedenborg discovered is present in the Old and New Testaments. The evidence I present strongly suggests such a possibility.
The correspondential sense of Sacred Scriptures was called by Swedenborg “spiritual sense” and the “interior sense of the Word.” The plain text meaning of the words and verses he called the “literal sense” or meaning. He showed by thousands of examples from across all the books of the Bible that the entire Old and New Testaments is “written in correspondences.” The correspondential sense in Sacred Scriptures is the spiritual message that God wants us to know about, and not just the literal sense.
Swedenborg honored the literal sense of the Old and New Testaments as “the Word of God.” He asserted and insisted that the literal sense is historically true and accurate in every detail, having been dictated by God to each prophet from within the mind. God is the actual author of the literal text of Sacred Scriptures. Swedenborg shows by many passages from the Old and New Testaments that God speaks the literal words in Sacred Scriptures, and these are therefore Divine and Holy. He shows by many examples from the Bible that God often speaks the literal in one way, and then follows it up by explaining its meaning another way. For instance, in the Parables of Jesus in the New Testament Sacred Scriptures, God speaks the parable or story, and then explains the spiritual meaning of the story. The story events in the literal “stand for” or correspond to some spiritual meaning, which is the message of the story as a whole, a message God wants us to understand by deciphering the symbolism and rational implications of the literal meaning.
Swedenborg states that God has always spoken in this way to humanity, since the beginning of the race on earth. He says that among the most ancient people on earth there were scientists called “wise men” and “sages” who studied the “laws of correspondences” and used them to extract new meanings from their Sacred Scriptures. This ancient science was later called “the science of correspondences.” In its modern version as rediscovered by Swedenborg in the eighteenth century, correspondences are cause-effect laws of creation that link the vertically arranged discrete degrees of existence in the mental world of eternity and in the physical world of time and space.
Swedenborg painstakingly demonstrates with thousands of examples in two dozen volumes that God speaks in correspondences because that is how meanings about truth and love descend from God and enter the minds of human beings. Swedenborg describes the anatomy of the human mind showing that it is layered in vertically arranged discrete degrees or layers of consciousness, some closer to God in authenticity of truth and love, and some more distant. God gives each of us the opportunity to settle in any of these mental regions of life. When God speaks, the audience is the entire human race. God’s meanings are celestial, spiritual, and rational in their purest form. They descend first into the highest layers of the human mind called celestial. When our consciousness is elevated into the celestial layer of thinking and loving, we have a celestial-rational understanding of the spiritual meaning of God’s message or communication.
In daily activities our consciousness is in the material or natural layer of thinking and loving, and we have reduced understanding of God’s message. It is still God’s Divine message, equally as before. But it is a lower form of God’s meaning or presence in our understanding and love.
We know what is God’s message to us in the material consciousness of the literal sense of Sacred Scriptures. When we talk about the content of the Bible we normally refer to the historical details of the physical events that took place at some place in some century. This is the literal sense. If there is also a correspondential sense hidden within this, then what is it? What is God talking about in the correspondential sense of Sacred Scriptures? The evidence presented below will show the astonishing fact that God is talking about details of theistic psychology and science, namely, about mental development, mental anatomy, steps in regeneration, discrete degrees in cause-effect laws, correspondences, and conjugial love between soulmates.
When God speaks the Divine Words reach us here in our conscious material mind as we read Sacred Scriptures. Said differently: When we read Sacred Scriptures God speaks Divine Words to us and they are reaching us through a series of discrete layers of meaning in our mind called correspondences. First we understand God’s meaning through celestial-rational correspondences. We are not conscious of this operation. When we operate with our material consciousness of daily life, we understand God’s meaning through material-natural correspondences. Celestial-rational correspondences of God’s Speech and material-natural correspondences of it, are different and contrastive, and this difference needs to be understood.
Celestial and rational correspondences of God’s meaning (“spiritual sense”) deal with · love and truth as substance within the mind, being God there · dying and resuscitating · the second death and organic induction into heaven and hell · synergy of breathing of spiritual societies · nature of life in eternity and the vertical community connection · mental development, remains, temptations, reformation, and regeneration · conjugial love and eternal marriage between soulmates · God’s management methods and goals · mental anatomy and spiritual genetics · discrete degrees and correspondences.
Material or natural correspondences of God’s meaning (“literal sense”) deal with · animal sacrifices to gain forgiveness from God · worship rituals that must be performed as a group or society · outward conduct of appropriate social behavior towards others · punishment of bad behaviors that are forbidden by God · historical and cultural events, places, and details · natural disasters, famines, migrations, miracles · promises and reassurances of God’s forgiveness and love
You can see from the contrast between the two lists that the higher correspondential sense that can be extracted from the literal sense results in a change of content or topics. The more interior “spiritual sense” exists in a more rational understanding that is above the natural or material understanding. We can read Sacred Scriptures at two levels of meaning. One is the literal or surface meaning of God’s Speech, and the other is the underlying or spiritual meaning of God’s message. The literal meaning of God’s message deals with sacrifices, worship, punishment, and promises, while the spiritual meaning deals with mental development and anatomy, discrete degrees and the laws of correspondences, regeneration and temptation, marriage and community in eternity. In other words, the correspondential or spiritual sense of Sacred Scriptures deals with theistic psychology.
It is clear that God gives both of these components of Sacred Scriptures because both are important and necessary to humankind. Religion and science are both necessary. If God gave only the theistic psychology component to science there would be no religion. Without religion there would be no civilized world, hence no science or community. If the literal of Sacred Scriptures were written as theistic psychology, only few people would read it and acknowledge it. Further, when God speaks the Divine Words are rational truths that come down to the conscious material mind through stages of transformation by the laws of correspondences. The celestial-rational meanings represent the first transformation. As this descends into the material mind there is another transformation. Each transformation changes the content. By the time it reaches the mind of the prophet the transformation has reached its final state in the form of a particular language and culture on earth.
The literal meaning of the written Word is therefore the basis and source of a religion. The literal meaning now contains all the previous transformations. Knowledge of correspondences allows science to extract these prior or more interior meanings. Hence it is that we can list the content and many of the details of theistic psychology. The knowledge of theistic psychology is extractable by any scientist or scholar from any Sacred Scriptures. Its methodology has been described as rational empiricism.
Swedenborg did not use the expression “theistic psychology” but it is obvious to me that this is what he was in fact describing, namely, that while the literal sense of Sacred Scriptures is given for religion, the correspondential sense is given for theistic science.
In line with the discoveries and developments by Swedenborg, I investigated the following proposition: Proposition 2: Any text that contains an extractable spiritual sense by the application of correspondences, is Sacred Scriptures. My research after several years of investigation indicates two preliminary findings that I believe will be fully established by other researchers and scholars. Proposition 3: The Theological Writings of Swedenborg are Sacred Scriptures.
Proposition 4: The holy writings known in the major world’s religions today are Sacred Scriptures.
A critical methodological issue facing the Propositions is to distinguish between “contains correspondences” vs. “contains a complete series of correspondences.” Swedenborg states that the Book of Job which forms part of the modern Bible, is written in the ancient style of correspondences, but does not contain a complete rational series, as do the other books of the Old Testament. While there are “holy books” it doesn’t mean that all holy books have a complete internal series of correspondences. The definition of Sacred Scriptures is that they contain an arrangement that forms a complete rational series. This series must cover all the anatomical layers of descent.
The following presents samples of my research selected from my online collection of books Principles of Theistic Psychology (18 volumes) and from my other essays and articles.
Evidence
Relationship Between Sacred Scriptures, Religion, and Theistic PsychologySacred Scripture is Divine Speech transformed by correspondence into a natural language . All genuine Sacred Scripture has therefore two levels of meaning. The clearly visible literal sense is historical and cultural, leading to particular religions. The hidden correspondential sense is universal and culture-free. Hence although the literal sense of the various collections of Sacred Scripture is necessarily cultural and ethnic, also divisive against each other, the hidden correspondential sense of all Sacred Scripture is unified and consistent, relating to the rationality and love of Divine Speech as One God for all.
The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#topic3 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To understand how we are alive and what it means to be alive, we need to know what God has revealed to humanity. These Divine revelations are known in most cultures today as Sacred Scriptures. The literal meaning of Sacred Scriptures in a natural language was given to serve as the basis a specific religion at some time in history. The scientific meaning hidden within the literal meaning, was given to serve as the basis for theistic science and theistic psychology. Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg: (Note:
The words in italics are substitutions for the original expressions (see Table
below): SS 78. Further, it is through Sacred Scripture that God the Divine Psychologist is present with us and is conjoined with us, for God the Divine Psychologist is Sacred Scripture, and as it were speaks with us in it. God the Divine Psychologist is also Divine truth itself, as likewise is Sacred Scripture. From this it is evident that God the Divine Psychologist is present with us and is at the same time conjoined with us, according to our understanding of Sacred Scripture, for according to this we have truth and the derivative rational knowledge in our cognitive organ, and also pro-social motivation in our affective organ. God the Divine Psychologist is indeed present with us through the reading of Sacred Scripture, but we are conjoined with Him through the understanding of truth from Sacred Scripture, and according thereto; and in proportion as God the Divine Psychologist has been conjoined with us, in the same proportion theistic psychology is active in our mind. Theistic psychology is within us; theistic psychology that is outside of us is the institutionalized scientific discipline with a number of us who have theistic psychology within them. This is meant by the words of the Incarnated Divine Human to those who study theistic psychology without applying it to their daily willing and thinking who want to know how heaven is established in our mind: "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). Here the "kingdom of God" means God the Divine Psychologist, and from Him, knowledge of theistic psychology. (SS 78) (see Note below) Note:
The following substitutions were made in the above paragraph indicated by
italics:
The conversion Table above illustrates the way in which theistic psychology is extracted from the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture, in this case, the Writings of Swedenborg. As you can see, all traces of the original historical or ethnic references vanish when this is done, and what remains is universal science applying to all human beings. Many more illustrations will be given in what follows. The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#topic3A ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Why We Need Sacred Scripture
This is why it is absolutely necessary that God give people guidelines and definitions of what is heavenly and what hellish. We cannot rely on our own judgment. Hence it is that God gives Sacred Scripture to the human race. This is the Divinely given definition and criterion for what is good vs. evil, true vs. false, heavenly vs. hellish. In Sacred Scripture God gives us several distinct layers of meanings and definitions. Our first encounter with Divine Speech through Sacred Scripture is the literal sense of the sentences that make up the books of Sacred Scripture. These sentences can be read by anyone and be understood in the literal sense. What are the topics of Sacred Scripture at this literal level of meaning? What is God talking to us about? At the literal level Sacred Scripture has a historical and religious content. For instance, the Old Testament Sacred Scripture reads like the history of an ancient people, and contains poetry about God, visions and dreams by prophets, various prophecies of future history, numerous commandments and rituals that must be performed, and punishments and rewards are received accordingly. This literal-historical level of meaning of Sacred Scripture forms the basis for religion and its various denominations and varieties. What happens when people form religions and belief systems based on the literal sense of Sacred Scripture? People interpret this literal content to suit themselves and what they love. People focus on the parts they like and ignore the parts of Sacred Scripture they don’t like. There is no consistency, no rational responsibility for being consistent. It is necessary therefore for people to go to the next layer of meaning in Sacred Scripture. This is called the spiritual meaning or the interior meaning, whereas the literal sense is called the natural meaning or the external meaning. People are able to penetrate to the hidden correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture by making these steps: (1) Acknowledging that the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture can only be understood by being received from God. No one can do this on their own or from their own. Those who try come up with much improbable fantasy rather than truth and reality. (2) Studying Sacred Scripture by rational and scientific methods. One must be completely consistent, explain apparent contradictions, and ignore no parts. This is called forming for oneself the Doctrine of Truth from Sacred Scripture. Theistic psychology is an instance of this approach. (3) Applying each truth and idea to our daily willing and thinking. We must monitor the hundreds of choices we make every day. Every choice must be distinguished in our mind as either heavenly or hellish, as defined by the spiritual meaning of Sacred Scripture that God reveals to us on a daily basis. If we practice these three steps on a daily basis, we are slowly building up our heaven and cutting our ties with hell. After resuscitation we happily and easily let go of whatever hellish traits remain, and we enter our heaven. The correspondential sense of the Old and New Testament Sacred Scriptures are revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg Sacred Scriptures. The Writings Sacred Scriptures teach us how to extract the correspondential sense of all Sacred Scriptures. The literal sense of the Writings Sacred Scriptures makes up the Swedenborg Reports in about 30 volumes that describe his experiments, observations, and rationale. It is revealed there that life in eternal heaven is a conjugial life, that is, everyone there is married to their soulmate. Swedenborg interviewed many married couples who live in their heavens. A husband and wife are soul mates and live out their immortal life in happiness and blessedness in company with other similar couples with who they form a society or city. Swedenborg describes the details of life in heaven and hell.
The Hidden Correspondential Sense of Sacred Scriptures
What is God talking to us about in the hidden correspondential sense of Sacred Scriptures? And why is it hidden?
The idea of “God talking” is the same as the idea of “Divine Truth” because God thinks and speaks Divine Truth and nothing else. Remember that the mental world of eternity is the world created by God’s thoughts and purposes. God has no beginning and no end, and therefore God’s thoughts are eternal, which is the same as saying that God’s thoughts, or Divine Truth, forms the world of eternity. Remember also that the physical world of time and space is an effect or consequence of a mental cause. This mental cause of the physical world is Divine Truth, which is God’s thinking.
We at first think that the physical world is concrete and solid while the mental world is ephemeral, almost non-existent in concrete reality. We have sayings in popular culture like “It’s only in his imagination. It’s not real.” A popular song about an island the singer is dreaming of ends with “But there is no island at all, just a picture on my wall.” So we grow up with the idea that the mental world is less real than the physical world.
But as we progress in our rational thinking we discover from the hidden correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture that the mental world is more real than the physical world. Everything in the physical world is temporary and breaks down with time. Nothing is permanent. But in the mental world created by God’s thoughts every single thing is permanent. We are immortal because our mental world is created by the thoughts of God, that is, by Divine Truth. A human mind constructed out of God’s thoughts and feelings is an immortal being because nothing in it can die; everything in it is permanent in eternity. Animals do not have the same mental body we have.
While we have a natural or material mind and a spiritual-rational or celestial-rational mind, animals only have a natural mind. Upon the death of the animal the mental body containing the animal’s natural mind cannot remain itself, cannot survive, and so dissipates. It is our rational mind that makes us different from all animals. Our spiritual-rational mind is constructed as a receptor organ for God’s thoughts and feelings, while animals do not have such an organ. The natural mind that animals have are similar to our natural mind in that its content is constructed through the sensory signals of the physical body. In contrast to this, the spiritual or celestial-rational mind does not receive any input whatsoever from the physical body and the natural world. All the input into our spiritual mind comes from the spiritual world, that is, the mental world of eternity.
The input or inflow of God’s thoughts and feelings into our spiritual mind is unconscious and automatic. This is the source of rationality, that is, our ability to think and reason rationally in our natural mind. We are not conscious of the inflow of God’s rational thoughts. We are only conscious of the rational thoughts as we are thinking about something or solving a problem.
Why then are we not perfectly rational all the time? Why is the Divine Truth hidden in Sacred Scripture as its correspondential sense? Why not reveal the truth to everybody?
To understand the answer you need to recall that God’s thoughts and feelings flow out into the created mental world of eternity where the minds of human beings exist and live. God’s thoughts and feelings spread out into the mental world of humanity like sunlight and heat spread out into physical space and into the planets. Divine Truth as Divine Speech, spreads into the unconscious spiritual mind of every human being, insuring the rationality and immortality of every member of the human race. But where does Divine Truth go from there? How does it go from the unconscious spiritual mind to the conscious natural mind where we do our thinking?
The answer is that the natural mind and the spiritual mind are connected by the laws of correspondences. These laws govern the functional connection between the layers of reality, starting with the spiritual mind and its layers, spreading outward to the natural mind, and finally being written down as sentences in a book. At each level of descent there is a corresponding reaction so that the upper level causes the lower level to react in correspondence with itself. When Divine Speech, or Divine Truth, reaches the bottom of the natural mind, the meaning of the ideas are natural, not spiritual. The literal sense that the prophet writes down in sentences is not what God said or thought, but a correspondence to what God thought and said. See the Layers Diagram.
For instance the literal sense of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture often speaks of water, different forms of it, like rain, ocean, storm, flood, river, spring waters, etc. When Swedenborg read the Sacred Scripture people use in the heavens of their eternity, there was no mention of water anywhere. Instead, when Swedenborg compared the specific passages and phrases where the Old Testament Sacred Scripture mentions water, there was mention of various forms of truth, like external vs. internal truth, or mediate truth vs. genuine truth, or truth of doctrine, truth of religion, natural truth vs. spiritual truth, falsified truth, etc. In other words, Divine Speech discusses the varieties of truth in human minds, not the weather or bodies of water on earth. Another example is the frequent mention and description of wars conducted by the children of Israel in the Holy Land. All sorts of sordid details are given, some quite revolting. In several passages God is quoted as saying that He orders the children of Israel to invade the land that was promised them, wage holy war against the inhabitants, and destroy their cities, and decimate their population. God orders that no one should be spared the sword, -- women, children, and cattle. Many people today are puzzled or offended by such a barbaric treatment commanded by God. But you can understand it if you look for the hidden spiritual meaning of these events. Every detail of war mentioned in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture can be analyzed and seen to deal with the details of the psychology of regeneration.
Swedenborg was conscious in both the natural mind, as we are now, and in his spiritual mind, as we will be after resuscitation, which is the process of awakening in the spiritual mind a few hours after the death of the physical body . Because Swedenborg was conscious in both minds simultaneously he was in a position of making direct empirical observations of how natural and spiritual phenomena are interrelated. He was able to read the literal meaning of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek so that he was conscious of its meaning in the natural mind, as we are, but also of its meaning in the spiritual mind, since the two are interrelated. This is how he empirically discovered the natural-spiritual correspondences in the Bible.
The Correspondential Sense of the Genesis Creation Story
Let's see what he discovered about the Genesis creation story as he compared passages in the Bible with Sacred Scripture that exists in every person's unconscious spiritual mind. In the following passages people are called "angels" when, after death and resuscitation, they become conscious in their spiritual and celestial layers of the mind. The expression "the Word" refers to Sacred Scripture. "The Lord" refers to the universal God the Divine Human . The expression "the Word in the world" refers to the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture as we are conscious of it in our natural mind, which is referred to as "the church." Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg: [comments in italics are not in the original] De Verbo 14. XIV The Word in the heavens. The Word [= Sacred Scripture] exists in all the heavens [= layers of the mind], and it is read there as it is in the world [= the meaning of it in our natural mind] , and sermons [= knowledge of theistic psychology] are based on it. For it [= Sacred Scripture]
is the Divine Truth which is the source of the angels' [= people in the
afterlife already conscious in their celestial layers] intelligence and
wisdom. For without the Word no one knows anything about the Lord [= God the
Divine Human], love and faith, redemption, and all the other secrets of
heavenly wisdom. In fact without the Word heaven [= consciousness in the
afterlife in our celestial layers] would not exist, just as without the
Word there would be no church in the world [= no way of regenerating our
character], so that there would be no linking with the Lord.
(...) The nature of the spiritual sense [= correspondential sense] has been demonstrated at length in my Arcana Coelestia, where the whole contents of Genesis and Exodus have been explained in accordance with that sense. The difference is such that no word is the same. Things take the place of names, and likewise of numbers; the histories are replaced by matters concerning the church [= the natural mind]. The surprising thing is that, when an angel reads it, he is unaware that it is not the same as what he read in the Word while in the world [= after resuscitation, we become conscious in the spiritual mind and unconscious in the natural mind]. This is because he no longer has any natural ideas, since they are replaced with spiritual ones; and the natural and the spiritual are linked by correspondences into a kind of unity. So when someone passes from the
natural into the spiritual [= at our death and immediate resuscitation],
it seems to him as if they were the same. In fact an angel does not know that
he is wiser than he was in the world, though his wisdom is really so superior
as to be comparatively indescribable. He is unable to recognize the difference,
because in his spiritual state he knows nothing of the natural state, which he
had in the world; and he is unable to compare and differentiate them [= as
Swedenborg was able to do], because he cannot return to his former state so
as to make a comparison [= but Swedenborg was conscious in both before his
death]. Still an angel in heaven is constantly being brought to a higher
degree of perfection in wisdom than he had in the world, because his affection
for spiritual truth is purer [= more rational and perfect]. For that Word contains an inmost sense, called celestial, which in all its details refers to nothing but the Lord [= how God the Divine Human manages our mental operations]. In this Word [= celestial layer of our mind] the Lord [= God the Divine Human ] is read in place of "Jehovah" [= God's literal Name in the Bible], and of "Abraham", "Isaac" and "Jacob"; and also the Lord is named in place of "David", "Moses," "Elijah" and the rest of the Prophets; and His divinity is distinguished by special marks [= in the written version of Sacred Scripture that exists in our celestial mind]. The names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and also the names of the Apostles, when read there, convey something about the Lord as regards the church [= how we can change our inherited character]; and so with all the rest. From this it became plain to me
that the whole of the Sacred Scripture deals in its inmost sense with nothing
but the Lord. The difference which distinguishes the two Words, the spiritual
and the celestial, is like that between thoughts, the province of the intellect
[= our cognitive organ], and affections, the province of the will [=
our affective organ]. For the angels of the celestial kingdom are guided [=
our chief motives and loves] by love to the Lord and so affection for good
[= wanting to be conjoined with God the Divine Human ]; the angels of
the spiritual kingdom are guided by faith in the Lord and so by perception of
truth [= wanting to be conjoined with the truths of God the Divine Human].
The script of the celestial Word,
however, is made up of letters not known in the world. They are indeed
alphabetical, but each one of them is composed of curved lines with serifs above
and below, and there are small marks or dots in the letters, and also above and
below them. I was told that the most ancient people on this earth had such a
script. Some details agree with the Hebrew script, but not much. Such a script
expresses the affections which make up a love; so it contains more secrets than
they themselves can ever utter. They express these unutterable secrets which
they perceive from their Word by means of representations. The wisdom hidden
away in this Word surpasses the wisdom in the spiritual Word as a thousand does
one. In the natural Word which we have in this world there is a description of the creation of the world, the first creation of man, and the earthly pleasures and delights of man and the world. By the persons named following him up to the Flood [= hellish traits we inherit and acquire ] are meant his descendants, and the numbers mean their ages. But in the spiritual Word the angels of the spiritual kingdom have, this is not what is meant. The first chapter is a description of the reform and regeneration of the people of the most ancient church [= celestial traits we inherit and acquire]; this too is called a new creation. The second chapter describes as the Garden the intelligence of the people of that church; Adam and his wife stand for the church itself, and their descendants down to the Flood describe the changes in the state of that church [= evolution of mental states in the human race], up to the time when it came to an end and was finally destroyed by the Flood [= hellish traits we inherit and acquire]. But in the celestial Word possessed by the angels of the Lord's celestial kingdom, the first chapter describes the glorification of the Lord's Human; the Garden describes his Divine wisdom. Adam himself is understood to mean the Lord as regards the Divine itself and at the same time the Divine Human. His wife stands for the church, which since it has life from the Lord is called Eve from [the Hebrew word for] life. Adam says of her that she was to be his bone and his flesh, and [they should be] one flesh, because the church comes from the Lord, and is out of Him and with Him as if one. The names of the descendants of Adam describe the successive states by which the Lord was received by the people of that church and linked with them, until there was nothing at all received and so no linking. [6] So when the first chapters in our Word are read by upright people, especially by boys and girls, and they feel joy at the state when everything was created and at the Garden, then these meanings are unfolded, and the spiritual angels [= those in the afterlife connected to the natural mind of people still on earth] understand them in accordance with their Word, and the celestial angels in accordance with theirs, without being aware that a person or a child is reading it [= hence without prior knowledge or biased teaching]. These meanings are unfolded in their due sequence because they correspond, and correspondences are from creation like this. This makes it plain what the Word is like in its depths, that is, it has three senses. The last is the natural one for men on earth; this deals mainly with worldly matters [= historical narratives] and where it deals with Divine matters [= spiritual meanings about the afterlife], they are still described by the kind of things which the world contains [= spiritual ideas described and understood naturally, not spiritually]. The middle sense is the spiritual one, which describes the kind of things which belong to the church [= mental world of eternity in the afterlife]. The inmost sense is the celestial one, which contains the kind of things which belong to the Lord [= how we are conjoined to God by loving Him]. For the whole of nature is a theatre representing the Lord's kingdom; and the Lord's kingdom, heaven and the church, is a theatre representing the Lord Himself. For just as the Lord glorified His Human [during the Incarnation Event], so too He regenerates a person; and as He regenerates a person, so too did He create him. [7] These facts may establish what the Word is like in its depths. The natural Word as possessed by the Christian part of the world contains within itself a spiritual and a celestial Word. For the spiritual sense of our Word is the Word in the heavens which make up the Lord's spiritual kingdom; and the celestial sense of our Word, its inmost sense, is the Word in the heavens which make up the Lord's celestial kingdom. Our Word therefore contains both the spiritual and the celestial Words; but the spiritual Word and the celestial Word do not contain the natural Word. The Word of our world is therefore the one most full of Divine wisdom, and consequently more holy than the Word of the heavens [= because it contains the other two Sacred Scripture within itself]. (DE VERBO 14) AC 4. While the mind cleaves to the literal sense alone [= of Sacred Scripture], no one can possibly see that such things [= heavenly secrets in the form of correspondences] are contained [= hidden] within it. Thus in these first chapters of Genesis [= Chapters 1 to 11], nothing is discoverable from the sense of the letter other than that the creation of the world is treated of, and the garden of Eden which is called Paradise, and Adam as the first created man. Who supposes anything else? But it will be sufficiently established in the following pages that these matters contain arcana [= secrets] which have never yet been revealed; and in fact that the first chapter of Genesis in the internal sense treats in general of the new creation of man, or of his regeneration [= mental character change from inherited hellish traits to heavenly], and specifically of the Most Ancient Church; and this in such a manner that there is not the least expression which does not represent, signify, and enfold within it these things. (AC 4) AC 67. CHAPTER 2 As of the Lord's Divine mercy it has been given me to know the internal meaning of the Word, in which are contained deepest arcana that have not before come to anyone's knowledge, nor can come unless the nature of the other life is known (for very many things of the Word's internal sense have regard to, describe, and involve those of that life), I am permitted to disclose what I have heard and seen during some years in which it has been granted me to be in the company of spirits and angels. (AC 67) AC 68. I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections. But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt. (AC 68) AC 69. Man was so created by the Lord as to be able while living in the body to speak with spirits and angels, as in fact was done in the most ancient times; for, being a spirit clothed with a body, he is one with them. But because in process of time men so immersed themselves in corporeal and worldly things as to care almost nothing for aught besides, the way was closed. Yet as soon as the corporeal things recede in which man is immersed, the way is again opened, and he is among spirits, and in a common life with them. (AC 69) AC 70. As it is permitted me to disclose what for several years I have heard and seen, it shall here be told, first, how the case is with man when he is being resuscitated; or how he enters from the life of the body into the life of eternity. In order that I might know that men live after death, it has been given me to speak and be in company with many who were known to me during their life in the body; and this not merely for a day or a week, but for months, and almost a year, speaking and associating with them just as in this world. They wondered exceedingly that while they lived in the body they were, and that very many others are, in such incredulity as to believe that they will not live after death; when in fact scarcely a day intervenes after the death of the body before they are in the other life; for death is a continuation of life. (AC 70) Here is a summary of the correspondential sense of the first chapters of Genesis: From: BibleMeanings.info (paraphrased from the Writings of
Swedenborg): AC 6. The six days, or periods, which are so many successive states of the regeneration of man, are in general as follows. AC 7. The first state is that which precedes, including both the state from infancy, and that immediately before regeneration. This is called a "void," "emptiness," and "thick darkness." And the first motion, which is the Lord‘s mercy, is "the Spirit of God moving upon the faces of the waters." AC 8. The second state is when a distinction is made between those things which are of the Lord, and those which are proper to man. The things which are of the Lord are called in the Word "remains," and here are especially knowledges of faith, which have been learned from infancy, and which are stored up, and are not manifested until the man comes into this state. At the present day this state seldom exists without temptation, misfortune, or sorrow, by which the things of the body and the world, that is, such as are proper to man, are brought into quiescence, and as it were die. Thus the things which belong to the external man are separated from those which belong to the internal man. In the internal man are the remains, stored up by the Lord unto this time, and for this use. AC 9. The third state is that of repentance, in which the man, from his internal man, speaks piously and devoutly, and brings forth goods, like works of charity, but which nevertheless are inanimate, because he thinks they are from himself. These goods are called the "tender grass," and also the "herb yielding seed," and afterwards the "tree bearing fruit." AC 10. The fourth state is when the man becomes affected with love, and illuminated by faith. He indeed previously discoursed piously, and brought forth goods, but he did so in consequence of the temptation and straitness under which he labored, and not from faith and charity; wherefore faith and charity are now enkindled in his internal man, and are called two "luminaries." AC 11. The fifth state is when the man discourses from faith, and thereby confirms himself in truth and good: the things then produced by him are animate, and are called the "fish of the sea," and the "birds of the heavens." AC 12. The sixth state is when, from faith, and thence from love, he speaks what is true, and does what is good: the things which he then brings forth are called the "living soul" and the "beast." And as he then begins to act at once and together from both faith and love, he becomes a spiritual man, who is called an "image." His spiritual life is delighted and sustained by such things as belong to the knowledges of faith, and to works of charity, which are called his "food and his natural life is delighted and sustained by those which belong to the body and the senses; whence a combat arises, until love gains the dominion, and he becomes a celestial man. AC 13. Those who are being regenerated do not all arrive at this state. The greatest part, at this day, attain only the first state some only the second; others the third, fourth, or fifth; few the sixth; and scarcely any one the seventh. Continued here: http://www.biblemeanings.info/Bible/genesis.html Let us examine a Number from the Writings Sacred Scripture that will demonstrate to you how the scientific sense is extracted from the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture. This passage gives an analysis of a phrase in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. Try to keep track of the topic by translating certain words from the literal meaning into theistic psychology concepts. See if you can memorize these correspondences:
Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture: (words in italics appear in the table above) AC 9278. Six days thou shalt do thy works. [Exodus. 23:12] That this signifies the state of labor and of combat when the man is in external delights that are to be conjoined with internal, is evident from the signification of the "six days" which precede the seventh, as being a state of labor and of combat (see n. 737, 900, 8510, 8888, 8975). The labor and combat then are signified by the "works" which they were to do in the six days. By the "works of the six days," and the "rest on the seventh day," are signified those things which come forth in man in his first, and in his second state, during regeneration, and also those which come forth in him when he has been regenerated. (Concerning the first and second states of man during regeneration, see above, n. 9274; and concerning those things which come forth with him when he has been regenerated, n. 9213.) These things take place to the end that external things may be conjoined with internal; for there is an external man, which is also called natural; and there is an internal man, which is also called spiritual. The external man communicates with the world, and the internal man with heaven. [2] The Divine order is that heaven should rule the world in man, and not the world rule heaven in him; for when heaven rules man, then the Lord rules him. Man is born into loving the world and himself more than heaven and the Lord. And because this is opposite to Divine order, there must be an inversion by means of regeneration; and this inversion is effected when the things of heaven and the Lord are loved more than those of the world and of self. This is the reason why the man who has been regenerated, as also he who is in heaven, is alternately in external and in internal things; for external things are thereby disposed so as to agree with internal things; and finally to be subject to them. [3] When a man is in external things, he is in labor and combat, for he is then in a life which savors of the world, into which the hells flow from all sides, continually endeavoring to infest, and even to subjugate in the man the things of heaven; but the Lord continually protects and sets him free. From this arise the labor and combat which are signified by the "six days of the week in which works are to be done." But when the man is in internal things, then, because he is in heaven with the Lord, the labor and combat cease, and he is in the tranquility of peace, in which tranquility conjunction also is effected. These are the things which are signified by the "seventh day." That the interiors of man have been created according to the image of heaven, and his exteriors according to the image of the world; thus that man is a heaven and a world in a little form, and according to the maxim of the ancients, is a microcosm, may be seen above (n. 6057); and consequently that it is according to Divine order that the Lord through heaven directs the world in man, and by no means the reverse. [4] The nature of the labor and combat when a man is in external things, can be seen from the fact that he is then in such a state as to be in heat from the world and to be cold toward heaven, unless heaven be to him as the world; and that he is consequently in such a shade that he cannot conceive otherwise than that external things flow into internal, and consequently that the eye sees and the ear hears of itself, and that their objects bring forth thoughts, and produce the intellect, and that thereupon he is able of himself to believe, and likewise to love God; consequently from the world to see heaven. From this fallacy he can scarcely be withdrawn until he has been raised from external things into internal, and thus into the light of heaven. Then for the first time he perceives that the things in him which are of the world, thus which are of the body and its senses, see and act through influx from heaven, that is, through heaven from the Lord, and not at all from themselves. From this it is evident why a sensuous man believes that everything of his life is from the world and from nature; that there is no hell, nor heaven; and finally that there is no God; consequently why he ridicules everything of the church insofar as he is concerned; but is in favor of it insofar as it concerns the simple, so that they may be in bonds, in addition to those of the laws. [5] From this it can be known what it is to be in external things, and not at the same time in internal things, and that when a man is in external things, he is in cold and shade in respect to the things which are of heaven and which are of the Lord. From this also it can be known who in this world are intelligent and wise, namely, those who are in the truth and good of the church, because these are wise from heaven; and also who are foolish and insane, namely, those who are not in the good and truth of the church, because their knowledge is derived solely from the world; and that those among them who by means of the sciences of the world have confirmed themselves against the truths and goods of the church, are more insane and foolish that the rest, however much they may believe themselves intelligent and wise in comparison with others, and may call those simple who are in the good of life from the truths of doctrine; when yet the simplicity of these latter is wisdom in the eyes of the angels, and moreover after death they are raised by the Lord into angelic wisdom. (AC 9278) You can see from the above that the hidden meaning of the verse "Six days thou shalt do thy works" in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture refers to the process of regeneration by which the natural mind is made to correspond to the rational mind by compelling our thinking and willing to conform to the truths of Sacred Scripture in our understanding. This self-compulsion on a daily and hourly basis is referred to as "six days of doing one's works." In God's purpose our main task on earth is to regenerate, hence the methods of regeneration is a major topic of Divine Speech hidden throughout Sacred Scripture. For other demonstrations of extracting the hidden meaning of Sacred Scripture using correspondences, see Sections: 9.1.1 || 1.8.8.1 || 1.8.8.2.3 || 1.8.8.12 || 1.8.8.2.1 || 1.8.2 The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#need-SS +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Why We Need Theistic PsychologyThis is what God wants us to know. Divine Love wants each human being to live in the heaven of eternity that is constructed out of God’s rational feelings and thoughts. God has arranged things so that He cannot make us to be in our heaven if we don’t want to. This is called spiritual freedom. God puts spiritual freedom above all other properties of human beings. Through His Divine omnipotence God maintains the spiritual freedom of every human being from birth to endless eternity. God makes sure that we remain totally unaware of the fact that our thoughts and feelings are nothing but reactions or adaptations in our mind to His thoughts and feelings in the form of the spiritual substances of good and truth inflowing from Him. His thoughts and feelings are not our thoughts and feelings! But our reactions to the substances of good and truth inflowing into our mental organs, are our thoughts and feelings. Our thoughts and feelings are never God's thoughts and feelings, and vice versa, but they are related to each other by correspondence.
God does not want us to actually sense or be sensuously aware of the fact that our thoughts and feelings are mere reactions and adaptations to His thoughts and feelings inflowing as good and truth substances. Why not?
Because we would not like it, and could not be happy in heaven. In order for us to feel happy it is a necessity that we feel like an independent self or person, and that we act from our free will according to our own desires and understanding. We don’t want our thoughts and feelings to be controlled by God. And so because God has made us this way, He makes sure that we are unconscious of the source of our thinking and feeling as being from God rather than from self.
God gives us the sense and feeling that we think and feel from ourselves. This is called the as-of self . In other words, we do not have a self that originates in ourselves. The collection of thoughts and feelings we call a human person is not built up by ourselves, but by God’s actions in our mind, and to which each of us reacts in a unique fashion. Every human being is born from parents so that the mental world of the offspring is an actual offshoot to the mental world of the parents. This has been true since the beginning of the race so that everyone lives in the same inherited mental world of humanity. Our mental body contains all the qualities of our parents, and they inherited their mental qualities from their parents. Various specific genealogies thus evolve as races, blood lines, families, and nations, each sub-variety of culture being a particular zone in the mental world. The inheritance of the visible physical traits are correspondences to the inheritance of the mental traits.
Over the many generations of human beings on this planet there occurred a progressive decline in mental traits because people falsified the thoughts of truth that came into their conscious natural mind from their spiritual mind. The original generations lived in a paradise on earth because this corresponded to their mental states, which were heavenly . They were in direct communication with conscious awareness, of their family and friends already in the afterlife of eternity. This was through their spiritual mind, which in those days was still conscious. But later generations began to falsify the thoughts of truth in their natural mind. Falsified truths serve to justify feelings and intentions that are contrary to good. In this way they created a hell in the mental world and became unconscious of their spiritual mind while on earth.
Hell in the thoughts and feelings of our natural mind is nothing but the perversion of the thoughts and feelings in our spiritual mind or heaven, because evil, which is hell, is nothing but the corruption or adulteration of good, which is heaven. The hells of the human mind then kept growing and accumulating from generation to generation. The New Testament Sacred Scripture reveals that every human being born on this earth had become a hell by the time of the Incarnation Event two thousand years ago, by which God made Himself be born as a human child on earth. By acquiring a Divine Natural Body, God radically changed His relationship to the human race and our evolution of consciousness. The Divine Child, while on earth, created in His natural mind a new mental organ that did not exist before in the human race. This organ is called the spiritual-natural mind. The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#need-tp ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Incarnation Event: God Enters the World of History and Science
About two thousand years ago an extraordinary and totally unique event took place that altered the course of human evolution in a fundamental way that is only now being discovered by science. The Universal God the Divine Human, Creator and Manager of the universe, entered history and science by the Incarnation Event (see entry for Incarnation Event in the Subject Index in Volume 18).
This event had been foretold in the most ancient Sacred Scriptures.
The ancient prophecy was given at the beginning of a phase of human evolution called The Fall . Before this, the celestial human race existed on this earth . At the end of this phase called the Golden Period, the new spiritual phase began on this earth. We are of this race. We are called spiritual in contradistinction to the earlier race called celestial. The human mind was created in three discrete layers -- celestial, spiritual, natural. Hence the evolution of the race must follow the anatomical composition of the human mind. The celestial layer of the human race was evolved, developed, and completed through the lives of the individuals that lived in the early generations on this earth. When the celestial anatomical layer was complete, the celestial race was "consummated" or extinguished. A few "remnants" whose anatomical structures deviated from the norm were the carriers that insured the connection between the extinguished celestial race and the newly beginning spiritual race.
As we are part of the spiritual race we possess a functioning operational celestial layer of our mind even though nothing of its operations is conscious to us. Our celestial mind is above our spiritual mind, a discrete degree within it, and whatever is within or above, is far superior all that is below it. Our celestial mind is far superior to our spiritual mind. But even so, we only become conscious of our spiritual mind after resuscitation . This happens just a few hours after physical death. When we are resuscitated we at first are conscious in our natural mind, which is the layer we know ourselves in everyday life here on earth. This natural layer forms the content of who we know ourselves to be. But shortly thereafter our natural mind begins to fade like a distant memory -- our identity, profession, hobbies, knowledge of history and science -- all of this that is stored up in our natural mind, slowly begins to fade like a distant memory from childhood or some land we once visited. See the Layers Diagram.
This happens because the natural mind is totally unsuited for life in eternity which is a mental world without time, space, matter, or sickness and death. Everything now depends on our rational feeling and thinking. What kind of people we are with and what the environment and situation is like, depends entirely on our ruling loves. Not like before on earth out of which the content of the natural mind was formed. Now in eternity the laws that govern reality are purely rational laws. To try to operate with the natural mind after resuscitation doesn't get you anywhere. You have to disregard your identity, your culture, your nominal religion, your citizenship awards, your achievements and reputation -- all of these things are formed in your natural mind and are part of the natural mind. But after resuscitation you are existing in your spiritual mind.
Swedenborg reports that some people he talked to after resuscitation insisted on not letting go of the natural mind. The only way this is possible is to act insane in the spiritual mind, pretending by fantasy that you are still in your natural mind and in your physical body on earth. The result of this spiritual inanity is very sad and frightening. People in this mental state are victims of their own emotions and feelings. In the spiritual mind the environment around you is created by correspondences of your emotions and thoughts. So if you have insane thoughts and emotions the environment you exist in are correspondences to them in the natural world. For instance the intention to rob someone by misleading them and posing as a friend, immediately causes deadly scorpions and poisonous flying snakes with an ominous darkening of the skies. So the intended victim can immediately recognize the stranger's evil intentions. Nevertheless, some victims who are also spiritually insane, fantasize something totally different that is going on. And so they fall victim to the machinations of others. And Swedenborg reports that no matter how clever someone is, there is one who is more clever in and endless series of the layer of the human mind called the hells.
Everyone is born into eternity with a permanent and immortal mental body and temporary physical body . After the celestial race was extinguished, as discussed above, what happened to those people who had been celestial and had lived on earth all those generations? Well, they were in the immortal heavens of their mind called the celestial heavens of the most ancient peoples . Swedenborg visited with them in their mental states, seeing the habitations they lived in that corresponded to their feelings and thoughts. So even though the celestial race died out on earth, the people of that race continued to evolve in their celestial heavens.
This fact is of greatest importance for us to understand because our unconscious celestial mind is made up of their celestial heavens. Whatever the mental operations they experience, these are the causes of the operations in our unconscious spiritual mind. And whatever we experience here in our conscious natural mind is a consequence of the operations going on in our spiritual mind, which are connected by correspondence to the celestial mind of those who are in that state. Hence it is that the various distinct layers of the human mind are connected by the laws and operations of correspondence.
The Universal God the Divine Human manages the layers of the human mind through the laws of correspondences. Divine Speech or Divine Truth issues forth from God's mind into the layers of the human mind, first into the inmost or highest layer called celestial heavens, and from there in descends or externalizes by correspondence into the spiritual layer of our mind, and from there by correspondence into the conscious natural layer of our mind where it presents itself as Sacred Scripture in a natural historical language. This process of the sequence of correspondences initiated by Divine Speech is the continuous and permanent method by which God rules the universe. See the Layers Diagram.
Until two thousand years ago the long history of evolution of the race on earth was managed by God the Divine Human in this way through correspondences. But there was a creeping mentality of materialism that came about as the natural mind of the human race on earth was becoming more scientific and more rational in consciousness, mentality, and civilization. In order to allow for democratic modernism to evolve on this planet it was necessary to develop the sensuous sub-layer of the natural mind as opposed to its rational layer. The sensuous layer of the natural mind tends to be submerged into materialism to such an extent that we start denying the existence of God or the afterlife of eternity. These concepts require a rational understanding and when people reject rational understanding as not important to them, they lose the ability to comprehend spiritual things like theistic psychology. See the Layers Diagram.
So materialism was strengthened while religious ideas and practices became cultural and national expressions rather than spiritual. Once people lost their rational ability to see spiritual truths and realities, they could no longer be conscious or aware of the existence of God and the afterlife. Even those who had religious ideas and practices could not understand Sacred Scripture in a universal scientific or rational sense.
What was God going to do about this? This was a serious situation where the human race could die out so that those who were already in their eternity could also be destroyed since the created order no longer worked to keep all things into one synergistic unit. Of course God had already provided for the solution since the beginning of creation, since to God all things are united into one -- past, present, and all future. The solution had to be such that the natural mind could once more recognize that God exists.
God cannot exist for us in full strength or conjunction unless each individual reciprocates God's love for the individual. We must acknowledge God's love for us or else we cannot closely be conjoined to God. And without this there are consequences. God manages molecules, planets, animals, and all things directly by correspondences which provide for the cause-effect relation between adjacent layers of discrete degrees . God manages human beings in two ways. One is immediately and unconsciously across the layers of the mind. The second is mediately and consciously through the conscious layers of the mind. The celestial race is conscious at the celestial level. The spiritual race is conscious at the natural level prior to resuscitation, and afterwards at the spiritual level. When materialism took hold of the natural mind on earth, God disappeared from conscious awareness of people on earth.
The prior conscious awareness of God was replaced by a blind faith in God. But a blind faith is not the same as a rational faith based on conscious understanding of God such as we have in theistic psychology. Blind faith only enters the natural layer of the mind. The spiritual layer requires rational faith. So while people on earth had a rational faith in their unconscious celestial and spiritual mind, they only had a blind faith at the conscious natural level. The only way God could remedy this situation was by entering history and science.
God made Himself be born as a Divine Human Child. This Child was at first not conscious of who He was, namely the Incarnated God in the natural or physical world. God the Divine Human was always both Divine and Human. This is why He created human beings who are in His Image as the Divine Human. So God has always been in the Human Form. However, God's Human Form was a mental body that consisted of a celestial affective organ and a spiritual cognitive organ. The affective organ is in the Human Form and the cognitive organ is in the Human Form. This is therefore also true of us. Our affective and cognitive organs are both in the human form.
However, God did not have a physical body. This was completely unnecessary in the prior generations because people could see spiritually, and therefore they could see God's Human Form replicated in their own mental body. People were able to look upon the human form they had and see God's Human Form. But after the Fall, the spiritual race was no longer able to see God's Human Form in their own body and mind. Whenever God wanted people to have a communicative exchange with Him He would "possess" or take over the conscious mind of an individual in the celestial or spiritual race in their heavens. They were called "angels" when they appeared to people's natural consciousness. God spoke through the angels and everyone could see and hear that.
But once materialism crept into the mind, people were no longer able to even believe that there are angels, let alone see and hear them through their internal mind. In the past God could communicate with people's internal mind and thereby influence them and protect them. But this path of communications was destroyed by materialistic thinking which denied God and taught the negative bias in science. This is what you and I were taught in our generation. Hence we no longer had the ability to hear God, to recognize Divine Speech in Sacred Scriptures.
But when God entered the physical world, this suddenly changed. The Divine Child grew into an adult male and He declared Himself to be Divine. God's life on earth as a citizen of a small mid-eastern nation created a historical biography, which makes God's presence on earth a historical fact. This was His mission, to make Himself once more visible to humankind on earth. Now people had a choice as to whether to acknowledge God or not. People did not have that choice before God's Incarnation.
Furthermore, by entering history, God entered science.
It is true that the literal sense of the New Testament Sacred Scripture is used as a religion by various groups who disagree with each other on almost everything about God and the afterlife. It is the literal sense of the New Testament Sacred Scripture that gives the historical account of God's Incarnation and its details.
Quoting from the Writings Sacred Scriptures: AC 2803. (...) But the Divine Human which was born from eternity was also born in time; and what was born in time, and glorified, is the same. Hence it is that the Lord so often said that He was going to the Father who sent Him; that is, that He was returning to the Father. And in John: [New Testament Sacred Scripture] In the beginning was the Word (the "Word" is the Divine Truth itself), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:1-3, 14; see also John 3:13; 6:62). (AC 2803) Doc. Lord 1. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth (John 1:14). From these passages [in the New Testament Sacred Scripture] it is evident that the Lord is God from eternity, and that this God is the selfsame Lord who was born in the world; for it is said that the Word was with God, and God was the Word, and also that without Him was not anything made that was made; and it is added that the Word was made flesh, and they beheld Him. (Lord 1) TCR 3. (...) Jehovah God is Love itself and Wisdom itself, or Good itself and Truth itself. He came down in the form of Divine Truth, which is the Word and which was God with God, and took upon Himself human form, so as to reduce to order everything in heaven, in hell and in the church. For at that time the power of hell was stronger than the power of heaven, and on earth the power of evil was stronger than the power of good, so that utter damnation stood threatening at the gates. This impending damnation was removed by Jehovah God by means of His Human, which was Divine Truth, and thus angels and men were redeemed. Afterwards He united in His Human Divine Truth with Divine Good, or Divine Wisdom with Divine Love, and so returned into the Divinity which was His from eternity, together with and in His glorified Human. This is the meaning of the passage in John: [New Testament Sacred Scripture] The Word was with God and the Word was God; and the Word was made flesh. John 1:1, 14. (TCR 3) Here there is an explanation about the New Testament Sacred Scripture saying that "the Word was God ... And the Word was made flesh." The Word" = Divine Truth or Divine Speech = God the Divine Human. "Was made flesh" = incarnation in a physical body on earth. That this was God who incarnated is clear from the statement that "the Word was God' and that the Word was made flesh. Hence it was God who incarnated in a physical body on earth. This is the Divine Child.
The literal sense of Sacred Scripture is always used by religion, not science. Hence there are disagreements according to culture and interpretation. But the correspondential sense of Sacred Scripture reveals its scientific sense, which is universal because it does not mention culture or anything in the natural mind, but only the spiritual and celestial mind. Theistic psychology is based only on the correspondential sense and hence cannot be identified with any religion. The Incarnation Event is therefore not only an religious event but an evolutionary scientific event.
The correspondential sense of the Old and New Testament Sacred Scripture reveals that the Divine Child created a new layer in His Natural mind that did not exist before in the human race. This new layer is called the spiritual-natural layer or the interior-natural layer. Once this layer was created in the Divine Child's mind, it became available to every human being, past, present, and future. This was the momentous new evolutionary step that was taken by the human race about two thousand years . See the Layers Diagram.
From then on we would be able to be consciously aware of spiritual truths. This fact then restored the race to its celestial level, though in a totally different way. Now we would be able to receive a new mind that was not contaminated by inherited evils. This new mind then could form the basis for our heavenly eternity. This new mind was constructed within our natural mind, so that we could be conscious of it. But this ability would be dependent on our regeneration. Only when we are willing to undergo character reformation, can we see anything with this new spiritual-natural capacity. This requires the positive bias and theistic psychology.
There remains a logical puzzle about the Incarnation Event. The New Testament Sacred Scripture records few biographical facts about God's life on earth as a citizen of the Ancient Holy Land. Almost all the facts reported about Him are external, belonging to His social and political life. Almost nothing is recorded about His state of mind, what He thought of as a Divine Man on earth, or what He was busy doing in the universe while He was growing up as a Divine Child. But these biographical facts about God's inner life while on earth are revealed in the correspondential sense of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, written hundreds of years prior to the Incarnation Event! For instance, the Psalms of David, one of the Books of the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, records the thoughts and feelings that King David had when he was stressed under attack from his political enemies from whom he was forced to flee for awhile.
By Divine Providence David was allowed to think, compose, and write down only those thoughts and emotions, that corresponded to what the Divine Child would undergo mentally when stressed under the attack of the hells. And similarly with the histories of the the patriarchs and their families that make up a large portion of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. Every recorded detail fits by correspondence all the developmental stages that the Divine Child went through in order to create the new human organ called the interior-natural organ within the conscious natural mind. This new creation was one of the central purposes for God's Incarnation, as explained above.
So we have all these biographical details of the thoughts and feelings of the Divine Child during the Incarnation Event. So the puzzle is this: What explains the strange history of God, portrayed as a political problem to the authorities of the land and was put to death by them at age 33? What happened to God on earth so that these events could befall Him? After all He was God, and so He was still omnipotent and running all things in the universe. He was of course running the details of His Own Incarnation. He was running the minds of the authorities who tried and condemned Him, and He was running the Roman soldiers who executed Him.
After the execution and His death, He caused Himself to be resuscitated in His physical or natural body.
This was a unique event in the history of the human race. God the Divine Human was now equipped with a Natural Body, born and grown on earth in time-space, in history and science. God's relationship to the human race took a whole new turn, that was not possible before. Now God could be seen in the conscious awareness of the natural mind. It is easy to picture and see in one's mind the event of God as a Man with a Natural Body, a Face, Hands, Feet, Heart, Lungs, Liver, etc. God was always in the Human Form, as explained above, but now in addition to the mental human form, God acquired the natural human form.
Note carefully this detail: human beings do not resuscitate in the physical body. We resuscitate in the mental body in the afterlife of eternity. The physical body or corpse, disintegrates. But with Himself, God caused His resuscitation with the physical body. Swedenborg confirms that He often saw God's Natural Body in eternity , and in fact, we will all be able to confirm this with our own observation when we are resuscitated. All those who were in their heaven in eternity could also see God's Natural Body there.
God's Natural Body in eternity is not physical but substantial. This is described and explained under the topic of "glorification".
Note that without the idea of God's Natural Body born on this earth it is not possible to picture God in any way since He is infinite and we cannot picture something that is not in the human form. The religions based on the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, including the Koran Sacred Scripture, created the rule that it is not permitted to picture God in human form. And this is understandable for it is not possible to picture an infinite God who is not in the human form. Now if you allow the Incarnation Event as part of theistic psychology, it is permitted to picture God in the human form. Now we know what God looks like in the Natural Form, namely like we do. And this is why it is said in Sacred Scripture that we were created in God's Image and Likeness.
So by creating a Natural Body for Himself God changed His relationship to the human race. In this way He repaired the loss suffered by the race called the Fall (see above). The race had already completed the celestial and spiritual layers of the mental world of eternity, and now it was necessary to complete the last layer called the spiritual-natural or interior-natural layer of the mental world. This required that God obtain for Himself a Natural Body on earth.
The sad and ignominious details of God's short life on earth was constructed by God for the sake of correspondences. In Sacred Scripture God's incarnation is called "the Word made flesh" (as discussed above). He is Divine Speech, He is Divine Truth, He is Sacred Scripture or "the Word." Written Sacred Scripture had been given to people since the Fall, but with the rise of materialistic thinking people lost the spiritual meaning of Sacred Scripture and interpreted all its meanings with materialistic ideas. For instance, they pictured the afterlife as happening here in the physical world. They rejected the idea of an afterlife in mental eternity. They could not comprehend such a thing.
As a result, they reinterpreted Sacred Scripture to suit their pet philosophies and political lifestyles. Hence Sacred Scripture lost all its spiritual value and it became useless for the purpose of preparing oneself for a life in eternity. In other words, they "killed the Word." Since God was "the Word" or Sacred Scripture, He enacted in physical life by correspondence, what people had done to Sacred Scripture over the generations. They perverted Sacred Scripture for their political gain, thus killing God in their own mind. When God incarnated, He created those details in His biography on earth that corresponded and represented the details of how Sacred Scripture was killed in the minds of people.
Henceforth people would no longer be able to kill Sacred Scripture in their mind because it is now known in history and science that God is a Man, and that His Divine Speech is Sacred Scripture. The human race is now on a permanent rise in evolution so that any individual regardless of cultural or religious background, can have a living relationship with God the Divine Human born on this earth. In theistic psychology this living relationship is called the Divine Psychologist.
It is important to have a rational understanding of God. This understanding requires knowing about correspondences, that is, knowing how God has formed all things in discrete non-overlapping layers of existence. The only connection between the layers is that they operate together by correspondences. The layers have no independent existence of functioning. It is that the human mind, or the world of eternity, was created by God in corresponding layers so that all the layers react to each other as cause and effect. In this way the entire creation is held together as one in God's Mind.
Further, you need to remember the distinction between "God as He is in Himself" and "God as He is Outside of Himself". God as He is in Himself is changeless from eternity to eternity, is infinite, incomprehensible, and cannot be approached directly. Because of this, God created the mental world of eternity, and then the physical world of time linked to it by correspondences. God's creative activities are rational and developmental. When the human mental world evolved sufficiently in the course of numerous generations, it reached a phase where God could reveal Himself in a Natural Body taken up from earth. So God made Himself be born a Divine Child in the land that had been entrusted by Him centuries before, to study and protect the Old Testament Sacred Scripture. This Sacred Scripture was a theistic psychology textbook on what the Divine Child is going to do, what thoughts He is going to have, and how He is going to change the psychobiology of the mental world in eternity. Every human being past, present, and future will therefore be directly affected by this change.
God's Natural Body is Divine because it is made of Divine substances. All the substances of earth or matter that formed His inherited physical body had been replaced by the death and resurrection process. Now God had a Divine Natural Body along with His Divine Natural Mind He constructed for Himself on earth. This is the Body that can now be seen by anyone from the spiritual and celestial layers of their mind.
But it is necessary to think of this Natural Body as Divine, and therefore infinite. This is a difficult idea to comprehend rationally and without the idea of space, time, or place.
God's Natural Body can be seen by anyone, regardless of where they are or which way they turn. Swedenborg confirmed this amazing phenomenon. He observed with the people who live in the third heaven or celestial mind, that whichever way they turn turn or face, the Spiritual Sun in which God's Natural Body appears, remains in front of them at the same altitude of height on the horizon, and, equally brilliant in light. God can now appear in this Natural Body in every individual's mind. This is why the Incarnation Event had to happen. This Divine Human Natural Body is in every place but apart from space . It is therefore omnipresent. That is, God the Divine Human is omnipresent and omnipotent in this Divine Human Natural Body.
The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#incarnation
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How Divine Speech Descends In the Human Mind Through Discrete Layers
Our mental heaven in eternity is inborn. This heaven is already present in our mind when we are born, just as hell is present in the human mind at birth. Physiologically, our mind is constructed out of heavenly feelings and traits and out of hellish feelings and traits. In other words, heaven and hell are located within the spiritual organs of the mind. This awesome secret has been revealed thousands of years ago in the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. An example is the scientific revelation in the New Testament Sacred Scripture: Being demanded of the Pharisees when the kingdom of God should come, He answered them, and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:20-21). The phrase "cometh not with observation" means that the natural mind, which is formed by physical content, cannot be in heaven. In the literal sense it means that heaven is not in the natural world but in the spiritual world of eternity. Hence this passage, among others in the New Testament Sacred Scripture, reveals the scientific reality of dualism, that is, of the existence of this world in time-space, and the world of eternity which is snot in time-space. The phrase "the kingdom of God is within you" means that eternity is in our mind. "Within you" contrasts with the phrase "with observation" which is outward through the physical senses, while "within you" is mental and is not observable outwardly by the physical senses. I am amazed that I did not realize the meaning of this passage the first time I read it thirty years ago . And I am astonished that no one until Swedenborg in the eighteenth century, took note of this amazing scientific revelation in the New Testament. It wasn't until I became an expert on Swedenborg and then read this passage again that its meaning hit me. It is the Divine revelation of scientific dualism . Similar scientific revelations occur in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture, as for instance the Genesis verses: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Gen. 1:1). And the heavens and the earth were finished (Gen. 2:1). These are the nativities of the heavens and of the earth (Gen. 2:4), In the literal sense it plainly says that God created the spiritual world of eternity ("the heavens") and the natural world of time, space, and energy. This is the Divine confirmation of scientific dualism as a reality, not a hypothesis or theory. What is not revealed here is that the world of the heavens in eternity is the same as the mind. For thousands of years people who derived their religion from the Old Testament had a materialistic worldview, not abstracted from the senses. They were not willing to think of the heavens as being created in a separate universe, outside time, space, or region. To think of the universe of eternity, not in space, not in time, involving no material substances, and yet still supportive of human life and happiness, requires a rational spirituality, not material or sensuous. It requires a rational consciousness of God. This level of thinking had not yet developed in the human mind until the age of science and modernism starting in the 18th century. This is the reason that 20 centuries of Christian scholarship and adoration of the New Testament were not able to uncover this obvious heavenly secret, namely, that "the Kingdom of God is within you." In theistic psychology I render this statement by the following formulaic expression: the Kingdom of God = eternity and human life there = the heavens = within you = your mind = your mental organs = your feelings, thoughts, and loves = the self = immortality Is this not an astonishing realization? You too will be astonished as soon as you begin to reflect on this amazing rational equation. This equation shows that all human beings are born immortal! Who knew this? The vast majority of people on this planet today belong to the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist religions and practices. None of these religions give a clear and factual description of our immortality or life in eternity. None of the religions give any clear explanation of the most basic facts that Swedenborg presents in the Writings Sacred Scripture. As for instance the fact that every human being who dies is resuscitated within 36 hours and continues life in eternity as himself or herself. Which religious leader, prophet, or scholar has known this? The reason is that Sacred Scripture reveals almost nothing about life after death -- when you consider the literal meaning of the sentences of Sacred Scripture. This is why all sorts of imaginative and fantastic interpretations have been given of the Book of Revelations, which is the last book of the New Testament Sacred Scripture, and is written in a prophetic and visionary style, rather than historical narrative, as the rest of the New Testament is written.
The most popular beliefs surrounding the symbolism and interpretation of the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation, have been that its visionary scenes that John witnessed "while being in the spirit," describe symbolically the historical scenes that will take place on earth at the so-called "end of times" or when the physical planet is destroyed and instantaneously remade, while the faithful who are saved, are "caught up in the air" and kept safe during these tumultuous events that destroy earth. Then a "new earth" is created by God for those who are "resurrected from the graves," put back together again with new and immortal bodies, to enjoy forever on the new earth. These amazingly imaginative ideas come from one source -- the practice of interpreting the literal sense of Sacred Scripture in accordance with one's own ideas, beliefs, scholarship, intelligence, or imagination. None of these approaches can yield the true spiritual meaning that is hidden within the literal sense of Sacred Scripture . Instead, it was necessary to wait until God reveals the appropriate method for extracting the hidden meaning from the literal sentences. This method had been revealed before by God to the most ancient peoples on this earth. Swedenborg interviewed some of these people who have been living since then in their celestial heavens. They informed him that when they were on earth they called this knowledge the Science of Correspondences.
This therefore is the most ancient science on the planet. It has to do with how the spiritual world of causes relate or act upon the natural world of effects. In other words, the science of correspondences was the rational revelation of scientific dualism and how the two worlds are connected by laws. Swedenborg interviewed people in eternity who were from different historical eras on earth. He was thus able to piece together a historical chart of the succeeding civilizations on this earth , describing the mentality and character of those people. After some generations, the most ancient civilization died out and in its place arose a series of civilizations. By the time the Old Testament Sacred Scripture was written about three thousand years ago, almost nothing was left of the knowledge of the science of correspondences. It was so well hidden that no one knew, not even the prophets who wrote the Bible, that the sentences of Sacred Scripture were written in correspondences because they represented the content of Divine Speech.
This history is necessary for us to know because of a rational principle that I would like to phrase as follows: Individual biography recapitulates human evolution and history In other words by knowing the details of the mental evolution of the human race on earth we are able to know details of our own mental states and how they develop in our life from birth to eternity. It wasn't until the Writings of Swedenborg in the eighteenth century that the human mind was first given knowledge again of the lost science of correspondences. Now for the first time we are able to read Sacred Scripture and extract from it the Divine Speech that is hidden within it. In order for God to revive this consciousness in the human race it was necessary that He select a scientist, like Swedenborg, who was given the scientific genius, rationality, and reputation, to bring this science of dualism back into modern times and the modern person of the future. In order to succeed, it was necessary for this person to be given access to the laboratory of eternity. This was done by making Swedenborg's spiritual mind to be conscious while he was still living on earth. At age 57, he became a dual citizen, living and interacting in both worlds simultaneously! Only a scientist who had access to both worlds simultaneously could make the necessary observations of this science of correspondences, since it is the science of how the worlds are connected by functional cause-effect laws for all phenomena. Now any person who studies these laws of correspondences can read Sacred Scripture and figure out its hidden correspondential sense. This correspondential sense is the content of Divine Speech. Theistic psychology is the knowledge extracted from the literal sense of the Writings Sacred Scriptures. In order to understand this more clearly, it is necessary to have a mental chart of the human mind and how it is created, ordered, and managed by God through Divine Speech. Study the following conceptual diagrams which are explained elsewhere in theistic psychology (see Volume 6): Conceptual Charts of the Physiology of God and the Human MindChart 1
Chart 2
The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch1p1.htm#layers (to be continued) +++++++++++++++++++++
The Method of Correspondences With Enlightenment
Enlightenment is not a mystical experience. Nor is it difficult to understand precisely what it is. From the perspective of theistic psychology enlightenment is a psychobiological process of the human mind corresponding to the biological process by which sunlight and its heat are received by plants and use it to fabricate their nutrition. Spiritual light in which there is spiritual heat proceeds from the Spiritual Sun into the mental world of humanity where it enters the mind of every existing human being simultaneously and proceeds outward and downward by successive degrees of correspondence. The cognitive (light) and affective (heat) organs of the mind are constructed and animated by this universal “influx,” and we use it for willing and thinking in daily activities.
The operation of enlightenment in the cognitive organ is also called “revelation”: Quoting: By "revelation" is meant enlightenment when the Word is read, and perception then” (AC 8694). When we read the Writings Sacred Scripture (“the Word”) we can comprehend the revelations in a spiritual way when we are enlightened while reading and reflecting. It is not necessary that we read the printed sentences on the page or screen. It is equally effective if we think the sentences or phrases and reflect upon their universal meaning.
In this reflection upon the universal meaning, we are to be motivated to apply the truth to self. To be motivated to apply the truth to one’s willing and thinking is to search for the universal meaning. This universal meaning applies to every individual regardless of background, culture, and religion. Hence we call this universal meaning theistic psychology. This process of extracting the scientific meaning from the Writings Sacred Scripture is the process of practicing the method of correspondences with enlightenment.
Enlightenment is the comprehension of scientific meaning within the literal meaning. It is to perceive how the sentence applies to self and to all other human beings. This is what makes it into a science – universal and objective applicability. Enlightenment, or the perception of spiritual meaning, is not received when our motivation for reading and reflecting upon the Writings is other than application to one’s own willing and thinking. Our interest must be no other than the desire to reform our inherited character by facing spiritual combat in temptations. The truths we extract that apply to our willing and thinking are to be formed into a doctrine of justification by which we can fend off doubts and relapses. This is the ultimate purpose of enlightenment.
Enlightenment is not something superfluous or special, reserved for certain types of scholarship and piety. Enlightenment is the psychobiological process by which every person’s affective and cognitive organs are regenerated and prepared for life in heaven. Without enlightenment no one can be prepared for heaven. Either we are enlightened in this world, or failing that, in the afterlife. No one enters heaven without being enlightened while reading the Writings Sacred Scripture. Everyone who is resuscitated in the world of spirits is given instruction in the Writings Sacred Scripture since they alone contain the rational heavens of our immortality. Those who have lived a life of conscience and use are happy and willing receivers of the truths of the Writings. Others are unwilling.
The extracted knowledge of theistic psychology may be studied by anyone for any purpose, but everything in it will be understood naturally, and nothing in it will be understood spiritually – unless one is enlightened by the Divine Psychologist while it is being read or applied. It is not possible to perceive spiritual meanings without being ‘online’ as it were, connected to “mediate influx” in a deliberate and conscious way. This ‘online’ feature applies to enlightenment since it is the organic operation of spiritual light in the cognitive organ of thinking and reasoning. As long as we are plugged in the correct way, enlightenment flows and operates in our conscious mind. The organic venue for the process is the interior-natural organ.
When the Writings discuss some particular historical ethnic group or religion, we are to search for the scientific meaning behind the discussion, just as Swedenborg performed for us with the Old and New Testament portion of Sacred Scripture. The Writings teach that all Sacred Scripture is written in correspondences and that we are to extract spiritual doctrine from them. The Writings Sacred Scripture are written in natural-rational correspondences, which is a discrete degree above the New Testament Sacred Scripture. The angelic spirits in the first heaven of the mind read the Writings Sacred Scripture as we do, but it is clear that they know nothing about any of the historical names, nations, periods, and places mentioned in the Writings. Instead of these things, they see the interior-natural correspondences. Our interior-natural organ can give us enlightenment to see these spiritual-natural correspondences of the Letter of the Writings, not exactly as they do, but in an image that is so close that we can speak with them and think with them.
The scientific meaning of “Abraham” is a celestial mental state in every person’s mind regardless of religion or planet. Similarly with “Jerusalem,” which refers to the spiritual-rational correspondences out of which is constructed the second heaven of every human mind. By this method of correspondences the reader makes the historical names “vanish,” and likewise, with all references to natural things (AC 1405; 3776). When we read the Writings Sacred Scripture we think and reason in our external natural understanding by means of the natural-rational correspondences of the literal meaning. But the angels who are with us, only perceive the interior-natural, the spiritual-rational, and celestial-rational correspondences that are within the literal meaning we are reading.
Quoting: AC 1963 When the Word is being read by man, angels neither know nor perceive what eighty-six is, nor are they concerned about what age Abram was when Hagar bore him Ishmael. Rather, when such a number is read, the real things embodied in that number instantly present themselves to them, as when all other expressions are read, these present themselves as the things which they have been shown to mean in the internal sense. (AC 1963) when the Word is being read by man the angels may thereby be in their happiness of wisdom (AC 5398) this sense is for the angels who are with man while the Word is being read, consequently that there is from this source an influx of holiness, and a perception of it, with those who are in the life of faith and charity (AC 8971) They said that these persons are mentioned with honour in the Word for the reason that in the internal sense the Lord is meant by them-by "Abraham", "Isaac", and "Jacob", the Lord in respect of the Divine and the Divine Human; by "David" the Lord in respect of the Divine Royalty; and by the "Apostles" the Lord in respect of Divine Truths; also that when the Word is read by man the angels have no perception whatever of these men, for their names do not enter heaven (HH 526) When we read passages in the Writings Sacred Scripture that discuss Abraham or King David or one of the Apostles, these names repeatedly appear within the literal meaning of the Writings. What is the scientific or universal meaning of these names? They each refer to human mental states and their dynamic activity in regeneration and spiritual growth. This applies to all people regardless of background, religion, or planet, though no doubt with realistic differences. When we read one of the many superb Memorable Relations throughout the Writings, what do the angels who are with us get out of it? Especially when our children read them in the innocence of ignorance? The angels have no idea of number or age. What then do they think of when numbers and ages are mentioned in the Memorable Relations? Neither do they know of directions like north or south. Neither do they know of the European nations and cities, as those which are mentioned in many places throughout the Writings, nor the names of the bishops of the Church, and so on.
It is clear that the Writings Sacred Scripture exists at discrete levels and that the Letter is different at each level. The method of correspondences starts at the natural-rational level of the literal meaning, collecting facts and organizing them into an orderly doctrine that we use as a tool in daily spiritual combat with our temptations brought to us by the Divine Psychologist for this very purpose. This doctrine may be called abstracted, to distinguish it from the later doctrine that is extracted.
Abstracted doctrine does not use the method of correspondences, and hence does not depend on enlightenment. We all start with principles of life and religious doctrines that are abstracted, paraphrased, contrasted, and reflected on. They are the foundation of our moral-rational life, and hence of civilization and society. Further on down the road of maturity we begin to go beyond abstraction. We leave the discrete degree of the literal and its rational abstractions in our mind, by making the literal meaning “vanish” from central focus, and as a result, we begin to think with angels (AC 1405; 3776). Quoting: But as he grows into a young adult, if he develops his power of reason, he employs what is in his interior natural to work out the reasons for things, which are truths of a yet higher nature. These are extracted so to speak from what is present in the interior natural. (...) This is the manner in which a person rises with his understanding from the world up to heaven. (AC 5497) The phrase “to rise with the understanding from the world up to heaven” refers to enlightenment through Sacred Scripture. Our thoughts suddenly begin to operate by means of spiritual-natural correspondences of the Writings Sacred Scripture. We are with the angelic spirits that inhabit the first heaven in our mind. And by progressive enlightenment in our interior-natural organ we climb up Jacob’s ladder of discrete correspondences in our mind, “as though” we actually were in the presence of the angels who dwell in our spiritual mind.
We receive this light of heaven when we read the Writings as Divine Speech rendered in the correspondences of Sacred Scripture. To read the Writings as Divine Speech in correspondences is to read them with enlightenment. The abstract doctrine of the literal meaning is suddenly seen infused with heavenly light so that its interiors are perceived as truth from the Divine Human. This interior perception in enlightenment cannot possibly be at the same discrete level of meaning as the literal. The literal Sacred Scripture and the abstracted doctrine of the literal, now become spiritually empowered with a comprehension that is a discrete degree above them.
We learn and memorize and apply abstracted doctrine for decades before we begin reformation and regeneration. Abstracted doctrine is necessary for making us ready for reformation, and we could not become ready without it. But the Writings tell us that the time must come in adulthood when we choose to begin our reformation and regeneration. Now we must enter a discrete degree within the abstracted doctrines that we have collected in our mind until then. We do this under the supervision of the Divine Psychologist who provides the spiritual light or enlightenment.
The Divine Psychologist is commanding us, through the literal meaning of the Writing Sacred Scripture, that we must begin practicing the method of correspondences with enlightenment. This involves the deliberate intention and systematic application procedures called extractive research, that is, spiritual meaning that is “drawn out” by means of correspondences and illustration.
Quoting: AC 8694 [3] But what is the nature of the revelation with those who are in good and from this in the affection of truth, cannot be described. It is not manifest, neither is it altogether hidden; but it is a certain consent and favoring from within that a thing is true, and a non-favoring if it is not true. When there is a favoring, the mind is at rest and is serene, and in this state there is the acknowledgment which is of faith. The cause of its being so is from the influx of heaven from the Lord; for through heaven from the Lord there is light, that surrounds and enlightens the intellect, which is the eye of the internal sight. The things which are then seen in that light are truths, for this very light is the Divine truth which proceeds from the Lord. That this Divine truth is light in heaven, has been frequently shown. (AC 8694) This passage describes in natural expression a spiritual phenomenon that we experience mentally when extracting theistic psychology knowledge for ourselves. The extracted information is called “revelation” because it cannot be perceived as true except by enlightenment. The spiritual meaning which is the content of revelation or enlightenment, “cannot be described” with natural expressions because “it is not manifest.” But “neither is it altogether hidden.”
What does this mean? Something that cannot be described in language that refers to natural objects and conditions, which are “not manifest” in natural perception? The closest specific description given for it is that “it is a certain consent and favoring from within that a thing is true, and a non-favoring if it is not true.” If we were to become conscious in our third heaven, we would be nearly omniscient, because whatever we were curious about would instantly be present in our thoughts as an answer in Divine Truth, which is omniscient.
Methods of ExtractionThe procedures for extracting scientific facts from the Writings Sacred Scripture are surely endless in number when we consider that the Writings Sacred Scripture mark themselves as the last portion of the overall Sacred Scripture that took thousands of years to deliver to humanity. It calls itself “the Crown of Revelations” because “it will endure forever.” Quoting: Coronis 0 LII. This New Church, truly Christian, which at this day is being established by the Lord, will endure to eternity, as is proved from the Word of both Testaments; also it was foreseen from the creation of the world; and it will be the crown of the four preceding churches, because it will have true faith and true charity. (CORO 0) We need to extract the correspondential sense of the above passage to see how it applies to theistic psychology:
We now know that heaven and earth must stay connected in creation so that there will never be an end to earths in the natural world. An endless series of civilizations and generations will be using the Writings Sacred Scripture for extracting the information they will need to regenerate. Every generation must extract its own information because each generation is unique in relation to all the others, and their regeneration will depend on new truths that prior generations have not seen. This is why it is rational to think that the number of methods by which spiritual information can be extracted from the Writings, is endless. But here are three methods of extraction that it was given me to discover. Perhaps others have also made these and similar discoveries in their study of the Writings. They are serviceable to our generation for extracting certain types of spiritual facts that are suitable to a civilization whose genes of consciousness is formed by natural-rational correspondences. I use the expression genes of consciousness to refer to the basic semantic units that define our mentality levels.
The Method of SubstitutionThe substitution technique involves parallelisms in the Writings that are explicitly stated in the Letter. It may also be called the method of applying the Letter to the Letter. The Letter of the Writings must define the substitution for it to be permissible. Some substitutions are near to each other, as they are mentioned closely to each other in the text, while other substitutions are more distant from each other, so that several steps of parallelisms must be reconstructed and demonstrated.
I illustrate near substitutions in the following table which is based on a search for equivalence statements in the text, as for instance "it is the same whether you say that...", besides others like it that could also be searched.
Let’s take a passage that allows several substitutions according to the table above. I have bolded the words in the original, and also in its duplicate paragraph below to indicate the substitutions: Quoting: The natural mind, by its two capacities called rationality and freedom, is in this state that it is capable of ascending through three degrees, or of descending through three degrees. It ascends by reason of goods and truths, and descends by reason of evils and falsities. And when it ascends, the lower degrees which tend towards hell are closed, but when it descends, the higher degrees which tend towards heaven are closed. The cause for this is that they are in reaction. These three degrees, higher and lower, have neither been opened nor closed in man in earliest infancy, for he is then ignorant of good and truth, and of evil and falsity. (DLW 274) [making the substitutions;] The natural man, by its two capacities called rationality and freedom, is in this state that it is capable of ascending through three degrees, or of descending through three degrees. [The man] ascends by reason of love and faith, and descends by reason of evils and the hells. And when [the man] ascends, the external degrees which tend towards hell are closed, but when [the man] descends, the internal degrees which tend towards heaven are closed. The cause for this is that they are in reaction. These three degrees, internal and external, have neither been opened nor closed in man in earliest infancy, for he is then ignorant of love and faith, and of evil and the hells. It this case, it turns out that the original and the substitutions are so close that the two paragraphs hardly seem different in meaning. Nevertheless, the second paragraph is not merely synonymous with the original but reveals new features that are more interior. To see this requires more detailed study and examination. (see Note 8).
Let us take another passage where the substitutions create a more dramatic difference: · The very essence and life of faith is the Lord alone (AC 30) · The very essence and life of conscience is the Lord alone The second sentence containing the substitution is a more interior meaning than the original. We knew that the life of faith is the Lord since faith is truth from the Lord, and what is from the Lord is the Lord. Hence, the very essence and life of faith is the Lord alone. But we did not know that the very essence and life of conscience is the Lord alone. This is a new spiritual revelation contained within the first revelation of the Letter. We must now confirm this new more interior perception by finding a passage in the Letter that states that the life of conscience is the Lord. As for example: Quoting: The new will with the spiritual regenerate man is conscience (NJHD 1919) [2] A person does not feel this struggle to be anywhere but in himself, and he feels it as the pangs of conscience. Yet it is the Lord and the devil (that is, hell) who struggle in man; their struggle is to gain control of the person, to see which is to possess him. The devil, or hell, attacks the person and calls forth the evil in him, while the Lord protects him and calls forth the good in him. (TCR 596) Genuine conscience is given by the Lord through the knowledges of a true faith (SE 3615) With angelical spirits there are bonds of conscience, which conscience is from the Lord. (SE 3850) Judgments are based on what is the Lord's when they accord with truths and spring from conscience. (AC 9160) When conscience dictates, it is in like manner said in the Word that "Jehovah speaks;" because conscience is formed from things revealed, and from knowledges, and from the Word; and when the Word speaks, or dictates, it is the Lord who speaks; hence nothing is more common, even at the present day, when referring to a matter of conscience, or of faith, than to say, "the Lord says." (AC 371) You can see from these series of passages that a conscience that is genuine is from the Lord and is the Lord. Quoting: “nothing is more common, even at the present day, when referring to a matter of conscience, or of faith, than to say, "the Lord says."
In summary, we go through three steps in the method of substitution. First, we find parallelisms in the Letter that are explicitly identified in the plain meaning of the sentences. Second, we make the substitutions and reflect on the new formulation. This new meaning is more interior than what could be seen in the original text of the Letter. It has been spiritually enriched by the different series or contexts which are brought together by the substitution. Third, find new passages that explicitly confirm the new meaning.
Note that the new perception after substitution is more interior than the older perception before substitution. Despite this, the new perception is not yet a discrete degree higher than the old perception. It is in the same degree, which is natural-rational at a more interior continuum. Performing this three-step method builds natural-rational vessels that are needed later for influx and enlightenment. This occurs when we apply the new meaning to our hourly willing and thinking all day long. Then, at some point -- unexpected point -- we receive enlightenment. That’s when for the first time we can see the meaning of the new perception in a spiritual degree.
Without having practiced the substitution method regarding some topic, there are not any such cognitive “vessels” that can be enlightened. Of course, it is possible for people to practice the substation technique implicitly, not as a formal research technique, but spontaneously, since our thinking about Sacred Scripture is always in the company of angels who prompt the train of our thoughts in favorable directions for noticing parallelisms and discovering the substitutes.
The Method of Rational SeriesQuoting from the Writings Sacred Scriptures: 210. III. THE SENSE OF THE LETTER OF THE WORD IS THE BASIS, THE CONTAINANT, AND THE SUPPORT OF ITS SPIRITUAL AND CELESTIAL SENSE. In everything Divine there is a first, a middle, and a last, the first passing through the middle to the last, and so existing and subsisting; consequently the last is the basis. Again, the first is in the middle, and through the middle in the last; thus the last is the Containant. And since the last is the Containant and the Basis, it is also the Support. The learned can understand that these three may be called end, cause, and effect; also being [esse], becoming [fieri] and standing forth [existere]; and that the end is being, the cause is becoming, and the effect is standing forth; consequently that in every complete thing there is a trine, which is called the first, the middle, and the last, also end, cause, and effect. When this is understood, it can also be understood that every Divine work is complete and perfect in its last; also that the whole is in the last, because in it prior things are together. (TCR 210)
The triconcentric diagram visually exhibits the three "discreet degrees of height" (A----> C ---> S) which are called "successive order", and the three "continuous degrees of breadth" which are called "simultaneous order." Picturing the triconcentric diagram while reading a sentence or paragraph in the Writings Sacred Scripture, greatly enhances our capacity to see the meaning distinctly. Quoting from the Writings: The human mind always dwells in the trine called end, cause and effect. If one of these is lacking, the mind is not possessed of its life. An affection of the will is the initiating end; the thought of the understanding is the efficient cause; and bodily action, utterance or external sensation is the effect from the end by means of the thought. (DLW 178) The first sentence may be graphically analyzed using the triconcentric method, as shown on the left of the diagram below: Diagram 2
Note that the three degrees of existence are connected by "correspondences" which are functional relations as indicated by the arrows. Thus, "ends" (also called "essence" elsewhere) descend by correspondence into "causes" and these in turn descend into "effects," the three being in functional correspondence with each other, both successively and simultaneously. By adding the concepts in the third sentence of the quotation above, we can enlarge the graphic diagram to include them and obtain a slightly more complex form of Swedenborg's thought, as shown on the right of the diagram above. In theory, there is no limit to the size of the graphic diagram, but in practice we restrict each diagram to a particular topic or topic domain under study.
Swedenborg's Writings are replete with sentences that mention one element of each of the three degrees of existence, as in the two quotations above. The Table below illustrates this same pattern in collateral works by various others discussing Swedenborg's ideas. Try to picture the concepts in a triconcentric diagram, as above.
This kind of conceptual "matrix" reveals a great deal about the system of thought in the Writings Sacred Scripture. The more a person studies the Writings the more one gains in one's thought a new way of classifying ideas or concepts by which one can then apprehend phenomena in an entirely new way; that is, in an integrated rather than loose system. By running your eye up and down within a column of such a matrix, you get a good indication of the specific character of that degree as applied to a particular topic domain. In the above instance, note how the A-words (affective organ) are inmost in degree, hence highest or earliest in successive order. Note how the C-words (sensorimotor organ) are outermost in degree of existence, and thus are the lowest or ultimate in succession. When you run your eye across a row horizontally, you are getting a good indication of the mechanism of that particular phenomenon, how it comes into existence and what are its successive steps of existence from origin / end, through cause, to effect. For instance, the GOOD OF LOVE (second line) must occur first in order to externalize as RATIONAL TRUTH in the intermediate stage and as MEMORY or MEMORY-KNOWLEDGES in its ultimate stage. Or to take the last line, HELPING is a consequence or effect of prior UNDERSTANDING, which in turn originates from LOVING.
The next diagram shows the trigrammatic series applied to contemporary concepts and authors in social psychology. Diagram 3
The method of rational series for extracting scientific information from the Writings Sacred Scripture is illustrated in the section 15.3 Genes of Consciousness. It consists of arranging words or phrases from the Writings in sets that they belong to.
If you inspect each column up and down you are creating a new rational set in the organization or thesaurus that you carry in your memory-knowledge. Now, when you read about Abraham you can supply the rest of the series in your mind, thus giving it a new meaning which is more interior than what you had before. Now, this new semantic gene of a higher continuous level will serve as a vessel for enlightenment. This occurs the moment you apply this new semantic gene to your willing and thinking in daily activities.
The Method of MappingThis method is illustrated in section 15.3.5 titled Enneadic Gene Structures. It uses a chart or matrix created by putting together two series obtained from the method of rational series. This chart is made of intersections that have dynamic properties relating to mental states, as described in the Writings when explicating the correspondential sense of the Old Testament. In the example below, the first column lists the phrases in the Writings and in the second column, their mental state map location is given. A refers to the affective organ (“the will”), C refers to the cognitive organ (“the understanding”). Levels 3, 2, and 1 refer to the three degrees: celestial, spiritual, natural.
When you identify the map location of “Divine good of the rational” as A3, you are thinking in a more interior way about this concept. “A” means affective and level “3” means celestial. So to recognize in your mind that “Divine good of the rational” is celestial willing (A3), you are providing an enlarged context for it that can be hooked up to other mapped areas, as is illustrated in the section below. Now this enlarged more interior thesaurus becomes a vessel for enlightenment the moment that you apply this larger interior thesaurus to some part of your willing and thinking at some point during the day. The method of extraction can only be applied to the Writings Sacred Scripture. Only Divine text is written in such a way that it may contain endless information to be extracted until eternity. It may appear at first that the extracted knowledge is of the same degree as the original, but deeper analysis shows that the extracted knowledge is at a higher degree, all the way to the celestial-rational. The elevation of meaning during the extraction process is due to the operation of the interior-natural organ, as discussed section 8 titled Thinking With Angels -- Our Virtual Heavens.
External and Internal RevelationFrom Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia (AC 5121): "And Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it." That this signifies revelation from perception from the celestial in the natural as to what it had in itself, is evident from the signification of "saying" in the historic parts of the Word, as being perception (n. 1791, 1815, 1819, 1822, 1898, 1919, 2080, 2619, 2862, 3395, 3509), here revelation from perception, because said of a dream and its interpretation - all revelation being either from speech with angels through whom the Divine-Human speaks, or from perception (of which hereafter); and from the representation of Joseph, as being the celestial in the natural (of which above, n. 5086, 5087, 5106); and from the signification of "interpretation," as being what it had in itself (of which also above, n. 5093, 5105, 5107). From this it is plain that by "Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it" is signified revelation from perception from the celestial in the natural as to what it had in itself. The above is a passage from the Writings that discusses the scientific sense of the verse in Genesis 40:12. Note the expression "revelation from perception from the celestial in the natural ." You need to know what is being referred to before you can understand it. What does "the celestial in the natural" refer to? Here, "the celestial" refers to the celestial mind or the celestial portion of our mind. This is the organ that is able to receive direct influx from the Spiritual Sun so that spiritual heat (or love) and spiritual light (or truth) stream into it, a process called "Divine influx." This influx is called divine not because God can enter into us, but because the love and truth that enter into us are from the Spiritual Sun and this is the expanse around the Divine-Human, hence it is Divine. Note this very important principle: Whatever is from God must be fully God since God cannot be divided into portions. This is because God is infinite and the infinite cannot be divided but remains the infinite wherever it enters the finite. So the infinite enters the finite, not the other way around. The finite contains the infinite fully, not just a part of the infinite, but all of it, since as already said, the infinite cannot be divided into lesser portions of itself.
You need to understand rationally the way the infinite enters the finite and "dwells" there in fullness of itself,
You can see that this is the same as saying: You need to understand rationally the way God enters the human mind and "dwells" there in fullness of itself,
God or the infinite "dwells" in the finite mind by adjoining love and truth to the mind as-if they belong to the person. We experience love as a feeling, like wanting to be useful to society, and we experience truth as an understanding, like seeing that selfishness is destructive. God dwells within the feeling of wanting to be useful, and the seeing that selfishness is destructive. God dwells in the loves and truths we acquire and feel as-if our own. How can that be? That's because the love and truth we experience as-if our own is not our own but came into our celestial mind from the Spiritual Sun. Now that they are in our organs, love in the affective organ and truth in the cognitive organ, they feel like our own, as-if they were own. Even if we know from revelation that all love and truth are God's, we still feel as-if they are own within us.
This is where God dwells, where God is in us. It's possible only because the love and truth in us is God's love and truth, and whatever is God's cannot be separated from God but forever remains God's. God is infinite and unchanging, and therefore the love and truth emanating from Himself as the Spiritual Sun, must remain God's. God cannot give them away to created things like the finite human mind. So if we now have the experience that the love and truth in us is our own, then it is equivalent to being adjoined or connected to God. But note carefully: It is never the case that we can be conjoined to God, or merging with God, or being one with God. If this were possible, we would become God, and each of us would be God, as some people believe.
Clearly, the possibility of being connected or adjoined to God depends on this sensation or feeling that the love and truth in us is as-if our own.
The moment we would actually sense the influx, or become aware of it, the as-if position is destroyed and we can never be conjoined to God, hence not receive love and truth from God, and thus instantaneously disappear from existence.
Consider again the phrase in the passage above: "revelation from perception from the celestial in the natural." The celestial mind is "within" the natural mind, which means that it is higher and superior to it. Whenever something is said to be "within" another portion of the mind, it is always superior to it in excellence, by far. So the celestial portion of the mind is superior to the natural portion of the mind in mode and level of operation in its affective organ (feelings, loves) and in its cognitive organ (thoughts, truths). The phrase "revelation from perception" refers to the influx of truth which is felt as-if it is our own. God prevents us from sensing influx so that we can maintain the as-if feeling. By maintaining the as-if feeling, we can be connected to God's love and truth, hence to God. The connection depends on our feeling that the love and truth is as-if our own.
Scientific revelations are Divine truths contained in Divine Speech. When we understand scientific revelations found in Sacred Scripture we are receiving revelation from perceiving the scientific sense of a word or phrase in Sacred Scripture. Perceiving the scientific sense is an intellectual effort that feels like our very own effort. This is the as-if feeling we have that those truths are our own from the effort of understanding them. Once we understand some scientific revelation, the truth of it becomes as-if our own. This is called rational consciousness. It does not work with sensuous consciousness. Feeling something we call "oneness with God" is an effort to connect with God through sensuous consciousness. This can only translate into mystical spirituality, which inhibits all forms of rational spirituality.
Rational spirituality is necessary for the appropriation of love and truth to self by means of the as-if feeling. The appropriation of love and truth to self is necessary in order to be connected to God. Hence all connection to God is based on rational understanding and not on sensuous experience. If we appropriate the sensuous consciousness of God, we become God, and this is impossible. It is therefore destructive of rational consciousness, our only means of connection to God. Our heaven is embedded in our rational consciousness, while our hell is embedded in sensuous consciousness or corporeal spirituality, this being a state of anti-rationality or irrationality.
Going on with the Number (AC 5121): [2] In regard to revelations being either from perception, or from speech with angels through whom the Divine-Human speaks, it is to be known that they who are in good and thence in truth, and especially they who are in the good of love to the Divine-Human, have revelation from perception; whereas they who are not in good and thence in truth, can indeed have revelations, yet not from perception, but through a living voice heard within them, and thus through angels from the Divine-Human. This revelation is external, but the former is internal. The angels, especially the celestial, have revelation from perception, as also had the men of the Most Ancient Church, and some too of the Ancient Church, but scarcely anyone at this day; whereas very many, even those who have not been in good, have had revelations from speech without perception, and also by means of visions or dreams.
This fascinating paragraph reveals and specifies many details about scientific revelations viewed from an evolutionary perspective. The highest portion of the mind called celestial receives revelation directly from perception of the scientific sense of Divine Speech. But we are not conscious of our celestial mind while we are attached to the physical body on earth, with the unique exception of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Therefore in order for us to become conscious of the scientific sense of Sacred Scripture, our understanding must be enlightened by gradual acquisition of knowledge which we must consciously build up into a coherent framework called "doctrine." We can also call it theistic psychology, from the perspective of organized and institutional science. The passage above reveals that anyone can have revelation from perception if they are willing to love the scientific revelations enough to guide their daily life according to it. This is expressed as "they who are in good and thence in truth." To be in good refers to our willingness to love the Divine-Human as the source of all that we have in our mind and in our future. When we love scientific revelations as God's Speech to us, we love good and thence truth. The truth we perceive is loved because it is from the Divine-Human. When we are in this state of mind, we experience perception from revelation. We can perceive how the truth applies specifically to us, and particularly to our feelings and thoughts. What we think must be according to truth or else we must reject what we think. And what we feel or enjoy must be according to the love or else we enjoy what is the opposite of love, namely love of self as god, which is not properly love, but cupidity. When we are unwilling to love the Divine-Human as the source of all that we have, we can still be enlightened to see the scientific sense of Sacred Scripture. But not by perception, only by mediation, through the intermediary of others. Others who have perception can translate for us through correspondences that are lower and easier to understand within the natural perspective. It is said in the passage above that when we are in this state we can hear a "living voice" within our mind. This refers to the sensuous consciousness of a spiritual vision that the prophets had in the Old Testament. The spiritual vision could be heard rather than seen, and the words heard could be written down as Sacred Scripture. This is called an "external revelation" to contrast with the "internal revelation" by direct perception. Swedenborg was raised into his celestial mind and made conscious there so that he had revelation from perception like all the inhabitants of the higher heavens. Continuing: [3] Such were most of the revelations of the prophets in the Jewish Church; they heard a voice, they saw a vision, and they dreamed a dream; but as they had no perception, these were merely verbal or visual revelations without any perception of what they signified. For genuine perception comes through heaven from the Divine-Human, and affects the intellect spiritually, and leads it perceptibly to think as the thing really is, together with internal assent, the source of which it knows not. It supposes that it is in itself, and that it flows from the connection of things; whereas it is a dictate through heaven from the Divine-Human, flowing into the interiors of the thought, about such things as are above the natural and sensuous, that is, about such things as are of the spiritual world or of heaven. From what has now been said it may be seen what revelation from perception is. But the revelation from perception which the Divine-Human had (who is here represented by Joseph, and which revelation is here treated of in the internal sense), was from the Divine in Himself, thus was from Himself. (AC 5121) It is clear from these details that God is very much involved in the details of our thinking and feeling. You need to maintain rational thinking to understand this enough in order not to feel disappointed or angry at God. My grown up children have always expressed a distaste for this idea that God is so involved in their thinking. It seems to them from their natural perspective, that if this were so, there would be no point or desire to keep thinking and living. They lose all enthusiasm for living when thinking about how it is God who directs their attention, focus, and memory. They suddenly feel that they are not free in that case and all joy of life leaves them, and all desire to do anything. But as they continue to grow in rational consciousness of God they will start feeling less and less troubled by the idea, and eventually, they will start feeling more and more that it is their joy to know it is God within them that activates and guides these processes in the mind, thus insuring that we are well and that our future is well. If it were left to us to think on our own even for a few seconds, we would instantly hate God and precipitate ourselves into the lowest hell of our mind, where we stay forever, being unwilling to emerge from there by loving God.
Another quote from Swedenborg (NJHD 51). (Reference numbers refer to numbered paragraphs in Arcana Coelestia): The Sciences and Knowledges through which the internal spiritual Man is opened. Those things are called scientifics which are in the external or natural man and in its memory, but not those which are in the internal or spiritual man, nos. 3019, 3020, 3293, 3309, 4967, 9918, 9922. Because scientifics belong to the external or natural man, they are respectively things of service, because the external or natural man was made to serve the internal or spiritual man, just as the world was made to serve heaven, nos. 5077, 5125, 5128, 5786, 5947, 10272, 10471. The external man is respectively a world, because the laws of the Divine order which are in the world, are inscribed upon it, and the internal man is respectively a heaven, because the laws of the Divine order which is in heaven, are inscribed upon it, nos. 4523, 5424, 5368, 6013, 6057, 9278, 9279, 9283, 9706, 10156, 10472; and in the work on Heaven and Hell, nos. 51 to 58. There are scientifics which concern natural things; there are such as relate to the civil state and life, and again there are such as relate to the moral state and life, and such as relate to the spiritual state and life, nos. 5774, 5934. But for distinction those which relate to the spiritual state and life, and which are chiefly doctrinals, are called knowledges, no. 9945. A man ought to become imbued with sciences and knowledges, because through them he learns how to think; afterwards how to understand what is true and good, and at length how to be wise; that is how to live according to what is true and good, nos. 129, 1450, 1451, 1453, 1548, 1802. Scientifics and knowledges are the first things, on which a man's civil, moral, and spiritual life are built and founded; but they ought to be learned for the sake of the use of life as an end, nos. 1489, 3310. Knowledges open the way to the internal man, and afterwards conjoin the internal with the external man according to uses, nos. 1563, 1616. The Rational is born through sciences and knowledges, nos. 1895, 1900, 3086. Still, not through the sciences and knowledges themselves, but through the affection of uses from them, and according to such affection, no. 1895. The internal man is opened and successively perfected through sciences and knowledges, if the man has for an end some good use; particularly the use which has respect to eternal life, no. 3086. In this case, the spiritual things from the celestial and spiritual man, go to meet the scientifics and knowledges which are in the natural man, and adopt those that agree, no. 1495. The uses of a heavenly life are then extracted, eliminated, and elevated by the Divine-Human, through the internal man, from the scientifics and knowledges which are in the natural man, nos. 1895, 1896, 1900-1902, 5871, 5874, 5901. And the scientifics which do not agree, and which are inimical, are rejected to the sides and exterminated, nos. 5871, 5886, 5889. The sight of the internal man calls forth from the scientifics and knowledges of the external man, only such as belong to its love, no. 9394. Scientifics and knowledges are arranged in bundles, and conjoined according to the loves by which they have been introduced, no. 5881. The things belonging to the love are then in the middle and in clearness, under the sight of the internal man, but those which do not belong to the love are at the sides and in obscurity, nos. 6068, 6084. Scientifics and knowledges with a man are successively implanted in his loves, and dwell in them, no. 6325. A man would be born into every science, and into intelligence from it, if he were born into the love of the Divine-Human, and into love towards the neighbour but since he is born into the love of self and the world, he is therefore born into [a state of] entire ignorance, nos. 6323, 6325. Knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom are the sons of love to the Divine-Human and love towards the neighbour, nos. 1226, 2049, 2116. Since scientifics and knowledges belong to the external or natural man, they are in the light of the world; but the truths, which have become matters of love and faith, and have thus obtained life, are in the light of heaven, no. 5212. Still, the truths which have thus obtained life, are comprehended by a man by means of natural ideas, no. 5510. Spiritual influx takes place through the internal man into the scientifics and knowledges which are in the external man, nos. 1904, 8005. Scientifics and knowledges are receptacles, and as it were vessels, of the truth and good belonging to the internal man, nos. 1469, 1496, 3068, 5489, 6004, 6023, 6052, 6071, 6077, 7770, 9922. Vessels in the Word, therefore, signify, in the correspondential sense, scientifics and knowledges, nos. 3068, 3069, 3079, 9394, 9544, 9723, 9724. Scientifics are a kind of mirrors, in which the truths and goods of the internal man appear, and are perceived, as in an image, no. 5201; they are together in them, as in their ultimate, nos. 5373, 5874, 5886, 5901, 6004, 6023, 6052, 6071, 6077. Because scientifics are in the light of the world, they are confused and obscure when compared with the things which are in the light of heaven; consequently, so also are the things which are in the external man, when compared with those which are in the internal man, no. 2831. Therefore, what is intertwined or confused, signifies in the Word the Scientific, no. 2831; likewise by the obscurity of a cloud, nos. 8443, 10551. The starting-point ought to be made from truths of doctrine which are from the Word, and they ought first to be acknowledged; it is permitted afterwards to consult scientifics in order to confirm these truths, which are corroborated in this manner, no. 6047. Those who are in an affirmative principle in respect to the truths of faith, are therefore permitted to confirm these truths intellectually by means of scientifics, but not those who are in a negative principle; for the affirmation which precedes inclines all things in favour of its own side, while the negation which precedes inclines them to its side, nos. 2568, 2588, 3913, 4760, 6047. There is an affirmative principle of doubt, and a negative principle of doubt; the former is with some who are good, and the latter with the evil, no. 2568. Entering into scientifics from the truths of faith, is agreeable to order; but, conversely, entering into the truths of faith from scientifics, is contrary to order, no. 10236. For influx is spiritual, and not physical, that is, natural; and, therefore, it takes place from the truths of faith because they are spiritual, into scientifics because they are natural, nos. 3219, 5119, 5259, 5427, 5428, 5779, 6322, 9109, 9110. Whoever is in a principle of negative doubt, which in itself is negative, and who says that he will not believe until he is persuaded through scientifics, will never believe, nos. 2094, 2832. Those who do so, become insane as to the things which belong to the Church and Heaven, nos. 128-130. They lapse into falsities of evils, no. 232, 233, 6047. And in the other life, when thinking about spiritual things, they are like drunken persons, no. 1072. A further description of their quality, no. 196. Instances to illustrate that spiritual things cannot be comprehended, if you enter into them in an inverted order, nos. 233, 2094, 2196, 2203, 2209. Many of the learned are more insane in spiritual things, than the simple-minded, because they are in a negative principle, and are furnished in abundance with scientifics by which they confirm the negative [state], no. 4760. An instance of an educated person, who was unable to understand anything concerning the spiritual life, no. 8629. Those who reason from scientifics in opposition to the truths of faith, reason sharply, because [they do so] from the fallacies of the senses, which are captivating and persuasive; for they can be shaken off only with difficulty, no. 5700. Those who do not understand anything of truth, and they also who are in evil, are able to reason concerning the truths and goods of faith, and yet they are not able to be in any enlightenment, no. 4214. The mere confirmation of a dogma is not the part of an intelligent man, because a falsity can be confirmed as easily as a truth, nos. 1017, 2482, 2490, 4741, 5033, 6865, 7012, 7680, 7950, 8521, 8780. Those who reason concerning the truths of the Church, whether a thing be so or not, are totally in the dark with respect to truths, and are not yet in spiritual light, nos. 215, 1385, 3033, 3428. There are scientifics which admit Divine truths, and others that do not, no. 5213. Useless scientifics ought to be destroyed, nos. 1489, 1492, 1499, 1500. Those scientifics are useless which regard as their end, and confirm, the loves of self and the world, and which withdraw [the mind] from love to the Divine-Human and love towards the neighbour; because such scientifics shut up the internal man, so that the man is afterwards unable to receive anything from heaven, nos. 1563, 1600. Scientifics are means for becoming wise, and means for becoming insane; and through them the internal man may either be opened or shut; and thus the Rational may either be cultivated or destroyed, nos. 4156, 8628, 9922. After death the sciences are of no account, but only what a man through the sciences has imbibed into his understanding and life, no. 2480. Still all scientifics remain after death, but they are quiescent, nos. 2476-2479, 2481-2486. (( NOTA BENE!)) The same scientifics which are false with the wicked because they are applied to evils, are true with the good because they are applied to goods, no. 6917. Scientific truths are not truths with the evil, however they may appear like truths while they pronounce them for interiorly there is evil in them, and from it they are falsified; science with the evil does not even deserve to be called science, because it is without life, no. 10331. Being wise is one thing, understanding another, being acquainted with a thing is a further, and doing is another still; nevertheless with those who lead a spiritual life, they follow in order and correspond, and in the doing or the works they are together simultaneously, no. 10331. It is also one thing to know, another to acknowledge, and still another to have faith, no. 896. An instance of the quality of the desire of knowing with spirits, no. 1973. The angels have an immeasurable desire of knowing and of becoming wise, because knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, are spiritual food, nos. 3114, 4459, 4792, 4976, 5147, 5293, 5340, 5342, 5410, 5426, 5576, 5582; 5588, 5655, 6277, 8562, 9003. The chief science with the ancients was the science of correspondences, but this science at the present day has perished, nos. 3021, 3419, 4280, 4844, 4964, 4966, 6004, 7729, 10252. The science of correspondences existed among the eastern nations, and in Egypt, no. 5702, 6692, 7097, 7779, 9391, 10407. Their hieroglyphics were derived from that source, nos. 6692, 7097. Through the science of correspondences the ancients introduced themselves into the knowledges of spiritual things, nos. 4749, 4844, 4966. The Word was written by mere correspondences, and its internal or correspondential sense is from that source; and without the science of correspondences it is impossible to know that this sense exists, or yet what the quality of the Word is, nos. 3131, 3472-3485, 8615, 10687. How much the science of correspondences excels the other sciences, no. 4280. (NJHD 51)
The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch4.htm#enlightenment ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Process of Enlightenment and Regeneration: The Scientific Meaning of Genesis 24Here is the text of Genesis 24 as it appears in the Writings, where it is given a word by word and phrase by phrase analysis regarding their spiritual meaning or “internal sense.” The passage opens with the comment that Sacred Scripture (“the Word”) has a literal meaning which has “stored within it” a different meaning which is “heavenly secret” because no one can know what it is except through a knowledge of correspondences. The internal sense is revealed to anyone who knows the correspondences in which Sacred Scripture is written. This is the secret now revealed to humankind through the Writings of Swedenborg (see also the analysis of Genesis 22 in Section xx): Arcana Coelestia
3011. GENESIS 24 1. And Abraham being old was come into days; and Jehovah blessed Abraham in all things. 2. And Abraham said unto his servant, the elder of his house, who administered all that he had, Put I pray thy hand under my thigh. 3. And I will make thee swear by Jehovah the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a woman for my son of the daughters of the Canaanite, in the midst of whom I dwell; 4. But thou shalt go unto my land, and to my nativity; and take a woman for my son for Isaac. 5. And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land; bringing shall I bring back thy son unto the land whence thou camest out? 6. And Abraham said unto him, Beware that thou bring not back my son thither. 7. Jehovah the God of heaven, that took me from my father's house, and from the land of my nativity, and that spoke unto me, and that swear unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land, He shall send His angel before thee, and thou shalt take a woman for my son from thence. 8. And if the woman be not willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this mine oath; only thou shalt not bring back my son thither. 9. And the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his lord, and sware to him concerning this word. 10. And the servant took ten camels, of the camels of his lord, and departed, and every good of his lord was in his hand; and he arose and went to Aram-naharaim, unto the city of Nahor. 11. And he made the camels kneel down, without the city, by the well of waters, about the time of evening, about the time the drawers go out. 12. And he said, O Jehovah God of my lord Abraham, cause to meet I pray before me this day; and do mercy with my lord Abraham. 13. Behold, I stand by the fountain of waters; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw waters. 14. And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink, and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also, her hast Thou appointed for Thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that Thou hast done mercy with my lord. 15. And it came to pass that scarcely had he done speaking, when behold Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder. 16. And the damsel was exceeding good to look upon, a virgin, neither had any man known her; and she went down to the fountain, and filled her pitcher, and came up. 17. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me I pray sip a little water from thy pitcher. 18. And she said, Drink, my lord; and she hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and made him drink. 19. And she finished making him drink, and she said, I will draw for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. 20. And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw, and drew for all his camels. 21. And the man marveling at her, withheld himself, to know whether Jehovah had prospered his way or not. 22. And it came to pass when the camels had done drinking, that the man took a jewel of gold, of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands, ten of gold their weight. 23. And he said, Whose daughter art thou? Tell me I pray is there room in thy father's house for us to pass the night? 24. And she said unto him, I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, whom she bare unto Nahor. 25. And she said unto him, We have both straw and much provender, also room to pass the night. 26. And the man bent himself, and bowed himself down to Jehovah. 27. And he said, Blessed be Jehovah the God of my lord Abraham, who hath not forsaken His mercy and His truth from my lord. I being in the way, Jehovah hath led me to the house of my lord's brethren. 28. And the damsel ran, and told her mother's house according to these words. 29. And Rebekah had a brother, and his name was Laban; and Laban ran out of doors unto the man, unto the fountain. 30. And it came to pass when he saw the jewel, and the bracelets upon his sister's hands, and when he heard the words of Rebekah his sister, saying, Thus spoke the man unto me, that he came unto the man; and behold he stood by the camels at the fountain. 31. And he said, Come thou blessed of Jehovah, wherefore standest thou without? For I have swept the house, and there is room for the camels. 32. And the man came into the house, and loosed the camels, and gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet, and the feet of the men that were with him. 33. And there was set before him to eat; and he said, I will not eat until I have spoken my words. And he said, Speak. 34. And he said, I am Abraham's servant. 35. And Jehovah hath blessed my lord exceedingly, and hath made him great, and hath given him flock and herd, and silver and gold, and menservants and maidservants, and camels and asses. 36. And Sarah, my lord's wife, bare a son to my lord after she was old; and he hath given unto him all that he hath. 37. And my lord made me swear, saying, Thou shalt not take a woman for my son of the daughters of the Canaanite, in whose land I dwell. 38. But thou shalt go unto my father's house, and to my family, and take a woman for my son. 39. And I said unto my lord, Peradventure the woman will not follow me. 40. And he said unto me, Jehovah, before whom I have walked, will send His angel with thee, and prosper thy way; and thou shalt take a woman for my son from my family, and from my father's house. 41. Then shalt thou be clear from my oath, when thou comest to my family; and if they give not to thee, thou shalt be clear from my oath. 42. And I came this day unto the fountain, and said, O Jehovah God of my lord Abraham, if now Thou do prosper my way wherein I do walk; 43. Behold I stand by the fountain of waters; and let it come to pass that the maiden which cometh forth to draw, and to whom I shall say, Let me drink I pray a little water from thy pitcher; 44. And she shall say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels, let her be the woman whom Jehovah hath appointed for my lord's son. 45. I scarcely had done speaking in mine heart, when behold Rebekah came forth; and her pitcher on her shoulder; and she went down unto the fountain and drew; and I said unto her, Let me drink, I pray. 46. And she made haste, and let down her pitcher from upon her, and said, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also; and I drank, and she gave drink to the camels also. 47. And I asked her, and said, Whose daughter art thou? And she said, The daughter of Bethuel, the son of Nahor, whom Milcah bare unto him. And I put the jewel upon her nose, and the bracelets upon her hands. 48. And I bent and bowed myself down to Jehovah, and blessed Jehovah God of my lord Abraham, who led me into the way of truth, to take the daughter of my lord's brother for his son. 49. And now if ye will do mercy and truth with my lord, tell me; and if not, tell me; and I will look to the right hand, or to the left. 50. And Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The word hath gone forth from Jehovah; we cannot speak unto thee evil or good. 51. Behold Rebekah is before thee; take her, and go, and let her be the woman of thy lord's son, as Jehovah hath spoken. 52. And it came to pass that when Abraham's servant heard their words, he bowed himself down to the earth unto Jehovah. 53. And the servant brought forth vessels of silver and vessels of gold, and garments, and gave to Rebekah; he gave also precious things to her brother and to her mother. 54. And they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him; and they passed the night; and they rose up in the morning, and he said, Send me away unto my lord. 55. And her brother and her mother said, Let the damsel abide with us days, at least ten; afterwards thou shalt go. 56. And he said unto them, Do not delay me, and Jehovah hath prospered my way; send me away, and I will go to my lord. 57. And they said, Let us call the damsel, and inquire at her mouth. 58. And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. 59. And they sent away Rebekah their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham's servant, and his men. 60. And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Our sister, be thou for thousands of ten thousands; and may thy seed inherit the gate of those that hate thee. 61. And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man; and the servant took Rebekah, and went away. 62. And Isaac came from coming from Beer-lahai-roi; and he dwelt in the land of the south. 63. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening; and he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold there were camels coming. 64. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and saw Isaac, and she alighted from off the camel. 65. And she said unto the servant, What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the servant said, It is my lord. And she took a veil and covered herself. 66. And the servant told Isaac all the words that he had done. 67. And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent; and he took Rebekah, and she was to him for a woman, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother. This charming and moving love story is written in the natural-corporeal correspondences of the Old Testament mentality and consciousness (see Section xx). Hidden within the corporeal correspondences are higher order rational correspondences that can be extracted through a deeper understanding of theistic psychology (see Section xx). The Writings inform us that all historical events and descriptions in Sacred Scripture are accurate to the detail. There are two portions to this idea that we need to think about. First, that the Divine Human brought these precise historical events into existence at the time they occurred. This idea includes the surrounding natural and social setting of the events, which is always specified in Sacred Scripture. For instance, some of the cities in which the events took place were named hundreds of years before the events recorded took place. The Divine Human also brought about that these particular names be chosen for those places because each name had its correspondence from the Most Ancient version of Sacred Scripture on this earth, and this was from heaven itself (see Section xx). Correspondences are from creation and they are eternal and unchangeable. The human mind is constructed on the pattern of correspondences, as are material objects and laws (see Section xx). Understanding correspondences will give you a deeper understanding of how we think and feel, and how things in nature are related to things in the mind or human spirit. The knowledge of correspondences is important for understanding both psychological phenomena and the physical environment around us. The revelation of correspondences and how to use them has the potential of raising the rational thinking potential of humankind and of every individual. So the first portion of the idea is that the events described in Sacred Scripture are historically accurate, brought about by means of correspondences. The second portion of the idea is that the Divine Psychologist used correspondences to restrict the thoughts of each prophet and revelator who wrote down the books of Sacred Scripture. In this way the literal sentences of Sacred Scripture in their original -- Hebrew, Greek, and Latin – were written out in an exact sequence of words, phrases, and sentences, that would allow the extraction of their inner scientific meaning to which they corresponded. This inner scientific meaning contains
These are then the two portions involved in the concept of Sacred Scripture: (1) the Divine production of actual historical events through the laws of correspondences, and (2), the Divine control by means of correspondences over what details are written down by the prophet and in what exact sequence, that would make them correspond with the inner rational series of scientific revelations to be extracted. You might be wondering why all this is necessary. Why didn’t God dictate the sentences of Sacred Scripture to make a textbook for theistic psychology. Why should we have to go through this elaborate methodology of extracting this scientific knowledge from historical descriptions? As you study theistic psychology you will be able to give may answers to this question. You may be sure that if this had been possible, God would have done that! So we need to understand why that is not possible, and the more theistic psychology you know, the clearer this dynamic will become. The human mind has a built in or wired in thinking syntax based on rationality which is based on Divine Truth. There is a developmental pattern of elevating the conscious understanding across the discrete levels of correspondences (see Section xx). If Sacred Scripture were written out purely in spiritual correspondences, it would be incomprehensible. The sentences of Sacred Scripture contain names of people and of places, details about the number of days or years that something took, time of the day or season, natural things like mountains, lakes, oceans, various objects like pitchers, swords, chariots, houses, food, and as well, various animals and plants. Each of these items are natural objects or qualities. The law of correspondences, by creation, dictates that spiritual events are the instrumental cause in the creation of natural events. In other words, spiritual events originate physical events. The spiritual law of correspondences is a mental law because the objective spiritual world = the objective mental world. There is only one objective mental world and only one spiritual world. They overlap and everyone’s mind exists in that overlap. The Writings say that it was the Ancients living throughout Asia, who chose the names of places which are named in the Old and New Testaments. They always gave names according to their knowledge of correspondences, which they inherited from the celestial race prior to the Fall (see Section xx). This is why we can reconstruct the spiritual correspondences hidden within the sentences of Sacred Scripture. Every sentence of Sacred Scripture was written by means of correspondences, but this was not known to the prophets and Gospel writers. This great “heavenly arcanum” or secret, was revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg (1745-1771). Theistic psychology is the process of extracting the higher-order correspondences from the literal sentences of the Threefold Sacred Scripture – the Hebrew Old Testament, the Greek New Testament, and the Latin Final Testament (= the Writings of Swedenborg) (see Section xx). Now that the third and final portion of the Threefold Sacred Scripture has been delivered to the human race, theistic psychology as a science has been made possible. Now anyone from any culture or religion can read through the historical and cultural details so that these vanish from view. Left in place are the concepts and principles of theistic psychology that God wants every human being to know and understand. What follows is an illustration and exploration of Chapter 24 in the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament. The discussion will proceed along three simultaneous columns or pathways. First, the details and dramatic sequence of the “story” in Genesis, as told in natural events that are correspondences. The content for this first column is taken from the Old Testament text. Second, we need to follow the spiritual correspondences of each natural detail that is mentioned. This is taken from the Writings, in particular the work known as Arcana Coelestia. Third, we need to state the scientific meaning of the spiritual correspondences. This is taken from theistic psychology. The Topics of Genesis 24 in Relation to Theistic PsychologyWe begin with Number 3012 from the 12-volume set of Arcana Coelestia, as translated into English. AC 3012 THE CONTENTS In the internal sense there is described the whole process of the conjunction of truth with good in the Lord's Divine rational; in this chapter, the process of initiation which precedes conjunction. "Isaac" is the good of the rational; "Rebekah" here is truth to be initiated into good; "Laban" is the affection of good in the natural man. The above paragraph is like a table of contents of Chapter 24 of Genesis, viewed in their spiritual correspondences or “internal sense.” It lists the topics of theistic psychology that are dealt with in this Chapter of Sacred Scripture. These are the things that the Divine Human wants to communicate to the human mind for the sake of its regeneration and preparation for eternal happiness in heaven (see Section xx). Overall, the Chapter deals with “the whole process of the conjunction of truth with good.” When extracting celestial-rational correspondences, the topic discusses how the Divine Child in the Incarnation Event actually performed and achieved this conjunction in His Own Mind (see Section xx). But when extracting spiritual-rational correspondences, the topic discusses what every person must actually perform in order to achieve this conjunction in himself or herself (see Section xx). This makes sense in view of the fact, explained elsewhere, that the Incarnation Event was the creation of a new psychobiological mind by means of which every human being could henceforth step through the same mental procedures that the Divine Child created in Himself (see Section xx). The celestial-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture discuss how the Divine Child created the conjunction process in His Mind. The spiritual-rational correspondences discuss theistic psychology. The literal sentences of the Writings are written in natural-rational correspondences. At this level of meaning the Writings give the external appearance of being a new Christian theology located within the Western cultural history and mind-frame. While this level is admirably suited for the Christian religion everywhere, it cannot form the content of a cross-cultural and pan-religious curriculum. But this literal meaning “vanishes from view” when one translates it into its spiritual correspondences. This is why theistic psychology can be suitable as the content of a cross-cultural and pan-religious curriculum about
These are the topics of theistic psychology. They are spiritual correspondences extracted from the natural correspondences of the Writings Sacred Scripture (see Section xx). They are the topics of Divine Speech. This is what God wants to talk to us about. This is what God wants every human being to know. This is what every human being must know in order to manage one’s own future in immortality. The scientific meaning of Genesis 24 gives the details about the process of regenerating our natural mind so that it is set into correspondence with our spiritual mind. This is the central issue in theistic psychology. The quality of life in our immortality is determined by how successful we are in regenerating the natural mind with which we are born. Anatomically, the natural mind has three organs layered into three discrete levels of operation. This can be rendered schematically as follows:
In the chart above, the conscious natural mind covers layers 1 to 4. Layers 5 to 7 constitute the unconscious spiritual mind. Layers 8 and 9 are uncreate, infinite, and Divine, referring to the Divine Human's Mind or Spirit. Upon the death of the body and subsequent resuscitation of the "spirit," the natural mind (layers 1, 2, 3, 4) is quickly rendered non-operational and our conscious awareness is thenceforth located forever in the spiritual mind (layers 5, 6, 7). The seven human layers of consciousness (1 to 7 in the chart), are created by the correspondences of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture (see Section xx). Here, individual development recapitulates history and evolution. Each level that succeeds is a discrete degree higher or more interior and rational. The Old Testament mentality or level of thinking (1) is our first concept of God, heaven, and hell (see Section xx). The New Testament mentality or level of thinking (2) is our next understanding of God, heaven, and hell (see Section xx). The Writings mentality or level of thinking (3) is our third concept of God, heaven, and hell (see Section xx). Our fourth concept of God, heaven, and hell is theistic psychology, which is a level 4 mentality or thinking, and is extracted from the Writings according to prescribed methods specified in the Writings (see Section xx). Level 4 becomes operational when we undergo conscious character reformation in adult life and begin our regeneration by applying the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture to our daily willing and thinking (see Section xx). Level 4 thinking is called "enlightenment" because its information base is from the spiritual mind and its reasoning quality is genuinely rational. This genuinely rational thinking is only the first layer of understanding genuine truth. Layer 3 is natural-rational, which is a rationality whose concepts are bounded by materialism, time and place. On the other hand, layer 4 reasoning is interior-natural, which also means spiritual-natural reasoning. Layer 4 is a new organ created within the natural mind by the Incarnation Event (see Section xx).
The scientific analysis by correspondences of Genesis 24, 25, and 26 yields a complete anatomical and developmental description of level 4 thinking (see Section xx). The natural mind cannot be regenerated through layers 1, 2, and 3, which constitute the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture (see Section xx). The Incarnation Event was the process by which the Divine Human created the interior-natural organ within the natural mind of the human race (layer 4). This tool two steps. First, the Divine Child created this new layer of thinking in Himself by extracting theistic psychology from the literal meaning of the Hebrew Old Testament, which He studied in His earliest years of conscious awareness as an infant (see Section xx). This took several rational steps, as described in Genesis 24, 25, and 26. When the process was completed in Himself, the second step was to create this new mental organ within the mind of every human being who were already in the afterlife, then every human being who was alive in the natural universe, and finally, every human being that is being born since then, and to the endless future of new humanity.
The interior-natural organ that makes possible conscious level 4 meanings, may be called a virtual heaven with three discrete layers of correspondences. This is because layers 5, 6, and 7 of the unconscious spiritual mind are virtually represented in our conscious natural mind (see Section xx). This is accomplished by virtual higher-order correspondences that can be operational in the interior-natural organ, while they cannot be operational in the exterior-natural organ (layers 1, 2, 3). The thinking level of people in their First Heaven is at layer 5 by means of spiritual- natural correspondences. This meaning level is virtually represented in our conscious natural mind through our understanding of spiritual-natural correspondences of Sacred Scripture. We are similarly conscious of layers 6 and 7 by means of spiritual-rational and celestial-rational correspondences of Sacred Scripture in their virtual form (see Section xx).
Regeneration cannot occur at the natural level of thinking (1, 2, 3) about Sacred Scripture because the literal meaning is always bound up in materialistic thinking that includes historical names of places or people, time and number and, matter and motion. This is true of all Sacred Scripture because it is always expressed in a natural language -- Hebrew, Greek, Latin. Theistic psychology is a level of thinking that goes into the interior of the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture (level 4). At this level we learn to think and reason only from the universal concepts contained in Divine Speech. Sacred Scripture is only a window to Divine Speech, and the window is opened or made transparent when we apply correspondences as prescribed. Nevertheless, there are different discrete levels at which correspondences can be applied to one's thinking and willing. One's degree of enlightenment or consciousness of higher meanings in theistic psychology is proportional to one's degree of regeneration, a process that goes on throughout life and never ceases to eternity.
Genesis 24 describes the process by which the natural mind is set to order by means of the higher correspondences in the interior-natural organ. Setting in order the natural mind means to make it correspond with the spiritual mind. When we are born we inherit a natural mind in disorder, and in fact, in an order that is dead set against the spiritual order. The symptoms of this include a civilization of materialism, the negative bias in science, numerous societal problems, violent conflict between people, and individual inadequacies (depression, addiction, deception, cynicism, intolerance, hatred). The natural correspondences of Sacred Scripture in the human mind are powerless to overcome this inbred negativity. Despite what people can read in Sacred Scripture, and the religious doctrines that are justified through them, people seem incapable of reforming themselves through these ideas and concepts. They endlessly fall back to their inherited enjoyments and inclinations, unwilling to give them up. Their concept of heaven and hell (levels 1, 2, 3), isn't powerful enough in their mind to effect character change.
This is why "salvation" of the human race was necessary in order to rescue the human mind from hellish attachments people are unwilling to give up, consequently condemning themselves to an eternity of hellish life. New and more powerful mental tools had to be created, concepts and truths that could overcome the hellish attachments with which we were born. Only God could do that. But now consider the task of communicating these new mental reasoning tools to the human race. God could not implant the new concepts into the conscious natural mind of every individual. That would have felt like some unknown power taking over our mind. It i snot possible to acquire concepts without wanting to, without some motivation or love for them.
The method this required involved these nine steps.
These nine steps collectively constitute the Incarnation Event (see Section xx). It created a way out for "fallen" humanity (see Section xx). A new interior-natural organ was created within the conscious natural mind.
The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch4.htm#Genesis 24 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Table Illustrating the Extraction ProcessIn theistic psychology, “Divine truth” in our conscious natural mind is called the doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech. The phrase “as Divine Speech” means that Sacred Scripture is read by means of the correspondences revealed and explained in the Writings. The scientific details extracted from this Chapter of Genesis are arranged in an orderly series that unfolds through the dramatic sequence of the story. Let us review in an encapsulated form what this Chapter has told us. The following Table presents the threefold analysis that is typical for extractive research in theistic psychology (see Section xx). Table 4.4.5
The above Table summarizes the discussion so far and shows the parallelism between the meaning of natural-corporeal correspondences (Old Testament Sacred Scripture), natural-rational correspondences (the Writings Sacred Scripture), and spiritual-natural correspondences (theistic psychology). These are three discrete levels of correspondences (see Section xx). Theistic psychology depends on thinking with spiritual-natural correspondences, which is also called the “first heaven” (see Section xx). From the Table above you can easily notice that there is a much greater similarity in content between the Writings (column 2) and theistic psychology (column 3), than there is between the Writings (column 2) and the Old Testament (column 1). This is because the Old Testament Sacred Scripture is written in corporeal correspondences, while the Writings are written in rational correspondences. Though both are natural correspondences, they are at different sub-levels of the natural mind. The corporeal level of thinking is the lowest operation of the natural mind (see Section xx). Next comes the sensuous level of thinking in which the New Testament Sacred Scripture is written. Finally, comes the rational level of thinking, and this is the consciousness level in which the Writings Sacred Scripture are written. The spiritual-natural correspondences of theistic psychology (or first heaven), are spiritual, and therefore they are superior to any of the natural correspondences in which the threefold Sacred Scripture is written. Yet their meanings are closely related to the natural-rational correspondences of the letter of the Writings. In this Table these similarities are more noticeable but in other passages the extraction process can be more involved (see Volume 2 of A Man of the Field listed in the Readings). Try to memorize the contents and patterns in Table 4.4.5 above. This will help you as you continue reading the analysis of Genesis 24, the passage in the Old Testament that discusses the theistic psychology of enlightenment. More specifically, it describes the mechanism by which our thinking and willing in daily life set themselves in agreement with the rational doctrine of truth from Sacred Scripture that we have acquired for ourselves. In this way, the natural mind is regenerated and we enter the phase of the genuine human life. This process is called "salvation of the human race" because without it every individual born on earth would enter the hells of their mind when they become spirits in eternity. We must be willing to undergo this process of re-alignment of our external self, which involves setting it in agreement with our rational doctrine. Our rational doctrine is spiritual in origin. It is not created by materialistic ideas of self-intelligence. It is extracted from Sacred Scripture using prescribed methods of extraction. This requires
This evolutionary mechanism of spiritual regeneration did not exist in the human race prior to the birth of the Divine Child on this earth two thousand years ago. The Incarnation Event was the mechanism which God used to set up the glorification process, that is, the process by which the Divine Human from eternity is conjoined as one to the Human born on earth in time and place. The human born on earth is called the Divine Child and it is this Person who underwent the mental changes that created the new pathway of regeneration for the human race. The glorification process was completed in the Divine Man, when He reached the age of 33, died, resurrected, and "ascended to Heaven." The expression "ascending to heaven" refers to the completion of the glorification process. The instant this process was completed, the entire human race now possessed a new biological mechanism of unparalleled significance for the race. The natural mind now had a new spiritual organ within itself that did not exist before the glorification process. In the Incarnation Event, God the Divine Human, acquired a human from earth and united it with His Divine. This produced a new entity in existence -- the Divine Natural of God. But note carefully that the Divine Natural Mind of God had to be a product of the same mechanism that produces the natural mind of every human being on some earth. The Divine Child made His external self limited and vulnerable, full of the inheritance of evil that every individual possesses. Think of the difficulty of the task involved in glorifying this natural mind full of evil! How can it be purified so that it could become one with the Divine? That's what we are told in the Genesis Chapters 18 and onward as we read the story of the four Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. An excellent and stimulating study of these chapters was made by Geoffrey Childs (see The Path in the Readings). The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch4.htm#table1 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Scientific Revelations in Sacred ScriptureNote: For a more detailed justification for extracting the correspondential sense of the Writings of Swedenborg, please consult my online book at: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/v2ch1-nonduality.html Quoting from the Writings of Swedenborg: I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections. But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt. (AC 68) As it is permitted me to disclose what for several years I have heard and seen, it shall here be told, first, how the case is with man when he is being resuscitated; or how he enters from the life of the body into the life of eternity. In order that I might know that men live after death, it has been given me to speak and be in company with many who were known to me during their life in the body; and this not merely for a day or a week, but for months, and almost a year, speaking and associating with them just as in this world. They wondered exceedingly that while they lived in the body they were, and that very many others are, in such incredulity as to believe that they will not live after death; when in fact scarcely a day intervenes after the death of the body before they are in the other life; for death is a continuation of life. (AC 70)
By focusing on the universal meaning of Sacred Scripture, the natural historical meaning recedes in the background. From a sectarian religion, Divine Speech is reconstructed into a science of the human mind and God. Note that the literal sense is also true and is unaffected by the scientific sense drawn from it. Hence it is not accurate to say that the scientific sense destroys religion or impairs it in any way. In fact, it's quite obvious that when both the literal and scientific senses are known, the literal and historical meaning is strengthened, not weakened. Theistic psychology supports all religions and is dependent on the literal sense as a foot is dependent on a shoe, or as the head is dependent on a hat for protection, or as the egg is dependent on the egg shell. The literal sense is the eggshell and the scientific sense is the egg, or, the hat is the literal sense while the head is the scientific sense. Take away the hat and your head has no protection, or, take away the egg shell and the egg is lost. In the passage below, "the internal or correspondential sense of the Word " refers to the scientific sense of Divine Speech.
Quoting from Swedenborg: The
internal or correspondential sense of the Word contains innumerable arcana.
Quoting from Swedenborg: But man has severed this connection with heaven by turning his interiors away from heaven, and turning them to the world and to self by means of his love of self and of the world, thereby so withdrawing himself that he no longer serves as a basis and foundation for heaven; therefore the Divine-Human has provided a medium to serve in place of this basis and foundation for heaven, and also for the conjunction of heaven with man. This medium is the Word. How the Word serves as such a medium has been shown in many places in ARCANA COELESTIA, all of which may be seen gathered up in the little work on THE WHITE HORSE mentioned in Revelation; also in the APPENDIX TO THE NEW JERUSALEM AND ITS HEAVENLY DOCTRINE, from which some notes are here appended. For the reason that the natural is the ultimate in which spiritual and celestial things, which are interior things, terminate and on which they continue in existence, like a house upon its foundation (n. 9430, 9433, 9824, 10044, 10436). That the Word might be such it was written by means of pure correspondences (n. 1404, 1408, 1409, 1540, 1619, 1659, 1709, 1783, 8615, 10687). Because the Word is such in the sense of the letter it is the containant of the spiritual and celestial sense (n. 9407). And it is accommodated both to men and to angels at the same time (n. 1769-1772, 1887, 2143, 2157, 2275, 2333, 2395, 2540, 2541, 2547, 2553, 7381, 8862, 10322). And it is a means of uniting heaven and earth (n. 2310, 2495, 9212, 9216, 9357, 9396, 10375). The conjunction of the Divine-Human with man is through the Word, by means of the internal sense (n. 10375). There is conjunction by means of all things and each particular thing of the Word, and in consequence the Word is wonderful above all other writing (n. 10632-10634). Since the Word was written the Divine-Human speaks with men by means of it (n. 10290). The Church where the Word is and the Divine-Human is known by means of it, in relation to those outside the Church where there is no Word and the Divine-Human is unknown is like the heart and lungs in man in comparison with the other parts of the body, which live from them as from the fountains of their life (n. 637, 931, 2054, 2853). Before the Divine-Human the universal Church on the earth is as one Man (n. 7396, 9276). Consequently unless there were on this earth a Church where the Word is, and where the Divine-Human is known by means of it, the human race here would perish (n. 468, 637, 931, 4545, 10452). (HH 305)
In its scientific sense "the Church" refers to our mental state when we are regenerating or developing spiritually through progressive character reformation by temptations. "The Word" refers to Divine Speech and "the Divine-Human" refers to God. "Those who are outside the Church" refers to our mental states prior to entering the states of regeneration. Read again the passage above by focusing away from the literal sense and towards the scientific sense. Then do the same for the passage below. "The Church of the Divine-Human" refers to the fact that every individual regardless of religion is led into the states of regeneration by the same one and only God. The "universal Church on earth" refers to every individual who acknowledges God and God's commandments.
The church of the Divine-Human is with all in the whole world who live in good according to their religious principles (n. 3263, 6637, 10765). All who live in good wherever they are, and acknowledge one God, are accepted by the Divine-Human and come into heaven; since all who are in good acknowledge the Divine-Human, because good is from the Divine-Human, and the Divine-Human is in good (n. 2589-2604, 2861, 2863, 3263, 4190, 4197, 6700, 9256). The universal church on earth before the Divine-Human is as one man (n. 7396, 9276). As heaven is, because the church is heaven or the kingdom of the Divine-Human on earth (n. 2853, 2996, 2998, 3624-3629, 3636-3643, 3741-3745, 4625). But the church, where the Divine-Human is known and where the Word is, is like the heart and lungs in man in respect to the other parts of the body, which live from the heart and lungs as from the fountains of their life (n. 637, 931, 2054, 2853). Hence it is, that unless there were a church where the Word is, and where the Divine-Human is thereby known, the human race could not be saved (n. 468, 637, 931, 4545, 10452). The church is the foundation of heaven (n. 4060).
Quoting from Swedenborg: The angels themselves declare that all their wisdom comes through the Word; for the light they enjoy depends upon how deep is their understanding of the Word. The light of heaven is Divine wisdom, which is visible to their eyes as light. In the shrine where a copy of the Word is stored, the light is flame-like and brilliant, surpassing in intensity any light in heaven outside it. The wisdom of the celestial angels exceeds that of the spiritual angels, more or less to the same extent as that exceeds that of human beings. This is because the celestial angels have the good of love from the Divine-Human, and the spiritual angels have the truths of wisdom from the Divine-Human. Where the good of love is, there too dwells wisdom; but where truths are, wisdom does not dwell except to the extent that the good of love is there too. This is why the Word is written differently in the Divine-Human's celestial kingdom from that in His spiritual kingdom. For in the Word of the celestial kingdom the expressions convey the different kinds of good of love and the characters the affections of love; in the Word of the spiritual kingdom the expressions convey the truths of wisdom, the characters the inward perceptions of truth. These facts will allow one to conclude what wisdom there is lurking hidden in the Word we have in the world. For in it lies hidden all the wisdom of the angels, which is beyond description; and a person after death enters into possession of this wisdom, if by means of the Word he is made an angel by the Divine-Human. (TCR 242) As the external of the Word appears in heaven of a scarlet color, and as there is an influx out of heaven into man's memory, in which what is drawn from the Word appears of such a color, therefore scarlet was employed in relation to the remembrance of things. (AC 9468)
Sacred Scripture or Divine SpeechTheistic psychology is the scientific knowledge extracted from Sacred Scripture according to the laws of correspondences revealed in the Writings of Swedenborg (see Section xx). When the authors of the Old and New Testament wrote down their sentences they did not know that within those sentences are hidden scientific revelations from Divine Speech. Swedenborg's sentences are also of this Divine style called "the Word" though he himself, being a mere human, could not see the infinite depth of meanings contained in the sentences he wrote. His job was to write about what he saw in the spiritual world according to his own understanding and scientifically trained mind. This he did. Surely, when he reflected upon it, Swedenborg must have realized that his sentences had that property of Divine Speech. He does state that he only wrote what the Lord inspired him to write, and frequently he says that he can't go further into some subject because the Lord did not allow it.
Swedenborg says that no one can discover the inner layers of Sacred Scripture as Divine Speech, except those to whom it is revealed by the Divine Human. Swedenborg was commissioned by the Divine Human to be the revelator of the code of correspondences through which all Divine Speech enters the human mind. Divine Speech is nothing but Divine Truth, and Divine Truth is the syntax by which our rational thinking proceeds. Our ability to think rationally allows us to understand spiritual concepts contained in Divine Speech. This is the only source of spiritual concepts for human beings. Without spiritual concepts, the human race would fall into animal life, which is purely natural, and of this world only. Heaven and hell, and immortality, would not be possible without spiritual concepts forming human minds.
Divine Speech contains spiritual concepts that descend from the Divine Human into the minds of human beings, thus forming their rational mind, by which they have immortality. Divine Speech is therefore the source of immortality and the source of life. But we need to consider the fact that human beings are in different states of rationality at different times of their biography. Rational understanding of spiritual concepts varies from high to low. For instance, when children read Sacred Scripture their ability to understand is at first limited mainly to historical and natural events and stories. their concept of God is a natural one, and so is their idea of heaven and hell. They think hell is a place of physical punishment and torment, and heaven as a place of physical rewards and enjoyments. Many adults continue along this natural approach to spiritual ideas. For instance, many religious people believe that this world will physically end, and a new physical world will be created, upon which will live those who are resurrected from their graves.
The physicalistic understanding of God, heaven, hell, salvation, sin, etc. is expressed in a language called "natural correspondences." These are lower-order cognitions or thought patterns. It is the way we think when all our knowledge is based in materialistic input -- our physical senses, or facts based on observations with the physical senses. Thus, nothing of the spiritual world can enter this knowledge since these cannot be observed with the physical senses. The only source of spiritual knowledge is Sacred Scripture. This spiritual knowledge is in Sacred Scripture, but it is hidden from the surface meaning of the sentences, which is purely natural in content and thinking level or mentality.
Individuals progress spiritually to deeper levels of understanding and rationality when they learn the laws of correspondences in which Sacred Scripture is written. They can now read the sentences of Sacred Scripture with higher-order cognitions called "spiritual correspondences." The Writings of Swedenborg analyze major portions of the Old and New Testaments, applying the method of correspondences revealed to him through his direct observations in the spiritual world (see Section xx). The Writings do not analyze themselves in the same way for reasons I can understand. If Swedenborg had tried to include this self-exegesis, his books would have been incomprehensible to most people. Instead, the exegesis of the Writings is to be done by others in the ensuing centuries and millennia, in their scholarship and research of the scientific revelations hidden within its sentences. Theistic psychology is the organized research effort that has begun this task that will be so critical to the evolution of the human race.
Let us see how how Swedenborg applies the method of correspondences to two common words in the Old Testament: "foes" and "enemies." Quoting from the Writings:
AE 671. And their enemies saw them.- That this signifies cognition and acknowledgment with those who are interiorly opposed to the goods and truths of the Word and of the church, is evident from the signification of seeing, as denoting to understand, consequently to know and to acknowledge (concerning which see above 11, 37, 260 a, 354, 529); and from the signification of enemies, as denoting those who are opposed to the goods of love and the truths of doctrine, consequently those who are in evils and falsities, for these are meant, in the Word, in its correspondential sense by enemies (inimicos) and foes (hostes). It is therefore evident, that by their enemies saw them, is signified cognition and acknowledgment with those who are against the two witnesses, which are the goods of love and truths of doctrine. [2] The interior truth involved is as follows: by enemies are here meant those who are interiorly, but yet not outwardly, opposed to the goods of love and the truths of doctrine, for with the lips they act as friends, but in heart as enemies. Therefore before the world they profess those things, but in their spirit, in which they are when engaged in meditating alone, they deny them. These, therefore, are the enemies who see; for when they are in corporeal-natural thought, which is the case when they are in the company of others, they see, that is, know and acknowledge goods and truths; but when they are in spiritual-natural thought, which is the case when they are alone, and think concerning the things of faith, then they do not acknowledge them. This is why it is said, that those two witnesses ascended into heaven in a cloud; for the cloud Signifies the external of the Word, of the church, and of worship, which, and from which, they see. That the cloud there signifies this external, may be seen in the article just above. [3] In numerous passages of the Word, mention is made of foes and enemies, and by them are meant evils and falsities, by foes (hostes), evils, and by enemies (inimici), falsities, for the Word in its bosom is spiritual; therefore in that sense foes and enemies mean only spiritual foes and enemies. That this is the case is evident from the following passages. In David: "Jehovah, how are my foes increased, many are they that rise up against me, that say of my soul, no safety (salus) for him in God" (Psalm iii. 1, 2). In the same: "Make wonderful thy mercy, O Saviour of them that trust, from them that rise up against me: keep me by thy right hand, from the wicked who are against my soul, who compass me about" (Psalm xvii. 7-9). In the same: "Deliver me not up to the desire of my foes, for witnesses of a lie have risen up against me, who breathe out violence; unless I had trusted to see good in the land of life" (Psalm xxvii. 12, 13). In the same: "Deliver me from my foes, O my God, from them that rise up against me, lift me up: deliver me from the workers of iniquity behold they lay snares for my soul" (Psalm lix. 1-3). In Isaiah: "The wicked acteth perversely in the land of uprightness, but Jehovah, thine hand is lifted up, fire shall devour thine enemies " (xxvi. 10, 11). Besides in many other places in the prophetic Word, where foes and enemies are mentioned, and also in the historic Word, where foes, wars, and battles are treated of. For as war signifies spiritual war, which is that between truths and falsities, and as the weapons of war, such as spears, bows, arrows, and swords, signify those things that pertain to spiritual war, so also do foes and enemies. That wars, in the Word, and also weapons of war, as bows, arrows, and swords, signify such things, has been frequently shown in the preceding pages. (AE 671)
The above analysis gives an indication of some of the content of Divine Speech. While the natural correspondences refer to foes and enemies in a natural sense, the spiritual correspondences of "foes" and "enemies" refer to the mental state of being opposed to what is good and true. Natural foes and enemies refer to the horizontal community of people in our geographic area. In the Psalms, David frequently refers to King Saul's soldiers who are chasing him. They are his foes and enemies from whom he asks God for protection. This is the literal, historical, religious meaning. But when we extract the spiritual correspondences, we get an entirely new meaning, this time not natural, but spiritual, which means mental, since spiritual=mental (see Section xx). The content of Divine Speech in its higher correspondences is about mental states and how we can change them to prepare them for heavenly life. This is obviously the most critical topic God can talk about to the human race since the purpose of the human race on earth is to become regenerated, to acquire a heavenly character, and thus to enter immortal life in heaven. It is for this single overarching purpose that God creates human beings, and therefore it is also the chief content of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture. In the passage above the scientific meaning of "enemies" is given as "cognition and acknowledgment with those who are interiorly opposed to the goods and truths of the Word and of the church." To understand this definition as theistic psychology we need to apply correspondences to it. What is designated here by "the goods and truths of the Word and of the church" to which we are opposed in certain mental states? "The Word" refers to Sacred Scripture and "the church" refers to our developing spiritual understanding based on it. We are called "enemies" by Divine Speech when we reject or contradict the spiritual concepts we derive from Sacred Scripture. Our concepts of good or love, on the one hand, and our concepts of truth on the other, are called "the two witnesses." These are the means by which we can be regenerated for heavenly life. The "goods of love" are for regenerating the affective organ of the will, while the "truths of doctrine" are for regenerating the cognitive organ of understanding. God talks about our mental states, teaching us to differentiate them so that we can learn to control them. This is called regeneration (see Section xx), without which we enter our hells upon entering the spiritual world of immortality. Hence God is intent on giving us the rational consciousness of the spiritual world. Our heaven of immortality is located inside this rational consciousness. Without it, we have nothing but the sensuous consciousness of the corporeal mentality, which is the hell in everyone's mind. Rational thinking about spiritual ideas opens the heaven in everyone's mind, makes it functional and operational.
The passage above discusses the exterior and interior mental states relative to each other, a distinction that must be understood and taken into account. It is said that "by enemies are here meant those who are interiorly, but yet not outwardly, opposed to the goods of love and the truths of doctrine, for with the lips they act as friends, but in heart as enemies." In other words, we need to recognize a particular mental state within ourselves in which we are of a divided mind, one part of our mind being an enemy to the other part. In this state we are "outwardly" supportive of the spiritual ideas we extract from Sacred Scripture but "interiorly" we are "opposed" to them. The reason we are inwardly opposed to the ideas of good and truth we learn about is that our hellish loves are enemies to the heavenly truths. Why?
Because heavenly truths, or truths of doctrine from Sacred Scripture, point to what good we must love and do. We don't like to do these heavenly goods because we already love to do the hellish things. these are the things we call good -- what we enjoy and already love, and they are evil enjoyments that benefit self only and lead to the destruction of all heavenly good and truth we could have.
The passage says that "before the world they profess those things, but in their spirit, in which they are when engaged in meditating alone, they deny them. These, therefore, are the enemies who see" The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch4.htm#scientific-revelations +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Correspondences in Sacred Scripture and Divine SpeechQuoting from the Writings Sacred Scripture: 66. There are in the Word, in general, four different styles. The first is that of the Most Ancient Church. Their mode of expression was such that when they mentioned terrestrial and worldly things they thought of the spiritual and celestial things which these represented. They therefore not only expressed themselves by representatives, but also formed these into a kind of historical series, in order to give them more life; and this was to them delightful in the very highest degree. This is the style of which Hannah prophesied, saying: Speak what is high! high! Let what is ancient come out of your mouth (1 Sam. 2:3). Such representatives are called in David, "Dark sayings of old" (Ps. 78:2-4). These particulars concerning the creation, the garden of Eden, etc., down to the time of Abram, Moses had from the descendants of the Most Ancient Church. [2] The second style is historical, which is found in the books of Moses from the time of Abram onward, and in those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and the Kings. In these books the historical facts are just as they appear in the sense of the letter; and yet they all contain, in both general and particular, quite other things in the internal sense, of which, by the Lord's Divine mercy, in their order in the following pages. The third style is the prophetical one, which was born of that which was so highly venerated in the Most Ancient Church. This style however is not in connected and historical form like the most ancient style, but is broken, and is scarcely ever intelligible except in the internal sense, wherein are deepest arcana, which follow in beautiful connected order, and relate to the external and the internal man; to the many states of the church; to heaven itself; and in the inmost sense to the Lord. The fourth style is that of the Psalms of David, which is intermediate between the prophetical style and that of common speech. The Lord is there treated of in the internal sense, under the person of David as a king. (AC 66) Recall that all details of reality and events are produced by God. This is the dictionary meaning of the word "omnipotence" which is attributed to God by definition. Since nothing exists before God creates it, all things that exist must be created out of the infinite and immortal spiritual substances that are in God. These spiritual substances are called "uncreate" to distinguish them from created objects. We are familiar with many of these uncreate substances, calling them by such names as life, love, good, truth, intelligence, and freedom, along with all their sub-varieties like different kinds of loves, different types of truths, different variety of sensations and mental delights. These uncreate substances are infinite and alive in themselves. When we receive them in our mental organs by inflow, these spiritual uncreate substances set in motion mental operations that we subjectively experience as loves and attractions we feel, the truths we think and understand, the delights and pleasures we experience, the will and determination we exercise when pursuing a goal, and so on. These operations in our mind are created by the inflow of the uncreate spiritual substances. In what sense are we then different from a television, a computer, or a robot? The scientific answer is revealed in the Writings Sacred Scripture. It is one of the most astonishing ideas in theistic psychology. It's called the "as-of self" (see Section xx). In other words, God has created our mental organs not only to be able to receive the inflow of the uncreate spiritual substances, but also to make us feel that these living operations in our mind are our own, not something that comes into us from outside ourselves. We don't want to be TV sets. We don't want to be computers and robots. We want to have a mind of our own, our own thoughts, our very own feelings. This human sentiment is discussed in the story of Adam and Eve in the Old Testament Sacred Scripture (see Section xx). The explanations are laid out in the scientific sense of the story once it is determined what the words in the literal meaning tell us by correspondence between the natural events and the mental operations. The natural event is about Adam, who is presented there as the first created human being, who complained to God about being alone. God responded by taking one of Adam's ribs while he was asleep, and creating a woman out of it, and the two became a married couple. This is the natural event or story line. It is written in a special Divine language where every detail mentioned hides some universal fact about mental states and about their proper preparation for immortality. The mental operations to which it corresponds involve the "as-of self" in the evolution of the human race (see Section xx). Adam stands for the self. Eve represents the "as-of self." The self of a human being could not be happy without feeling that our willing and thinking are our very own and that we can act in freedom in accordance with our desire. That refers to the feeling of inner freedom and privacy, but since it was revealed to our rational mind that God is omnipotent, we can reason that the rationality of our mental operations in our willing and thinking cannot really be our own. Both of these must be present in our mind – the feeling of freedom to act and the understanding that God is actually the only animating power and rationality. On the one hand, we understand rationally that the life and intelligence in us is not our own. On the other hand, we would be inhuman unless we had the sensation and feeling that our willing and thinking are our very own. This is why we need the "as-of self" concept. It is one of the most productive and beneficial ideas in theistic psychology. It is the as-of self that makes us human and fundamentally different from other receptors -- TVs, radios, computers, robots. Animals do not reflect rationally on the world and themselves. They do not have an as-of self, which is a purely human operation of the rational organ of the mind. God rules all created things by means of the uncreate spiritual substances that stream forth from the infinite Spiritual Sun and enter every created object from within. These living immortal substances create different operational effects depending on the structure or form of the receiving object. Rocks and atoms are physical receptors that receive the uncreate substances within themselves from within, and this makes up the basis or infrastructure of their existence. Plants and animals receive the inflow of uncreate spiritual substances still differently, and clearly in a higher level of function. This is why plant and animal species can adapt, survive, and propagate, while structures of rocks and atoms fall apart in time. Human minds receive the inflow of uncreate spiritual substances at the highest possible level, which is called rationality. This is the level that creates the operation of the as-of self. The above discussion was about how God creates and manages things through their inner reception of the uncreate substances. Recall that the uncreate substances are living in themselves as part of God's life. There are two main categories of uncreate substances -- good and truth. Divine Good is also called Divine Love, while Divine Truth is also called Divine Wisdom. You can see from the above discussion that good and truth are spiritual substances that form the basis of every object and quality in the created universe. This is difficult to grasp at first because we think of good and truth in materialistic ideas, not spiritual or rational. But you can see why and in what way theistic psychology uses the concept Divine Speech. God's "speech" refers to God's love and truth, since that's what God is -- infinite Divine Love and Truth. God creates and manages the universe by means of love and truth. Divine Speech is always about love and truth, the very source and structure of all reality, including worlds, atoms, and minds. The good and truth we receive form the basis of our mind, our immortality, our conjugial happiness, and our ability to make others happy from ourselves. God gives the human race love and truth in many different ways. One of the ways involves our conscious rationality as human beings. This is the "as-of self" spoken of above. God uses Divine Speech to elevate the consciousness of human beings. Divine Truth in Divine Speech is the primary and most powerful agent of creation. The Divine Truth in Divine Speech is expressed in meanings called correspondences -- the same correspondences that governs the laws between natural events and spiritual events, as discussed above. This is understandable when you consider that God manages the natural world as a world of effects whose causes are in the spiritual world. The cause-effect relation is achieved by means of correspondences. If X in the natural world corresponds to Y in the spiritual world, then Y is the cause of X.
In the following passage from Arcana Coelestia ("Heavenly Secrets"), Swedenborg is analyzing the phrase "When it is well with thee" which appears in Genesis 40, Verse 14. In its inner scientific sense, this phrase refers to a developmental phase of character reformation involving the sensuous or empirical level of thinking and feeling. Swedenborg takes the opportunity here to say something more about correspondences, a subject that he discusses progressively throughout the 12-volume set of Arcana Coelestia. AC 5131 "When it is well with thee." [Gen. 40:14] That this signifies when there is correspondence, is evident from the signification of its "being well with thee," when the rebirth or regeneration of the exterior natural or sensuous is treated of, as being correspondence; for it is not well with it until it corresponds. At the end of the different chapters it may be seen what correspondence is. There is a correspondence of sensuous with natural things, a correspondence of natural with spiritual things, a correspondence of spiritual with celestial things, and finally a correspondence of celestial things with the Divine of the Lord; thus there is a succession of correspondences from the Divine down to the ultimate natural. [2] But as an idea of the nature of correspondences can with difficulty be formed by those who have never thought about them before, it may be well to say a few words on the subject. It is known from philosophy that the end is the first of the cause, and that the cause is the first of the effect. That the end, the cause, and the effect may follow in order, and act as a one, it is needful that the effect should correspond to the cause, and the cause to the end. But still the end does not appear as the cause, nor the cause as the effect; for in order that the end may produce the cause, it must take to itself administrant means from the region where the cause is, by which means the end may produce the cause; and in order that the cause may produce the effect, it also must take to itself administrant means from the region where the effect is, by which means the cause may produce the effect. These administrant means are what correspond; and because they correspond, the end can be in the cause and can actuate the cause, and the cause can be in the effect and can actuate the effect; consequently the end through the cause can actuate the effect. It is otherwise when there is no correspondence; for then the end has no cause in which it may be, still less an effect in which it may be, but is changed and varied in the cause, and finally in the effect, according to the form made by the administrant means. [3] All things in general and in particular in man, nay, all things in general and in particular in nature, succeed one another as end, cause, and effect; and when they thus correspond to one another, they act as a one; for then the end is the all in all things of the cause, and through the cause is the all in all things of the effect. As for example, when heavenly love is the end, the will the cause, and action the effect, if there is correspondence, then heavenly love flows into the will, and the will into the action, and they so act as a one that by means of the correspondence the action is as it were the love; or as when the faith of charity is the end, thought the cause, and speech the effect, then if there is correspondence, faith from charity flows into the thought, and this into the speech, and they so act as a one, that by means of the correspondence the speech is as it were the end. In order however that the end, which is love and faith, may produce the cause, which is will and thought, it must take to itself administrant means in the rational mind that will correspond; for without administrant means that correspond, the end, which is love or faith, cannot be received, however much it may flow in from the Lord through heaven. From this it is plain that the interiors and the exteriors of man, that is, what is rational, natural, and sensuous in him must be brought into correspondence, in order that he may receive the Divine influx, and consequently that he may be born again; and that it is not well with him till then. This is the reason why here by "when it is well with thee" is signified correspondence. (AC 5131) We can highlight the above passage by summarizing some of the assertions contained in it. This will give us a more rational understanding of correspondences and the key role they have in our lives. (1) There is a succession of correspondences produced by Divine Speech, from the Spiritual Sun down and out to the ultimate physical plane of reality. (2) The end, the cause, and the effect follow in order, and act as a one because the effect corresponds to the cause, and the cause to the end. Hence correspondences are the means by which all phenomena (natural effects) are produced (spiritual causes). (3) The end is in the cause and actuates the cause. The cause is in the effect and actuates the effect. Consequently the end through the cause actuates the effect. The “end” refers to God’s goal of adequately preparing human beings for their life in immortality. This is Divine Love. The “cause” refers to the exteriorization of God’s goal by means of Divine Truth within which Divine Love is contained and hidden. Thus truth is nothing but the outward visible appearance of love, which itself remains invisible within it. (4) In order that the end may produce the cause, it must take to itself administrant means from the region where the cause is, by which means the end may produce the cause; and in order that the cause may produce the effect, it also must take to itself administrant means from the region where the effect is, by which means the cause may produce the effect. These “administrant means” are what correspond. This means that there is no direct contact across degrees between the spiritual and the natural realities. There is only a correspondential function that automatically ties them together in the position of cause and effect. The impossibility of direct contact between the natural and the spiritual, or between the effect and its cause, is because the effect and the cause are each in separate substances or realities that can never appear to each other. But they do appear to each other by correspondence, which is a functional connection, not direct and continuous. (5) All things in general and in particular in the human mind and in nature, succeed one another as end, cause, and effect; and when they thus correspond to one another, they act as a one. This is the basis of reality. Correspondences are the laws that hold all things in the right position, structure, and action. (6) In human action, the mental organ of “the will” operates our motivated affective goal states. This is experienced as a striving to achieve a particular “end” or purpose. The mental organ of the “understanding” operates our cognitive thinking sequences. These cognitive operations are motivated, initiated, and directed by the will to produce a plan to reach the desired goal state. A particular action is the ultimate result of the three-step process. In this behavioral series, the “will,” or the operations of the affective organ, defines and selects the “end” or particular motivated goal state. The “understanding,” or the operations of the cognitive organ, provides the “cause” or particular reasoning and plan. The action is the “effect” and it is executed or performed by the sensorimotor organ of the mind. Once the sequence affective-cognitive-sensorimotor is complete in the mind, the physical body reacts by correspondence and produces appropriate movement, action, perception, and sensation. These four things correspond to each other --
(7) The Divine Human's love in the form of spiritual heat, inflows into the affective organ, and the Divine Human's truth in the form of spiritual light, inflows into the cognitive. No matter how much love and truth flow into our mind from God, they remain inactive on their own, until we consciously decide to make our willing and thinking to correspond to the inflowing love and truth. Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture instructs us on how to achieve this correspondence. Our willing and intending, or motivational goal states, must be made consciously to correspond to the inflowing Divine love, and our thinking and reasoning processes, must be made consciously to correspond to the inflowing Divine truth. Thus can we be “reborn” as an individual with new character. This new and superior spiritual character makes it possible for us to live in the heavens of our mind, when we pass into the immortality of the afterlife. (8) The love and truth to which our intending and reasoning have been made to correspond, is nothing else than the Divine Love and the Divine Truth activating and operating by correspondence the new willing mind. We must continuously keep in mind that this love and truth are both infinite and uncreate, hence they cannot belong to us. When we fail to keep this in mind, we are spiritually insane and irrational. We must think rational thoughts, namely, that God wills that His Divine Love and Truth entering our mind, appear to us as-if our very own. In other words, it feels to us that we are free to think or do as we choose. This is a real feeling based on our actual reality. It is not an illusion or delusion. It is God who creates this reality. He makes it such that His love and truth, which operate our willing and thinking, feel to us like our own love and truth, our own willing what we like, and our own thinking what we want. We can forget, or we can deny, that it is God’s power and God’s rationality that activates our willing and thinking. God allows people to forget or deny reality. If God did not allow people to deny reality, and forced them to think only rationally, we would not have freedom, hence we would not be human. We could not reciprocate God’s love, for which He longs, and for which He created the universe. Hence it is absolutely essential that God give people actual freedom, not bogus freedom as an appearance to fool us. To give people actual freedom means that He must compel Himself to make things happen that He would not choose to on His Own, because they are evil things that make human beings suffer, instead of the good things that He Himself wills for them, which make them eternally happy. The revelation of this Divine Law of Permissions, as it is called in the Writings Sacred Scripture, proves that human freedom is actual, not a mere appearance or illusion, despite God’s omnipotence (see Section xx). Without the reality of this as-if appearance, we could not be maximally happy, hence we could not dwell in our heaven. But we must constantly acknowledge to ourselves that they are only as-if our own, and not actually our own. The moment we think they are truly our own, they turn instantly into their opposites -- negative love (hatred, fear, anger, dissatisfaction) and negative truth (invalid conclusions, false assumptions, delusional explanations). It’s like a car you are allowed to own for free given to you by a wizard. You are told that the moment you think that the car is actually yours, it will disappear. Our rationality is an ability or power that gives us the ability to reason truthfully. It feels like it’s our own rationality. But we are told in the Writings Sacred Scripture that if we assume that our intelligence is actually our own, not God’s, we lose it. Our rationality vanishes. We now start thinking and reasoning with flaws. Our conclusions are no longer accurate and real. Our assumptions are false. Our motivational states slip into negative zones. We have lost the status of humanity. We can regain it, but only by giving up how we think and feel. (9) The anatomy of the mind shows three discrete layers in the natural mind, from top to bottom-- rational, natural, and sensuous. Another way of saying this is natural-rational, natural-sensuous, and natural-corporeal (see Section xx). Love and truth inflowing from the Divine Human cannot activate anything in our will and understanding unless we ourselves consciously create rational concepts in our understanding. These rational concepts are called "administrant means" in the passage above. Elsewhere they are called rational "vessels" that can “contain spiritual truths.” Theistic psychology is the knowledge that consists of these rational concepts and principles organized into a science (“scientifics of doctrine”). Divine Love and Truth can inflow into these rational concepts. The more interior these rational concepts are, the higher the form of the Divine Love and Truth that we can receive into our consciousness. In other words, the thoughts and feelings are at a level of consciousness or mentality that correspond to Divine Love and Truth. It is Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture that forms the content of consciousness at each discrete level of the mind. You can see from this discussion that the revelation of the existence of correspondences and what they are, will be a great boon to the evolution of human civilization on this earth. The Table below shows how Divine Speech expressed in Sacred Scripture gradually raised the evolution of consciousness of the human race.
You can see that Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture has been given to the human race on this earth over a period of thousands of years in Western culture comprising three periods or phases of evolution. Prior to this history, Divine Speech was received in earlier forms of Sacred Scripture whose character is described in the Writings. These earlier forms of Sacred Scripture formed the consciousness and religions of the Asiatic people. Subsequently, the East and the West cultures and religions have developed separately, but at the beginning all cultures on this earth had religions from the ancient Sacred Scripture given to the first human generations born on this planet. These historical details are revealed in the Writings. They are important to know because of the universal law that individual biography recapitulates cultural history, or that the developmental steps of our consciousness recapitulate the evolution of mentality in the race (see Section xx). In the table above, the first phase is marked by the Hebrew Old Testament Sacred Scripture which was written in a style and mentality called "natural-corporeal" correspondences of Divine Speech. The meaning of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture was cast in a mentality that corresponded to the level and style of thinking of the civilization of the Old Testament in the Middle East and surrounding regions. The prophets through whose mind these Sacred Scriptures were written down, had this mentality and they wrote down the Divine Speech that came to their natural mind at the level of their own mentality, which was natural-corporeal. Hence the Old Testament Sacred Scripture had to be written in natural-corporeal correspondences of Divine Speech. The second phase is marked by the Greek New Testament Sacred Scripture, which is written in a higher mentality level called "natural-sensuous" correspondences of Divine Speech. When you contrast the numbered entries in the table which describe that mentality, you can see that Divine Speech in correspondences at the natural-sensuous level, comes through and speaks to a more universal level of the human mind, less sectarian and ethnic. From a general or distant relationship to God, humanity could now develop a personal and close relationship. God as a Divine Human has a relationship directly to the individual (phase 2 consciousness), not just collectively to a nation or religion (phase 1 consciousness). The third phase is marked by the Writings Sacred Scripture which are written with the highest level of natural correspondences called "natural-rational" correspondences of divine Speech. At this level of thinking Divine Speech describes the particulars of our relationship to God in universal scientific ideas, such as we have in theistic psychology based on the Writings Sacred Scripture. Theistic psychology is based on the systematic methodical activity of extracting layers of correspondences in the Writings Sacred Scripture. This extraction process must follow the procedures specified in the Writings regarding how to extract higher order correspondences from all Sacred Scripture. Theistic psychology was made possible when the Divine Child during the Incarnation Event created the interior-natural organ in Himself, and consequently in every human being’s mind (see Section xx). Considered in its literal meaning, the Old and New Testament Sacred Scripture appears to be historical, ethnic, and religious, and sometimes even sectarian and sexist. This literal content has been used in history to wage cruel wars against other religions and ethnic groups. Even within one religion that is based on the same historical Sacred Scripture, there are sub-varieties of interpretations that have fueled passions and aroused discrimination, disagreement, cruelty, and bitterness. All this negativity and dogmatism associated with religion and Sacred Scripture disappear totally when we go below the surface literal meaning to the inner level of correspondences, as is illustrated and demonstrated in the Writings Sacred Scripture. It is understandable why Divine Speech is of such a negative character by the time it comes down to the lowest common denominator, which is the ethnic mind of a prophet who is a member of a community somewhere and has a cultural or socialized mentality reflecting his tribe and times. All portions of Sacred Scripture are constructed of written sentences in some natural language like Hebrew (Old Testament), Greek (New Testament), or Latin (the Writings). In each case the literal-historical content reflects the age and culture. But the inner sense that is extracted through correspondences has no cultural, historical, and religious content. Its content is theistic psychology, a universal scientific revelation of endless proportions, delivered through the modern scientific mind of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). It is very significant to note that the modern scientific revelations in the Writings could not have been delivered by Swedenborg in the same way as the revelations contained in the Old Testament, and the New Testament. None of the authors of the Old and New Testament books had any idea of the hidden inner correspondences of the sentences they wrote down. Their thinking mentality was pre-modern. They could not possibly understand the rational scientific descriptions of the human mind, its anatomy, and relation to the spiritual world, heaven, and regeneration. For instance, the people who wrote the New Testament were eyewitnesses to the physical Incarnation of God as the Divine Human. They were able to relate to Him only at the natural-sensuous level. They would not have been able to read and understand the Writings, written 17 centuries later in natural-rational correspondences of Divine Speech. They had only natural-sensuous concepts by which to comprehend God and the Divine Human that walked among them. For instance, they could not understand why it was that the physical Divine Human had to undergo death and had to vanish from their sensuous consciousness. They tried to hold Him back, not being able to understand His explanations that He must return to a state of spiritual existence in order that He might appear to them in a more eternal manner. This new more real Presence is the Divine Human in their conscious rational mind and is called the “Holy Spirit.” The co-Presence of God with us is in our rational consciousness. The Divine Human, once He was present physically on earth, could have remained within their sensuous consciousness, as they urged Him to do. But He refused to do that for their sake and the sake of all humanity. It took 17 more centuries of evolution before a modern scientist like Swedenborg could be introduced into the spiritual world while still on earth, so that he might give an empirical rational account of the spiritual world and God. Nothing but an empirical and scientific account could serve for the new modern science of theistic psychology. From this discussion you can see how it is that the evolution of human consciousness is brought about by God through Divine Speech expressed in levels of correspondences matching the ability of people to understand God's management techniques. Human consciousness is therefore an expression of our relationship to God -- general, personal, and particular. For more on this topic see Section xx and my other online book Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg: Three Steps in Rational Spirituality available online: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html See also AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PRESENCE OF CORRESPONDENCES WITHIN THE WORD by Rev. Dr. Reuben P. Bell available online at: http://highermeaning.org/Authors/RPB/CORRESPO.shtml Here is an example of how we transform or translate natural-rational ideas into spiritual-natural correspondences:
The Table above is a comparison of the discrete levels of operation of Divine Speech in our mind as it descends from the Spiritual Sun (see Diagrams above). Divine Speech is also called Divine Truth and also, spiritual light. Truth is therefore a substance, which is why sunlight or electric light is a form of matter or physical energy. Light is not "nothing." It is constructed of something. Natural light is constructed of physical energy and matter. Spiritual light is constructed of the uncreate substances that stream forth from the eternal Spiritual Sun, which was not created because it exists in eternity, without a beginning point in time. Time itself is a created natural thing or process. It is not yet known when time, space, matter and the expanding physical universe was first created. This was not revealed explicitly in Sacred Scripture. But it is possible that future research in theistic psychology may discover this knowledge by extraction, using the method of extraction specified in Sacred Scripture (see Section xx). It is not possible to know all that there is hidden and extractable from the Sacred Scripture we now possess (see Section xx). The Writings Sacred Scripture explicitly state that no new revelations are to be expected for the human race, and that the Writings Sacred Scripture complete the full creation and evolution of the human race. The mental anatomy is now in place in every human mind for Divine Speech to be consciously interpretable through applying the method of correspondences with enlightenment (see Section xx). Through this extraction process every individual now has the ability to construct true doctrine of life for oneself, and thereby be regenerated by the Divine Psychologist who is now operating at the level of the natural mind, as a result of the Incarnation Event (see Section xx). The Table above gives an illustration of what this process of extraction yields. Divine Speech descends to its lowest possible point in the natural mind, which is called the corporeal mind (see Section xx). Sometimes this is referred to as the sensuous mind, or the corporeal-sensuous mind. To understand this, it is necessary to remember that the natural mind operates at three discrete levels of rationality, called the corporeal level, the sensuous level, and the rational level (see Section xx). The history of civilization shows a gradual progression of level of thinking from savage and barbaric to civilized and humane. The more civilization becomes humane, the more it is rational in its laws and practices. One sign of this is that new laws are constantly passed to give additional protections of human and individual rights. The more we are advanced in our civilization the more we practice justice, fairness, equal treatment, equal opportunity, compassionate government, spreading the wealth, helping neighbor countries and living in peace, etc. This progression in human mentality is created and managed by Divine Speech descending into the mind of every person. In recent history, Divine Speech has brought on a new progressive mentality in civilization through the levels of correspondences in which Sacred Scripture was delivered to a person or prophet, who wrote it down, and then studied and transmitted through generations and culture. The Old Testament Sacred Scripture was delivered Book by Book, over several centuries, starting with the first five books written by Moses about four millenniums ago. It was completed with the last Book delivered by a prophet several hundred years before the next portion was delivered, called the New Testament Sacred Scripture. Then, seventeen centuries later, the third and final portion was delivered in the Writings Sacred Scripture (completed near the end of the18th century). These three portions of Sacred Scripture provide a full set of revelations for the human race. This fact is established and justified through scientific and rational arguments and evidence for it is presented in the Writings of Swedenborg. Any literate person or scientist can verify this argument and this evidence. I have done so continuously for the past 24 years (see Section xx). The more I study the Writings the more I can present scientific arguments and evidence verifying its statements. This course in theistic psychology is the presentation of that evidence. The level of truths contained in Divine Speech correspond to the elevation of our rational understanding of God. It is Divine Speech that forms the content of our understanding at each level. Our understanding of God is higher and higher as we proceed from corporeal-sensuous correspondences of truth to natural-rational understanding, to spiritual-natural understanding. This is the highest level of thinking we are capable of as earthlings restricted to our natural mind in consciousness. At this level we are capable of character reformation and regeneration (see Section xx). Here is another example of how we apply the correspondential sense of the Ten Commandments to theistic psychology:
The above is from: http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/ch3.htm#correspondences-SS ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Levels of Descent of Divine SpeechGod creates and manages all the details of the dual universe through Divine Speech (historically known to many as "the Word of God" or "Logos"). Divine Speech issues or proceeds from the Infinite Rational Mind of the Divine Human. Swedenborg has described the Spiritual Sun as a brilliant aura around the Divine Human so that all whose consciousness is in the highest portion of their rational mind, can visually or sensually see the Divine Human amidst the Spiritual Sun as an aura around Him. In that state of mind called our “third heaven,” we know that the visual and sensuous appearance of the Divine Human outside of themselves at a seeming distance in the sky, is only an appearance that represents the Omnipresence and the Co-Presence of the Divine Human within themselves. They know that He is actually co-Present inside their mind, not sensuously, but rationally in the good and truth that inflows from Him and activates their will and their understanding. They know that the Spiritual Sun seen outside of themselves is actually within themselves. They cannot see the infinite, but the infinite can be within what is their finite and never the other way round (see Section xx). The sensuous consciousness of God is distant, but the rational consciousness of God is close up. Co-Presence with God is possible only in rational consciousness of Him. This is why the Divine Human had to depart the physical plane of reality. To remain would have condemned humanity to a distant relationship when God was longing for a close relationship. He departed from a distant sensuous consciousness for the sake of close up rational consciousness. It is revealed in the Writings Sacred Scripture that God created the universe in order to bestow eternal conjugial happiness and wisdom to every human being. It was not possible for us to be human, rational, and free by being created ready made angels in the eternity of heaven. That's what God would have done had He wanted a race of sensuous robots. While such a race could worship and obey God, it would not be able to love God. But God wants love, not worship and obedience for its own sake. God Himself is infinite love and truth, and the nature of love, as revealed in the Writings, is "spiritual conjunction." In other words, God's love is such that it desires to make every human being He creates, happy and rational to eternity by having them experience His infinite love and truth as if they are their own. For instance, when we walk, we feel like we are walking from our own power to exercise our will to move towards a goal. And yet, we know from rational revelation that our will has no power of its own but must be moved by God's Divine Speech which inflows into our affective organ in the form of love or spiritual heat (see Section xx). It is God's spiritual heat, or love, inflowing, that moves our legs while walking toward a particular goal. And yet, if feels like it is our own will that moves our legs towards the goal we have chosen. Another example is given by our ability to study and learn. It feels like we are putting up the effort to read, analyze, comprehend, memorize, apply. And we are happy with ourselves when we succeed. But in reality, it is God's moment by moment interventions that puts one thought next to another, or supplies the reasoning procedure by which we can make an appropriate conclusion. These examples show how God wills that what is actually His, to be as-if ours. God's inflowing love and truth, activating our will and intelligence, appear ours, yet are not actually ours, but appear as-if they are ours (see Section xx). This is the actualizing form that God's love takes. Swedenborg was told by the celestial angels that they actually perceive the inflowing love and truth from the Divine Human. They also told him that if they should for a moment think that their powers, intelligence, and wisdom are their own, rather than appear as-if their own, they would instantly fall out of heaven. The heavenly state of consciousness attributes every detail of one's thoughts and feelings to the Divine Human. But it is otherwise for the unenlightened person informed by sensuous consciousness rather than by rational ideas from Sacred Scripture. When we are in this materialistic mentality of the sensuous, we attribute some things to God and some things to ourselves. I have sometimes been told by people that they hate the idea of this "as-of self" that I was explaining to them. They react to the idea as something that removes their motivation or incentive to do or think anything. People want the credit for their effort and abilities. Of course, this is a practical attitude when we are interacting with other people in society, but it is an insane idea spiritually when we are considering our interactions with God who activates all our activities. Rational reception of Divine Speech by each individual is the mechanism that God has created for human beings so that they can be consciously co-Present with God. Co-presence with God is called "conjunction" with Him. When we are in a state of conjunction with God we are consciously aware of His interior presence in our rational mind. We can talk to Him as if He were present face to face on the outside, but He does not engage in sensuous or physical dialog by voice or apparition. He makes His thoughts known to us instantly, so that we think it in the form and meaning that is at our level of mentality. This is rational consciousness of God and it affords us conscious co-Presence. In that state of closeness to Him He is able to give us conjugial bliss in eternity. It is most important to underscore the fact that this co-Presence and communication with the Divine Human is not sensuous but rational. There are no voices or visions like the prophets of old experienced in their sensuous consciousness. There is no interlocutor who takes turns in a dialog, as we do with other people. There is only rational perception and rational love. In other words, God arranges our thoughts and feelings in a way that corresponds to His message. We experience His message as our own thinking, feeling, and rational perception. It is only rationally that we know that it is God who has rearranged our thoughts and feelings in any particular situation. In terms of sensuous experience, it appears that it is our own rearrangement or insight. It is easy to deny that it is God's. God makes it easy for us to deny that it is He that arranges our thoughts and feelings. In the modern age of science, God would not speak to us in living voice or appear to us visually because this would paralyze our rational consciousness of Him and thus deny us His co-Presence, rob us of conjugial bliss in eternity. God appearing at the United Nations tomorrow and making a Divine Declaration in the world media, would paralyze our ability to be co-Present with Him in our rational mind, which is where our eternal heavens are. God created heaven in our rational mind so that He can be co-Present with us to eternity, and by this conjunction to make us happy and intelligent to eternity. It is through Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture that God is present with us in our rational consciousness of Him. This rational consciousness is built up in our mind by the correspondences of Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture – and in no other way. God’s co-Presence varies from clear to obscure. "Clear" means that we are able to receive more interior meanings of Divine Speech in higher order correspondences of Sacred Scripture. When God is clearly co-Present in our rational consciousness we are able to receive a more perfect happiness and wisdom, than what we can receive when His co-Presence in our mind is somewhat "obscure.” Our consciousness or level of mentality reflects the clarity of His co-Presence within our rational understanding of His Sacred Scripture. The following chart shows the levels of descent of Divine Speech from the Rational Mind of the Divine Human to human minds at various levels of mentality or consciousness and enlightenment (from clear to obscure). This descent is sequential in successive order, but it is simultaneous in existential order. The descent of Divine Speech occurs simultaneously into every human mind but it is perceived according to one’s clarity or obscurity of His co-Presence. The clarity of His co-Presence depends on one main thing: The intensity or purity of our love of His truth and good. This purity is measured by how much we are willing to cooperate with Him in our endless regeneration process. Hence it all comes down to the bottom line of spiritual accounting – how much we are willing to let go of our own desires and justifications, in exchange for His desires and justifications, as explained to humanity through Divine Speech in Sacred Scripture. Our consciousness would be elevated instantaneously to the highest human potential of near omniscience (“third heaven”) if we were willing right this moment to let go of one hundred percent of our desires and justifications. But, assuming we can let go of all of them, would we be as happy as we can be? When the answer is Yes, we are in that third heaven.
Note: in the following discussion about the table above on levels of descent, the word "level" refers to this table, but "layer" refers to the layers chart of mental anatomy located elsewhere. They agree with each other but the levels of descent table above collapses some of the layers in the layers chart of mental anatomy. This is indicated in the first column.
Note that Divine Speech "descending" through correspondences in Sacred Scripture creates each layer of our mental anatomy successively, and causes them to operate by correspondences in these successive degrees or layers. In Itself (level 1) Divine Speech is incomprehensible and inexpressible because it is infinite and our understanding cannot comprehend the infinite. In the Rational Mind of the Divine Human infinite things make one distinguishably. In other words the infinite individual items each remain unique and mutually distinguished from all others. Divine Speech flows out of the Divine Human's Mind into the created universe from within by means of correspondences arranged in exteriorizing discrete degrees and operating in simultaneous order. Divine Speech as an outflow or emanation from the Spiritual Sun, is the means by which the Divine Human creates all things and maintains them in a rational and loving order. The Divine Speech exits or proceeds from the Spiritual Sun, which is an aura of spiritual heat (love) and spiritual light (truth) that is continuously proceeding, united as one, into the created universe. This proceeding is called Divine Influx and as it descends it makes first contact with humanity through the soul of every created individual (layer 3). The soul is immortal. It is a mental organ constructed out of the spiritual substances proceeding from the Spiritual Sun. The soul functions as a receptor or filter. It is capable of receiving or capturing the Divine Speech. Although the Divine Speech as received by the soul is no longer infinite, it is still Divine. In other words, the Divine can limit itself and “dwell” within the boundaries of finite things created for the reception of the infinite. This self-delimited Divine is called the Divine Proceeding or "Holy Spirit." It is what forms, initiates, activates, and operates our consciousness – its rational syntax and the human affections within it. The human begins in the inmost of the rational, in the words of the Writings. The Divine Proceeding which is in our soul does not become amalgamated or one with the soul because the infinite cannot become one with the finite. There is no “oneness” with God. There is an absolute duality between God and human beings, or between that which is uncreate (like love, life, truth, intelligence, light, heat, endeavor, propensity) on the one hand, and on the other, that which is created (like galaxies, atoms, plants, human minds, heaven, and hell). There is no possible overlap between the uncreate and the created. But the created has the property of being able to contain the uncreate. For instance, plant cells are capable of receiving life, light, heat, and propensity, while rock molecules can only receive heat and motion. The form, structure, and substance of each created object determines what uncreate substances it is capable of receiving from the Divine Proceeding. The human mind is created and is born into the spiritual world and overlaps with it. All human minds therefore overlap with each other, creating the objective spiritual world (see Section xx). When we are born, our physical body is temporarily alive on earth while our mental body ("spirit" or "mind") is permanently alive in the spiritual world. The shape of the human mind is the shape of the mental body, and this is the shape of the physical body. Therefore the spiritual world must be in the shape of the human body and the human mind. Swedenborg was able to confirm this by direct observation. He was given a "bird's eye" view of the spiritual world, as if he were taken out of it to look at it. He saw that it had a shape, and this was the form of the human body. Nothing was missing. In fact, as he was traveling through the spiritual world Swedenborg described his location with reference to the human body. He would say that he was "in the province of the eye" or the heart, or "in the region beneath the buttocks" (where some of the worst hells are located). Quoting: AC 818 There is a dreadful hell beneath the buttocks, where they seem to stab one another with knives, aiming the knives at one another's breasts like furies, but in the act of striking the knife is continually taken away from them. They are those who have held others in such hatred that they burned to kill them cruelly; and from this they had derived a nature so direful. This hell was opened to me (but only a little on account of their direful cruelties), so that I might see the nature of deadly hatred. (AC 818) Swedenborg called this shape of humanity in eternity as "the Grand Man," which is also translated as "the Grand Human." It has both male and female organs. Swedenborg says that the Divine Human continuously wills to unify the entire created immortal human race. This unification is reflected by the visual appearance of the Grand Human. But this Grand Human contains only the portions of human minds called heaven, which is why the Grand Human has a perfect human anatomical shape. But the hells of the human mind are separated out and formed into another unity which Swedenborg called a malformed or disfigured individual. (D.Love 6). The 6 levels of the chart above show the parallel forms of the spiritual world and the mental world, in the columns marked "spiritual geography" and "mental anatomy." The spiritual world is a vertically organized operational sphere for supporting the activity of thoughts and feelings of the human race. All our thoughts and feelings are operations in the anatomical organs of the mind. Swedenborg was able to visit three layers of heaven and three equivalent layers of hell. There is such a structural balance between the heavens and the hells because hells are created by the corrupted reception of spiritual heat (love) in the affective organ (“the will”), and spiritual light (truth) in the cognitive organ (“the understanding.” Everyone receives the same Divine Proceeding into their unique soul. From there, the Divine Proceeding descends by levels into the discrete layers of the human mind, thus, of the spiritual world. When Divine Speech descends through the soul into our third heaven, it is first received into the highest portion of the affective organ called celestial, which constitutes the third heaven of every individual. This mental activation or operation of the affective organ (or “will”) has a rational content which becomes conscious to us when we have elevated our consciousness into the third heaven. In that mental state, we are called "celestial angels." Swedenborg often talked to people who already live in the eternity of their heavens. Celestial angels think and feel by means of celestial-rational correspondences of Divine Speech (level 2 in the chart above). The topics they think and talk about includes all the things that have to do with love, affection, charity, willing, intending, and regenerating. Swedenborg saw their Sacred Scripture, which he described as having similar shaped letters to the Hebrew print of the Old Testament that he was familiar with on earth. That Sacred Scripture is located in the mind of every human being, in its uppermost layer of operation. If we are willing to elevate our consciousness and mentality to that level, we can become conscious of that celestial-rational Sacred Scripture. Those who elevate their conscious awareness to the second heaven (level 3) (also called “angelic spirits”), think and feel from spiritual-rational correspondences of Divine Speech in which their copy of Sacred Scripture is written. This level of comprehending Divine Speech involves thinking about truth, faith, science, knowledge, understanding. It is a cognitive world, while the third heaven is an affective world. The cognitive mind is a receptor organ of spiritual light from the Spiritual Sun descending through the soul and through the third heaven. Swedenborg compared the thinking level of celestial-rational correspondences (third heaven) with the thinking level of spiritual-rational correspondences (second heaven). There was such a discrete difference that there was absolutely no overlap in level of conscious meaning between the Sacred Scripture in these two discrete locations in our mind. The lowest form of thinking in the third heaven was absolutely beyond the thinking and comprehension of the highest thinking in the second heaven. But there was a relation of correspondence between them. When a celestial angel (third heaven) was allowed to communicate with a spiritual angel (second heaven) they did so through correspondences. Every celestial-rational idea or operation has a corresponding spiritual-rational idea or operation. Thus, while celestial angels are able to perceive directly any truth they are interested in – thus being near-omniscient, spiritual angels have to reason, reflect, debate, and be instructed about it before gaining understanding and enlightenment. There is a similar discrete separation between the spiritual angels (second heaven) and the "natural angels" of the first heaven, also called “good spirits.” When spiritual angels think in spiritual-rational correspondences from their Sacred Scripture (level 3), "angelic spirits" of the first heaven think in corresponding ideas from their Sacred Scripture called spiritual-natural correspondences (level 4). These interior-natural ideas involve things about the external behavior rather than internal thoughts (second heaven) and feelings (third heaven). They are involved in thinking about uses, functions, architecture, competition, justice, and so on. Swedenborg describes the apparent lifestyle of those who are in the three heavens of their eternal life, and it is fascinating to see the differences, all of which relate to the level of correspondences in which they understand their Sacred Scripture. The chart above shows that below the first heaven is located the "world of spirits" (level 5). This is the mental "space" that separates our heaven and our hell. This is the "great interspace" into which our mind is born at our birth, and it is the mental space into which we are resuscitated at the death of the physical body (see Section xx). The world of spirits is therefore the same level as our normal conscious daily natural mind. This level of thinking (level 5) is based on the level of natural correspondences in Sacred Scripture as expressed, written down, and published in a natural language on earth. Swedenborg observed that when people are resuscitated they awaken into the same level of mentality and thinking that they had in their last period on earth. For example, those who had materialistic beliefs and assumptions, would not at first acknowledge that they were now spirits in the spiritual world of the afterlife. They had to learn from new experience that their materialistic beliefs were false. Those who were religious minded, upon awakening from resuscitation, talk about heaven and angels. Swedenborg calls this level of thinking a natural level based on our "external memory" (level 5). In other words, our sensorimotor experiences occasioned by contact with the physical environment are permanently recorded in our memory. The organ of the memory has an external natural portion and an interior spiritual portion. It is our external memories from earth that form the style of life we have in the spiritual world. Those who share compatible or similar memories can be together as a community in heaven or hell since their intentionality will be projecting a similar city or residence, a similar daily round of activities, a similar civic and legal management system. Swedenborg reports that people even name their cities in the world of spirits by similar names as they had on earth -- London, Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem. The content of the external memory organ forms a plane for instantiating the appearances of the lifestyle environment. The type of mentality operative at this level is fixed by natural correspondences in the natural mind. The external natural mind is our daily familiar conscious mind. It is formed entirely by sensory input from the physical body and its abstraction into taxonomic explanatory systems. It is revealed in the Writings that the natural mind has three sub-levels of discrete operations in its outward external portion, and three levels of discrete operations in its inward interior portion (see Section xx). In other words, the natural mind is a microcosm of the entire spiritual world. The three vertical layers of the external natural mind are called corporeal (level 5a), sensuous (level 5b), and rational (level 5c). The natural-corporeal mind (level 5a) is closely bound to the order and limits of the physical world as we know it directly from our physical organs. For example, our corporeal mind (level 5a) can notice that the sun rises in the east every morning and sets in the west. From this observation we may conclude that the earth is flat, unmoving, while the sun is round and moving. The natural-sensuous mind (level 5b) is less closely bound to the physical appearances and is able to construct mental abstractions of them in which it can comprehend new higher relations. The sensuous mind can figure out that the earth must also be round and that the appearance of flatness is only present for the immediate visual view around us. The natural-sensuous mind (level 5b) forms abstractions by abandoning the assumptions of natural-corporeal correspondences (level 5a) and thinking in terms of natural-sensuous correspondences (level 5b). Materialistic science and secularized democratic societies are two great achievements of the natural-sensuous mind. The level of civilized society has been progressively moving to a more rational and spiritual mentality, as we can see when we compare the literal sentences of the Old and New Testaments. The mentality of the Old Testament peoples was such as we detect from the natural-corporeal correspondences in its literal sentences. They thought of God as a stern omnipotent ruler who was partial to certain people and seemed not to care about others, even to the point of commanding cruel acts against them, including slavery and genocide. This mentality went on for centuries, created and embedded in the natural-corporeal correspondences of the Old Testament. Remember that Divine Speech descends from the highest portion of the human mind (level 2, third heaven) to the lowest (level 5, world of spirits and earth). It is the same Divine Speech throughout, but its appearance in correspondences becomes progressively less celestial, less spiritual, less rational, less natural, until it ends up at the lowest level of correspondences built for the human mind -- natural-corporeal correspondences (level 5a or layer 9). The mental span from level 2 (celestial-rational correspondences) to level 5a (layer 9, natural corporeal correspondences) is so enormous that it goes from a heavenly society of rational peaceful people to a barbaric society of semi-rational and cruel people. The span of correspondences that shape human consciousness and behavior is built in given that spiritual geography = mental anatomy. Every individual must go through the developmental steps indicated by the elevation from level 5a (natural-corporeal) to level 2 (celestial-rational). We start our mental life with natural-corporeal correspondences (layer 9), move on through experience and instruction to natural-sensuous correspondences (layer 8), then to natural-rational correspondences (layer 7). The chart above shows that the Writings are written in natural-rational correspondences (layer 7), the New Testament is written in natural-sensuous correspondences (layer 8), and the Old Testament is written in natural-corporeal correspondences (layer 9). For instance, the same Ten Commandments are presented in all three collections of Sacred Scripture. One of the commandments is Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery (see Section xx). In the natural-corporeal meaning of the Old Testament it is clear that this refers to an overt act of infidelity in marriage. The same commandment is expressed in the mentality of natural-sensuous correspondences in the New Testament. Now it is made clear to the comprehension that there is physical adultery and mental adultery. Both are forbidden, so that if we now fantasize infidelity, and do not disapprove of it in our fantasy, then we are breaking the commandment against adultery. Further, in the Writings when this commandment is presented in the language of natural-rational correspondences, we can comprehend that there are three kinds of adultery: physical, mental, and spiritual. Spiritual adultery is a natural-rational concept that does not appear at the two discrete lower levels of correspondences in Sacred Scripture. As mentioned above, spiritual adultery refers to "adulterating the Word," which means to falsify Sacred Scripture for personal reasons such as gaining influence over others or using Sacred Scripture to justify continuing to practice one's wickedness. The adulteration of Sacred Scripture by falsifying its correspondences produces hell in our mind (level 6), as is discussed below. It is important to understand the connection between the natural mind and regeneration. No issue is more central to theistic psychology than this connection. The natural mind of the human race has undergone a major evolutionary transformation when the Incarnation Event occurred two thousand years ago (see Section xx). The purpose of this event was to create new mental pathways for the human race on earth which has descended to the level of sensuous consciousness of God (see Section xx). Swedenborg observed what happens to the masses of people that enter the world of spirits every day. Those who arrive with a sensuous consciousness of God reject the spiritual instructions they receive regarding the Divine Human, heaven, the doctrine of good and truth, charity and faith, love and wisdom. They reject them because these spiritual ideas require a rational understanding of them. Sensuous consciousness (5b) is the reliance on external appearances and their symbolic abstractions, while rational consciousness (5c) is reliance on interior framework and their correspondences. Sensuous consciousness (level 5b) sees absolutely nothing above itself, which is why it interprets all higher-order correspondences at the level of natural-sensuous correspondences. This type of mentality is known as "materialism." Swedenborg observed that hose who arrive in the world of spirits with a materialistic world view are unwilling to accept the reality of God and heaven unless it be proven to them by visual experience that God or heaven actually exist. In other words, materialism demands a sensuous consciousness of the Divine before it will acknowledge it. Since sensuous consciousness of the Divine is not given, materialism fabricates novel interpretations of natural-rational and spiritual-rational correspondences. Swedenborg reports that people with a materialistic outlook, when they realize that they are in the spiritual world, demand to be brought into heaven and into the presence of God. Angels then show up who are able to keep these people's spiritual mind closed while they are raised into their heaven with their externals or natural mind. This is necessary for it is impossible for their corrupted spiritual to be raised to their heaven. When they reach the mental state of their heaven, they face a surrounding environment that is devoid of all things -- no light, no sound, no people, no movement, nothing happening. They are shocked when they are told this is heaven and that it is filled with all sorts of beautiful gardens, palaces, and people. But they see nothing, hear nothing, smell nothing. Soon they begin to experience the emotion of panic and the sensation of suffocation. They quickly throw themselves out of their state of heaven back down into their natural-sensuous ideas and emotions. Their inability to have any experience in heaven is because heaven is a rational consciousness of God. It was crucial therefore for God to continue the creation of the human race by providing new mental pathways, new organic structures in the human mind by which materialism could be defeated. This was accomplished by the Incarnation Event (see Section xx). Since then every individual is born with these new mental pathways and organic structures. The individuals who were already in their afterlife phase were transformed physiologically and anatomically so that they can continue their immortality in the "new heavens" of the human mind that the Divine Human created through spiritual-rational and celestial-rational correspondences (levels 3 and 2). It is still possible for people to ignore the new mental structures and arrive into the world of spirits with a materialistic worldview. However, many people do not think deeply about their materialism so that they go through life ignoring their materialism and practicing decency and integrity for the sake of their idealism for good and truth. When they arrive into the afterlife and are instructed in rational loves and truths, they eagerly receive them, and love them. They ascend to their heaven and live in eternal conjugial bliss. When people's religious ideas are based on sensuous consciousness of God they avoid the use of Sacred Scripture for extracting higher-order meanings of God and heaven. They dislike giving up their sensuous cravings for the sake of rational understanding, which appears to them as "intellectualizing" God rather than "experiencing" God or "being one with Him." Sensuous consciousness of God turns into mysticism and opposes rational consciousness of Divine Speech (see Section xx). The Incarnation Event was necessary for creating the new mental organ for regeneration. The natural mind was reformed or transformed by that event so that it received a new interior form it did not have before. This new portion is called the "interior-natural mind" (see Section xx). The interior-natural organ was created into a discrete degree higher than the natural-rational organ (level 5c). If you look at the chart again you will see that immediately above level 5c is located level 4, the first heaven, and above that, the second heaven (level 3), and above that, the third heaven (level 2). These three heavens are progressively higher by virtue of their correspondences from Sacred Scripture. In other words, the newly created interior-natural organ was capable of conscious operations that represented the discrete levels of the three heavens. This new ability marks the highest and final phase of the creation of the human race. Now people are able to read the natural-rational correspondences of the Writings and extract higher-order correspondences that are spiritual-rational (level 3) and celestial-rational (level 2). This is what makes theistic psychology possible. With this new ability in our interior-natural mind we are able to understand Divine Speech in its highest rationality and meaning (levels 3 and 2). We have new powerful mental tools available for our regeneration efforts. The higher the correspondences we can think with, the more effectively we can overcome our inherited materialism. Individuals who have access to the concepts of theistic psychology can understand the process of character reformation within themselves. They can tap into a spiritual source of determination by which they can face their inherited hellish inclinations, attachments, and involvements and reject them for the sake of their heavenly opposites (see Section xx). When people are unwilling to acknowledge and to study the concepts of theistic psychology they are rejecting rationality as revealed by our Creator. They are then drawn deeper into the web of materialism and unreality. They retain their natural abilities to think logically by segments, but they are unable to put the segments together into a rational understanding of the whole. They have rejected the only source of rationality and sanity -- the spiritual correspondences of Sacred Scripture. They still receive the same influx as others but they systematically turn the ideas into their opposites. They use their limited logic in local segments to transform every statement of Divine Speech into its very opposite. The chart shows this as thinking level 6. (See Note 8) For additional descriptions of the three levels of rational mentality in spiritual development see my book titled Moses, Paul, and Swedenborg: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/moses.html For additional considerations of why Sacred Scripture must be our exclusive source of ideas about regeneration, see my book A Man of the Field: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
